tampines hill

the tembusu fragrance at nite(last two nites) was so strong, it smelled like rotten sewage. as they said, too much of everything is no good. like food, good food. to binge on food is bad. marathon man has been trying to control his weight ever since. but too often than not, he sucumbs to the irresistable pull of relishing on those sweet and oily stuff. when he has all his creative juices cranked up but cannot get it out to produce some solid result, he has to fall back on food to tame his wild thots. when he encounters things that bother him, he yearns for a mouthful to let him focus his mind to take on the problem. when he finds that the food is really good, he would tell himself no harm to break the diet just for once....when he is inivited to meals, he doesn't want to miss the opportunity to have free makan, he would not hesitate to give his tummy a sumptious treat. he needs to take care of all the consequences of letting himself loose on the mouth, somehow.....

he starts out his morning jog down in shenton way at about 10am, the street on this weekday is not particularly busy street is not busy, probably breakfast time is over, even the corner kopitiam in robinson road is quite empty. shenton way, marina bay area is full of construction activities. new buildings are being put up... the nbiggest of all, the three hotels of the ir....some new buildings, very tall and sleek, like the sail, the marina bay suite, the marina 1. the raffles .... in afew years time, this area will be the downtown of singapore.

and time takes him to serangoon central, under big rain. he stops over in a kopitiam for his lunch - mixed rice. after the rain he continues on towards tampines until he reaches tampines bus terminal. he enters the food court, and orders cheng-t'ng. an old lady wants to get a bowl of bubur hitam. she asks, "how muhc?"
"1.50."

"wow, very expensive. i thot 50cents only. don't want."

marathon man says to the vendor, "give this lady a bowl of bubur hitam. i will pay for it. "

the old lady says, "unlce, you treat me?"

"yes."

"thank you." she happily takes the bowl and finds herself a seat.

the cheng-t'ng with a lot of ice is always marathon man's favorite dessert. it's not so sweet and very cooling and with a variety of little titbits to munch upon.
he then presses on towards sun plaza park, then towards the direction of the little hill, on the left of the park. the path is full of stones and debris from shattered concrete slabs. he sees nobody around. he reaches the ridge of the hill which is about 100 feet high. it's very windy up there, like wuthering heights...he feels like he is in the open space in the show - the sound of music, except that he is not july andrews nannying a group of kids, instead he shouts aloud..... to the sky, hellooooooo.... at the same time, the thunder cracks, no lightning though. it is getting cloudy. he follows a wide dirt road, ends up in a dead-end. he turns back and goes by a very winding track into the woods below. he jogs along the fringe of the jungle for about 1.5 km. the road comes a to blocked end. at the same time he hears dogs barking in the bushes which signifies he has to turn back. instead of going back where he comes from, he comes out from the jungle by a shorted-cut side track of a constuction site. he finds himself beside tpe, where traffic zooms by him. somehow he turns into tampines link - ending his jog in court megastore.

too much food needs some wild runs to take care of the calories. too much loneliness needs some windy hill to yell it out......