after a nice beehoon, koytiaw, and mee breakfast at the punggol mrt terminal, marathon man started his morning jog. he turned left into punggol central, then punggol way, sengkang east rd, anchorvale st. hardly expected to see any exciting, new sites... thot that all hoohahs of punggol water project in the news recently were from the east of the mrt.... but there it was, the sengkang riverside park - a name he never heard off, poppep up right from the left side of anchorvale st. a piece of land, almost barren, beside the sungei punggol. looking at the entrance site map, this less-than-a-year-old park has 3 sites, the one that marathan man just landed was bounded by the anchorvale st, the east side of sungei punggol, then on the 2nd site was on the west side of sungei punggol, the third site was also at the west side of sungei punggol, but bounded by sengkang west way instead.
marathon man made it round the less-than-1-km track of the first site. he could not go any nearer to view the river, due to the bushes and mangroves growing on the river banks, blocking any access. but mid-way, thru some bushes, he saw a small, make-shift wooden hut built on the side of the river, not occupied. that's cool, whoever built it.
he crossed the river to the other side, the 2nd site of the park, where the visitor centre was located. there, half way he saw a couple of young chaps detoured into some uncharted bushes, next to the tpe. marathon man wanted to follow, but pulled back. this was probably due to the effect of aging - not taking as much risk as when he was younger - though his heart is still burning with a lot of things he wants to do.... well, maybe next time, when he gets better(after his bout of flu). there's some newly planted trees in the park, looked like fruit trees. there were 3 ponds in this site of the park. the ponds were almost surrounded by long reeds, and teemed with small cichlids. a family of 3, mother, father and a preschool kid were feeding the fish with a big loaf of bread... whenever a piece was thrown into the water, the fishes darted for it., some even popped out of the water, glided like a flying fish to get to the bread first. the fishes on the other end of the pond, at first were not affected by the commotion. but the fishes nearer to ground zero reacted to it by swimming towards it, led by the fishes nearer to it... before long, the fishes at the far-end also somehow swam towards ground zero.... although they might not know there's food for them - is that herd instinct?
he crossed the road to the thrid site of the park, where there were more fruit trees, accordingly there were durian and mago trees... he saw 4 crows kicking on two beer cans. apparently they had tasted beer and liked it so much, they wanted more. the floating island in the middle of sungei punggol was not yet completed. the foreign worker told marthon man, it would take another month.
sungei punggol, a river in the north east of singapore, carries a lot of dreams for many people - the punggol 21 project that the gahmen unvailed some 13 years back got a lot of people excited, living in hdb's in a garden setting with rivers, waterways, promenades, fruit ocrhards, parks, and many other cool activity-sites.... and the dreams faded away for a while due to slow developemnt in this area. but half year ago, it got revived by the gahmen again with the launching of the punggol 21+ master plan. looks like this time it's for real. a few big hdb projects can be seen here, some near completion, some half way done and some with site-plan put up... and the water project work is definitely going full force, by the activities carried out around the sungei punggol. all these are for the coming erection year, in two years' time.
looks like the gahmen, had a panic attach, suddenly realized they were far behind on their promises, had to do alot of catch-up - just like marathon man, just two days, afflicted with a panic attack, when he was shown a letter to exclude him from a money making deal, and may put him into a money losing situation.... because he did not do his due deligence in signing the document. he called up the lawyer, and got it signed. not that he wasn't aware that he needed to sign, but he was hesitating, but when the push came to shove, he thot it was too late to do it. but he did it anyway.... before he lost two days of his sleep over the matter...and got stressed flat-out.
panic attack motivates - but it also ages a person by years of his life... no fun.
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