West Coast Interlude 14th April 2009

Been a little busy with Farrell's Pasir Panjang project to do much walking about of late but Jimmy dragged my lazy arse from NUS to West Coast Park, a place neither of us visited in our years studying here. No regrets. What a spectacular place to view the sunset!

Even the clouds look exuberant here.

Who wouldn`t want to go to school in such a great place?

Lots to do between lessons too!



And it even answers the ever-perplexing question "why did the chicken cross the road?"

...to get away from the two greatest Hokkien-Yabbering dudes from NUS in living memory!

As with the last southern shore hike we took from the Esplanade to Tanjong Rhu, I had to insist on going further in hopes of hitting the next stretch of coastline (the Pandan area). An hour later and all we saw was an industrial estate with no outlets to the sea. After seeing a sporting Jimmy off, I decided to try to hit the AYE to catach 963 home. Took me 2 freaking hours and a lot of U-turns to find my way! Knee hurt like hell for days as a result. Gonna need a good rest to recuperate.

The Missing Road

In Search Of Admiralty Rd East


This one's for the birds

I was right. Walked almost 5 hours today with a lot less to see. I visited the east bank of the Canal Zone in hopes of getting good shots of birds which I could barely catch at maximum zoom from the west bank. The kingfishers below let out a hyena-like shrill and always managed to fly off just before I get a chance to take a picture. Tiny yellow humming birds were a lot less shy and preferred this rambutan look-a-like tree on the west bank were the joggers were. Caught a pic of only 1 of 3 drinking from the flowers of the same plant on Thursday.



Another small bird, a sandpiper I think, always let's me get within a couple of metres, waits for me to adjust my shot, then flies just out of camera range, leading me further and further away from the direction I want to go in. It also has an irritating habit of bobbing its head and doing a little dance everytime it lands, as if to celebrate the feat of having eluded me. The lone heron in these parts was "engaged" by a small bird, which latched on to its rear like a fighter plane as they bobbed and weaved as if in a dog-fight- the heron was a good 20 times bigger! A white egret and an eagle out at sea flew majestically overhead BUT I could never get anything better than blurry long range shots, if anything at all. Gonna need a better camera. Wonder if the cheap National Geographic one on sale at Cold Storage counters is still available. Best animal shots I got were of lizards way too confident of their camoflague for their own good. I guess the reason why most birds prefer the east bank was because people like me usually stuck to the civilised west bank-They all flew there when I switched banks.



Well, at least I bagged a large feather for a souvenier. Too bad there was no way to walk further along the coast. The entire Sungei Simpang and Khatib Bongsu areas seems completely out of reach. A concerned canal zone regular also warned me never to go to the east bank again- he says the protected zone started at the banks of the canal and not the thick vegetation just beyond as I thought. According to the Street Directory, there is no access to the coast from here on until the mouth of the now sealed up Sungei Seletar reservoir at Yishun Ave 1. If that's true, the next stretch might well be Punggol Beach as I don`t think I can get access to the Jln Kayu Seacoast (Seletar Camp). Guess the only good way of exploring the northern shore is by boat.



I was ready to throw in the towel as I trudged back along the canal to get a drink at the coffee shop at the junction of Canberra Link/Yishun Ave 2 and Yishun Industrial Park A. There were 2 pieces of interesting bonsai-like furniture outside but it seems Northern Exposure was coming to an abrupt end. As I thumbed through the Street Directory, I discovered something strange. According to this 2007/2008 version, Admiralty Rd East continues parrallel to the coast after it interesects Sembawang Rd right next to Crab Village. It supposedly crosses the canal and carries on until it ends at Yishun Ave 9 near the ITE. I`ve been taking buses to this area for 20 years and remember Admiralty Rd East ending at the junction with Sembawang Rd, even during the days when there was a kampung here (and many other places in Singapore). The supposed path of the road was blocked by plateaus, the canal, thick jungle and swamp. There did not seem any reason to build a new section either. I noticed that stretch was represented by dotted rather than solid lines. Still, there was absolutely no sign of its remains or any sign of impending road building a good year after the directory was published. The road supposedly ran south of a huge carpark at the end of Yishun Industrial Park at Ave 7, so off I went in search of it. Saw this set of stone lions outside a factory. Can you spot the difference between them (click for a full-size pic)?

At the end of Ave 7, I came across a large workers' dormitory and the carpark but absolutely no sign of Admiralty Rd East. There was a slope at the back of the carpark for lorries. One corner led to the protected area which started from the east bank of the canal. Standing atop this slope just outside the training ground, I saw an old road running parallel to the coast. If this was Admiralty Rd East, then the map on the Street Directory was mistaken. It ran north, not south of the carpark.

This looks intersting but it was getting dark and my batteries were dying out. Resisted the temptation to wander into the training area I had unintentionally strayed into earlier and tried to pick up the trail at Yishun Ave 9. It was pitch black by the time I reached it but there was no sign of Admiralty Rd East, only a worksite cum workers' quarters where its terminus was suppossed to be. Found a few HDB blocks with great views of the Johor skyline. Maybe I`ll return here during daylight to see if I can shed any more light on the missing road before I proceed to the Sungei Seletar (or the Lower Seletar Reservior as they call it now) sector.

Took a few shots of the moon from 5pm. This reminded me of a great module I took in year one under Helmer Aslaksen. Heavenly Maths was well designed as a course in cultural astronomy (more concerned with what mortals stuck on earth can see and less with where earth was situated in the universe). In Singapore, moons that appear in the sky during daylight hours are always top-crescent (the missing or unilluminated parts are at the bottom). At night, our new or crescent moon always appear to be a slanted bottom-crescent and never the left crescent as in our national flag. Check out this link for more:http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/flag.html

This was a great module. We learned to calculate holidays using Chinese (Ching Ming follows the Solar, not the Lunar calendar), Muslim (the Muslim year is 11 days shorter than the ang-moh one), Indian and Jewish calendars and the only formulae we needed were all in primary school arithmatic or geometry. Most of the courseware is posted in full detail online- very useful and exciting. Yours truly did a project on the Moon with two techno wizards in Year one which is still featured amongst those of latter batches. This course was one of the best I took, taught by one of the best at NUS. The website is so good you can actually teach yourself this stuff.

Still having problems with blog software. Like Joanne said, kids have moved on to Facebook and other newer trends. Still remember how an American Chinese girl couldn`t believe I was still using a pager in 2002. Haha. Guess I`ll still be playing catch-up for some years.

Longkang Fishing

Junction of Sembawang Rd and Admiralty Rd East,
Just South of Sembawang Park





Its a Stretch!
I set off last evening to continue my walkabout of the northern coastline of Singapore, intending to visit the pier I saw from the East end of Sembawang Park. Instead, I got distracted when I saw a well laid concrete path behind "Crab Village" seafood stall, the corner eatery amongst a small block of 2-storey shophouses housing several karaokes, pubs and makan places. Long stretches that seem to lead into the wilderness have been bountiful so far so I let my curiosity get the better of me.



I stumbled across a canal zone(it is not named either on the street directory or on any sign board I could find) with a wide bike and foot path on one bank and an SAF training area on the other. It obviously led to the sea so I decided to take this route instead of navigating through the posh Andrews Avenue private housing estate.


I was surprised at how wide and well-developed this waterway was compared to Sungei Sembawang, at least along the stretch leading to the coast. Unlike the latter, there were no school of carp trying to swim its way out to sea here. But I saw a man swimming across the canal and back again, even though the water was somewhat polluted. A small crowd was gathering on the near bank and I decided to join them. Apparently, the swimmer had laid a net all the way across the canal. I saw a fish in an underwater catch net and was surprised that it was a pomfret, the kind we can easilly buy at a wet market. I asked an uncle if it was a "bai chang" and he told me it was a "Jin Chang" (atas sikit).

Just then, the swimmer bagged a large one mid-channel to the delight of his multi-racial fans. I asked him if I could take a photo and he excitedly exclaimed "sure, why not" in Hokkien. I started snapping away to the delight of our hero of the hour. The fish expert uncle jokingly said that our hero was going to be on the papers. I replied "Po zua du bo, dian nou du wu la" and he told me putting this on YouTube will only bring our enterprising fisherman competition.




Next thing I know, our hero loses his grip on his slippery catch and his smile turned into a disgusted frown. My "paiseh" rang out to him before the uncle could even finish lightheartedly putting the blame on me. "Paiseh?!! Paiseh Nng teh ah" a tad cheem for this Teochew amateur but I think he wanted double compensation.


I tried to assuage his fans by saying how our hero was only letting the "small fry" go so it would return to him downstream when it had fully grown- no sympathy but they lost interest in me as the hero bagged another pomfret, though not as big. I started easing out of the picture and took some shots of a heron standing on the far side. It flew away with an angry squawk, apparently sensing no pickings here. No pomfrets visible from the surface, though some small fishes jumped over the net to get upstream.


I then climbed the slope running parallel to the canal, thinking I would find a boneyard beyond as I had seen a bulldozer on the high ground just behind "Crab Village". Instead, I found the remainder of a large farming plot with a duck pond right on the edge near the slope. I missed a monitor lizard which slipped into the pond a few metres from me and saw no other signs of wild life in it.

There was a pump and pier of sorts and interstingly, an artesian well pump nearby. There appeared to be crop patches with sprinklers on this plateau. I saw a couple of Thai workers "cultivating" a field far away and saw that the old 1970s style farm houses were obviously still occupied, with a vigilant guard dog moving forth to track me. There were several unused tractors lying around. The sights I saw, the smell of chicken droppings (none in sight) and the sounds of various long-forgotten bird calls made this canal kampung feel like Ah Ma's farm along Lorong Malai (now Zhenghua) 30 years ago. A car had driven to the main house I was walking away from as I searched for an easy way back down.

I then noticed there were golf balls all over the "veggie plots" and realised this was a driving range in the making. What a wukking waste!

Returning to the canal by the long but safe way, I ran into a slightly larger crowd watching the swimmer at work. Uncle told me he bagged 3 more golden pomfrets right after I left, as I could see in the catch net. I told them it must have been my presence that brought him bad luck (my former boss recently told me how his mahjong luck has improved since I quit) and got a few knowing chuckles for my trouble.

A "Bottle Tree" restaurant was hidden at the coast end of the canal, which opened up to the pier
I had seen on my previous foray and good beaches on both sides.





If I am to continue my coastal romp, then I would have to get across the canal and traverse the SAF training area. The street directory shows that it will lead to the coastal stretch behind Chong Pang and Yishun Industrial Estate. As in previous areas, there is a lot of blank green space which does not tell you what lies between the roads and the coast- till date these have mostly been thick, forested areas with no view of the sea.



Took several shots of the beach and the Johor coastline, including another of the mysterious distant land formation on the Singapore side which appears well north of Sembawang. This should not be possible as Sembawang is the northernmost part of Singapore, Ubin included. Well, only one way to find out. Found the mosque Mus used to drive to but not the rocky beach we use to visit- maybe I`m standing on it? Saw a few converted eateries within the private estate near the beach. Business is slow this Thursday. Not much exercise today- too much to see in too small an area. That will change on the next trip. I am certain.