I push this one open and step out. The natural light I haven’t seen for so long apart from my occasional courtyard exercises overwhelms me and I wince involuntarily. Such brightness. I turn my face towards the sun, feeling the warm rays rejuvenate my seldom used muscles. I board a bus to head to my favourite park in Shenton Place. “Hallo, Miss ah! You trying to do what?” the driver gives me a nasty look in the rearview mirror. I quit trying to get the machine to accept my farecard. “Machine spoil,” I say. “Farecard no more, where’s your EZ-link?” “E..zee..what?” a confused reply from my end. “EZ-link card! The tap tap one! Don’t have, pay coins lah!” the driver casts an annoyed look at me, and then at the side mirror, before pulling out of the bus bay. “Can you let me know when I reach Shenton Place?” I say as I dump a handful of coins into the coin machine which promptly spits out a ticket. The driver rolls his eyes, but nods surly. Typical Singaporean. The rest of the journey is uneventful, with me wondering what an E-zee-whatever was. I make sure to sit right up front, so as to observe how these people pay their bus fares without a farecard. By the end of the journey, I am suitably fascinated by the blue objects at the front and back doors which are apparently able to deduct fares from this card even through the thick material of a bag or wallet.
I get off the bus and decide to take a walk to wherever I feel like going. The bus stop I got off at is somewhat blocked by a big cluster of leafy trees. As I emerge from the canopy, my breath catches in my throat. Where…where am I? I look around me with trepid amazement. What kind of place is this? Such tall buildings, such man-made wonders! I tilt my face upwards and take in the sight of the three buildings towering over me. They’re so tall, they block out the sun. The first one has a matte silver finish with tinted glass panelling running down on either side. The second and third are part of the same building, I discover as I look on, still thunderstruck. I regain some of my composure and start walking. All around me, cemented pavements, laid roads, metal structures. Even the plants seem to have been…shaped into unnaturally beautiful forms. I wonder where I’ve mistakenly wandered to, and where my park is. Still, I feast my deprived eyes on this strangely familiar place. Suddenly, I realise. This IS my park. The trees and the location seem so familiar because it’s the park I’ve frequented ever since I was a child, save for the 22 years locked up. At this, I become a bit flustered. My beautiful, beautiful park. All cemented here, shaped there, built upon everywhere. I want to get out of here but I don’t seem to be able to tear my eyes off my old yet new surroundings. It seems like just a few weeks ago when I came into an area with lush greenery, air fresh, calm, a creation of nature. Now, it’s become a foreign place with buildings too tall to be for truly functional reasons, artificial even with the golden sunbeams shining on it, a thoroughly concrete jungle. It is too constructed, too needlessly modified and yet these people still lounge around in these cafes, seemingly right at home. Too extreme to be called an alteration, it seems to be downright magic to me.
