I borrowed a weighing scale from the residence this morning and after weighing my collection of papers and my bags, found that I had perhaps vastly overestimated how much junk I had collected after all. My collection of papers (in their binders, so including the binders’ weight) only comes to about 8 kg, and my big suitcase itself comes up to right about 20 kg after adding in some books and a couple souvenirs and a camera bag that I mildly regret bringing along, which I think is probably actually fine to check in with no extra charges at all. So that’s good.

I’ll probably just lug everything with me my entire trip — I only really have three more plane flights, Singapore to China, China to Japan, then Japan to home. I’ll probably have some sort of overcharge on the final flight (I already have prepaid for 20kg of checked baggage though) and probably will have to buy some extra luggage space on the China to Japan one, but it will probably still come out to be cheaper than what I would have paid trying to send a 20 kg box from SIngapore.

Most of the day was spent trying to puzzle out the train system in China and what routes I can take across the country, and why everything seemed to be sold out even for short routes. Outside of it being the middle of the Chinese New Year period, and also the fact that tickets don’t open until two weeks before the train ride, allegedly the shorter legs of a train ride or certain premium seats in a ride don’t always open until a few days before the actual ride so that people who need longer train rides have first dibs at trying to secure a ticket or something. I spent most of my day in my hotel room, drafting out my route across China, and wondering if I wanted to visit a couple cities in Japan at the end of the trip or just go right for China until a day or two before the very end. I’m still not sure on this.

Before I did all this planning though, I had to write my daily blog. And at the end of the blog yesterday, astute blog readers might recall (especially if they are reading this nonsense consecutively) that I mentioned that nearby Prawn Mee store that always had lines out the wazoo. Hm! I murmured to myself as I finished that part of the blog. I wonder what time Da Shi Jia Big Prawn Mee opens today since it’s a Sunday? Oh, 11 am. That is kinda late. Wait, what time is it now? 10:50 am… and I hadn’t eaten breakfast and didn’t really plan on going anywhere for lunch as well. And it was less than a 5 minute walk away.

Well, why not? So out into the heat I went. I got to the eatery 10 minutes after opening, managing to grab the very last free table outside by the road, and after “choping” it, as Singapore slang goes, a.k.a reserving the table with an empty tea bottle, I got in line at the cashier to make my order.

While in line though, I glanced back at the table and saw an uncle looking confusedly at the bottle, I guess trying to figure out if that was someone’s discarded water bottle or an actual chope (which is usually, but not always, done with a pack of tissue paper, but there was a giant fan blowing at that table). Or maybe he was wondering if it was possible to take half the table. He also put his water bottle down, at which point I broke line and hustled back to the front and confronted him rudely.. just kidding. I hailed him and said that that was my water bottle but that I was alone and he was welcome to share the table of 4 if he liked.

He was grateful for this, and said that he actually had a party of 5, he was just the “advance party”. This was super smart on their part, since by the time I had gone back to my place in line and made my order, and came back to the table, there was already a line forming. They eventually and very luckily managed to secure two seats from the table next to ours as well, and while we never ended up formally chatting, we did exchange plenty of smiles and a few words here and there and I got to listen in to the half-English half-Chinese chat between the three others at my table, a husband and wife as well as one of their fathers.

It turned out that while there were limited seats, it seemed like the actual limiting factor for the store was the speed that they cooked the food, although then again this might have been a function of it being very early on in the day. I wonder if they ever do “catch up” over the course of the day so that the limiting factor becomes the speed at which people eat. I made my order at 11:14 am, and according to my notes my order did not arrive until 11:43 am, although it came together with the others at the table I was with, so they might have thought that we were all one party.

Either way, the food was really pricey compared to most of the other meals that I had eaten, but I guess at the level of popularity that they were at, they could charge whatever and still get away with it. Also the prawns were indeed big, big, big, like the Chinese name of the store said! My dish cost a whopping $19.40:

Was it worth it? I’m not sure, there weren’t a ton of noodles but there were a ton of giant prawns. And the experience was neat, I suppose! What was there of the noodles tasted really good though. The people at the table also let me take a picture of a couple of their bowls, as they had ordered other stuff:

(The left bowl in the second picture is my own food, or part thereof anyway, so there’s only one of their bowls in each picture.)

I finished my food ahead of the others at my table, and we exchanged kind farewells as I vacated my seat. Their other two party members then joined the table that I had just left, one of them pulling in an extra chair so they could all sit and chat together. I had offered to move before the meal started so that they could sit together but they politely declined, I felt like they should have taken up that offer though! I was also hoping that they’d chat me up so that I could give away some postcards, as I’ve barely given away any this trip at all, but that didn’t materialize either. Oh well. It was still a memorable meal.

I went back to my room after, had a quick shower to wash away the prawn essence, and then settled down to try to figure out my schedule for the rest of the month. I also managed to secure one last meeting with a friend tomorrow before I leave the country, tentatively anyway, so that should be nice. I enjoyed putting up my feet for some time and just relaxing for once too, after doing so much walking (although I did end up clocking 10k steps by the end of the day anyway). All this is still ongoing though, so no firm updates for now on my itinerary. I’ll be continuing to work on this after this blog post too. I have a feeling that showing them my return ticket from Tokyo on Mar 23 might not be enough to satisfy the 30 day visa-free entry thing — they probably want to know where I’ll be exiting from as well. Which currently looks like it will be from Shanghai, I just don’t know when yet.

It was over 5pm in the afternoon when I decided that I probably should head out and actually do something today so my blog entry today didn’t just consist of prawn noodle propaganda. Plus, there was one more pilgrimage that I had wanted to make, which I had not done yet. I walked over to Somerset, passing a scene along the way that instantly made me think — ah, it’s Sunday!

I’ve passed this area multiple times before with no sign of any picnics here, but seeing so many people here made complete sense to me now that I’d seen it several times before — see my entry from a week ago for some links to previous occurrences.

My quest today involved visiting Bishan, which was six stops north of where I was at Somerset. It was a quick train ride, before a mall that I had been to before stood before me. Junction 8.

I did not spend much time in this mall other than to cool off, although I did find a little terrace where there were some people holding a dog show where the handler had to take the dog out for a walk in the middle of the “stage” and have it do some tricks as well.

I got waved down and shouted at to not take pictures though, as I was adjusting my phone for a second picture. So I acquiesced and walked away with my one picture. Walking out of the mall and passing by the bus interchange, I also saw this drawing on the wall that I decided to chronicle.

I also stopped by a small mobile shop in the neighbourhood shopping area and bought a roaming SIM for my upcoming trip to China. The idea with these is that I would be able to access Google and similar “blocked” services while I was in China, because my connection would be a roaming one. Ironically, this also gave me a Singapore phone number, after finding out at the start of my Singapore leg that the tourist sim no longer gave Singapore phone numbers and SMS capabilities. I should have just bought this one from the start.

They had two main options, CMLink and Simba, but it turned out that the CMLink one required Singapore identification, and did not accept passports for signup. The Simba one did though, and so I ended up paying $20 for something like 500 GB/30 days of data for Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Hong Kong, and 50 GB of roaming data for APAC, China, and South Korea. I’m not sure exactly all what APAC covers here, but this was a much better deal than the stupid $12 SingTel tourist sim for my needs. Alas, to only find it on one of my last days in Singapore. Though, then again, 30 days from now lasts for the rest of my trip. If I had used it earlier, it would probably have stopped working at some point in my China leg. So never mind that. There’s also a recharge function on the Simba app but that does NOT work for numbers registered on a foreign passport, apparently. Only those registered with a Singapore ID.

There was also a public library nearby, and to my delight, they had a pretty good book exchange rack outside:

There were a lot of religious books planted there for some reason, and a bunch of textbooks and storybooks that I didn’t care for, but I ended up taking home two books from here to hopefully bring back home and scan:

The left book seemed to be a rather personal memorial book for a Christian pastor or someone similar who had passed away over a decade ago, and the right one was a commemmorative book for Cedar Girls’ Secondary School with pictures and essays in it. Just the sort of hyper-local stuff I like to find and scan and archive!

I also met an old man there who gave me a pack of tissues for free, after pointing to it to show me that the seal on the pack was unbroken. There didn’t seem to be a catch to the gift, so I took it. And then decided to take his picture as well a few seconds after he had left. I saw a glimpse of him entering the library proper:

He’s the guy in the white shirt and the black sling bag behind the glass there. Thank you for the kind gesture! I didn’t actually end up entering the library myself though, and I moved on from the racks with my prizes after a bit.

I walked east and south from the train station past a large, fancy gazebo next to a bunch of outdoor heartland shops that was collectively known as Bishan Mall:

And then past a whole bunch of residential HDB blocks, until I neared my pilgrimage target. On this trip, I’ve staunchly avoided doing pilgrimages to two things: my former schools (though I did ask permission for all of them and got denied or ghosted on them all), as well as my former homes. since I’ve visited them all before on my last two visits to Singapore. However, in the ensuing two years since my last visit, I did find the address to my paternal grandparents’ home, which was in Bishan, and I was curious if I could find and recognize this area.

Finding it was no problem at all, and I went around the general vicinity photographing weird things, like there were some EV charging stations here in the carpark, something I had not seen anywhere in Singapore up until that point:

And a community garden that apparently dates back to 2005:

But even though the buildings did not look particularly new or renovated, the area around the block only partially matched my memory. Like, I thought there was a motorcycle parking lot right here:

But there wasn’t. And the food places were a little farther off than I had remembered. Maybe one’s sense of scale was just very different when young. I also didn’t totally remember these stairs:

I mean, I remembered it, but I didn’t remember there being a turn in the stairs before I reached the actual house where Ah Ma and Ah Kong used to stay. And I sure didn’t remember that elevator option behind it. Was that new??

The door to the unit itself was open, but someone else obviously lived there now. And they also had lost someone from their family at some point, apparently, since I could see a memorial clear as day through the grilles.

No one was around at first so I kind of peeked in and took pictures of the apartment from several angles:

How nosy am I? I couldn’t see much of the kitchen but I could visualize how it looked like past the doorway, although I did not remember the corner turn with that wall window facing that direction there. I did remember the two rooms and their doors from the second picture though. And I also remember Ah Kong standing me outside this grille gate, right here, and holding a bunch of holy paper in his hand, running it up and down my body from my head to my feet, then up to my head again, over and over, to ward away bad luck. He did it right here.

I walked past the door after taking those pictures, and then right after that an old lady actually came to the gate and peeked out of it. I thought she had heard me or something, but it turned out that she was just preparing to leave the apartment. What coincidence. I walked back past the entrance and down the stairs again, pretending that I was some other resident of the block that happened to just be passing by. I then snapped a picture of the old lady and her companion once they descended to the ground floor using the elevator.

I felt like I was prying too much into a stranger’s personal life at this point though. But also, this might be the only record in the future to show that they existed. And to a certain point I needed some closure to yet another loose thread from my past, and to show my grandparents who resided in their home now. Sorry I’m late, Ah Ma. Thanks for all the grilled fish.

I then peeked at the kopitiams and eateries around the area. There were quite a few in the immediate vicinity, though it also looked like nothing I remembered except that there were indeed some shops where I expected them to be. I was looking for a particular eatery by a roadside that I thought would match some family pictures we had at home of the last meal that we ate in Singapore with the extended family, but I was unable to find it. So either that eatery was long gone, or it was in a different location entirely. Possibly even both.

I did take pictures of some of the kopitiams though. There were three or four in the cluster of shops, and at least two of them were hosting Chinese New Year celebrations.

Also this was somewhat pretty, though I don’t know the context behind it:

It seemed like they were in invitation-only mode, as one of the shop uncles waved his hand at me dismissively when I peeked at their laminated menu, as though to say “Not today, xiao jie!”. So I went off to one of the *other* kopitiams in the area that was just serving lonely people without large extended families to eat with. I didn’t take a picture of the actual kopitiam, though it was called New Century Food House, and I ended up eating some rice with curry, fish, and vegetables picked off of a selection of steaming food trays.

This was $6.50 and was pretty decent. As I understand it, it would have been $4.50, I think, if I had opted for meat that wasn’t that fish, since the man behind the counter had mentioned something about meat being $3, and then when I selected fish later on he said it was $5 and asked if that was fine. I said yes.

I then walked back toward the train station afterwards, passing this tree and sign along the way. Also a new sight to me.

Bishan was full of crows for some reason, and there were so many caws and shrieks as I walked that it sounded like there were vultures circling a carcass and getting ready to strike. I looked up at a tree at a traffic light and saw easily a dozen birds perched on branches there, and more flying around nearby.

Finally, I reentered the Bishan Mall area again, taking another picture of what the covered gazebo area looked like at night.

Nice lighting. I bought a drink from the nearby Fairprice and then caught a train home.

I had been looking out for dad’s favoured belinjo snack this whole day, as well as the past couple of days’ spent wandering through HDB blocks, but for some reason I’ve been unable to locate any of that at all. Again, I’m not sure I can bring it home with me anyway since I have so many more stops after Singapore before I return to Edmonton, but it would have been somewhat fun to try, and I know he likes those crackers. It doesn’t seem like I’m going to succeed in this though.