There was a large fly in my room that I had to swat off the bed a couple times last night, then another one in the toilet that I had to stare down until it went into a corner by the toilet bowl and disappeared. I want out of this place and back home where there aren’t many flies. This is probably the part I am dreading the most about owning my own home. Bug management.

Also the laundry came out with little white bits over my clothes as though a tissue paper exploded in the machine in the previous load or something. So irritating. And the clothes weren’t dry even after overnight so I hung some of it out in my room and left the air-con on when I went out today. This is probably my only wash here though, I should be able to ration my clothes and get home fine from here. To the place’s credit, I left the clothes spread out in my room and left the air-con on while I went out today, and they were all perfectly dry when I came back home.

Also, I feel like I have both too many and too few days left in Singapore at the same time, and by this I mean that I have too many days left because I don’t have specific things or places I want to visit, and I’m not sure what to do with my time besides visit random places and see random things (in reality — I have largely been visiting shopping malls which are mostly the same as the previous mall I went to). Yet at the same time, I have too few days left because even if I just want to do that mall hopping thing I mentioned above, Singapore has so many to visit that I feel like I can’t spend my time fairly enough and spread my time out properly among all the places that I could and want to visit. And there’s a good number of things I could do besides that too. So I feel like I’m wasting my time here in Singapore, or at least not spending it productively enough for how much effort and time and money it took me to get here.

This was actually why I wanted to spend a month here in Singapore initially, so that I could take my time and explore every nook and cranny of the country that I was born in. And so that I don’t have to feel the pressure of somehow making every day count because I’m only here for a few days, and instead have some days where I can rest and chill and make a home-cooked meal, some days where I can visit tourist attractions, some days where I can explore old memories, some days where I can just take the train way west (I am much less familiar with the west side of Singapore than the north, south, and east side) and drop at a random stop and start walking, and so on. I could have done all this if I had managed to come here to study, since I did do something like this on a much smaller scale in Kyoto. That 5-week experience was still somewhat rushed, since not all the time was mine alone, but I also felt like I could take breather days and enjoy life and just walk around to see things.

But I didn’t and won’t get to study here, so that’s out of the question, and I can feel the clock for my time left in the country ticking down every day even though I only spent 4-5 hours out exploring a day due to work and blog obligations and a general need for relaxation and shelter from the heat and humidity. It’s also generally said that it takes about a week of being in Singapore before one gets used to the heat and humidity, and I had hoped that being in Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong would give me a bit of a headstart in getting used to the climate here, but it hasn’t really. Instead, it drained my wanderlust battery (and made me sick). And by the time I get used to the climate here and am able to stretch my energy and willpower to stay out longer, it will be time to go home.

Anyway, due to this, I have been sort of trying to avoid visiting the same places that I visited the last time I was here, and spend my limited time on “new” places instead, although it hasn’t been totally possible to avoid this because I’m living in the eastern part of the country, not very far from where I was living the last time I was here in 2022, and not very far from our last house when we were living here as a family back in 1998. It’s somewhat impossible to avoid Tampines (the East 11 station in my mind) since it’s a very convenient and large hub, and is sort of a home for me, and basically next door to Simei (East 10) where I am living, but I’ve avoided visiting my previous homes at Yishun way to the north or Clementi way to the west so far, or malls like Sim Lim Square that I remember fondly from last trip, as well as several of the other stations on the eastern train line like Eunos (East 6) and Kembangan (East 7), since I’ve visited and explored those areas last time already. But I’ve double dipped (across both trips) on Tampines (East 11), Paya Lebar (East 5) briefly, and will probably visit Kallang (East 3) as well since that was such a pivotal part of my childhood, and maybe Pasir Ris (East 12) as well, and I do feel guilty when I do this, like I’m wasting time that I should be spending elsewhere. Same for visiting Marina Bay and the I Light Singapore festival since that’s also technically a repeat from last year.

I’m not sure what the end goal of writing all that down was, but I felt like I needed to record all that so that I can remember this feeling the next time I do plan a trip to Singapore. I think I will need to book a central hotel with a kitchenette (and in-suite laundry) for a longer period of time, at least 3 weeks if not a full month, and take more time to wander the country from that base of operations.

For today, I wanted to pick a new place to explore, although I knew that exploring via train station basically equals just yet another mall again, just slightly different from the others. But still, that was fine, as the malls are excellent for a chance to get out of the heat, and I had a few things I needed to buy for the family anyway.

It had rained in the morning but the rain had stopped by the time I started out on my walk today, and it was hot but not swelteringly hot as the sun was nowhere in sight. Could feel the humidity in the air though. I started with a walk to the Simei MRT Station, taking a slightly different route that took me past a laundromat embedded in the bottom level of a HDB block next to a couple of mom and pop shops selling daily necessities and random goods. I’ve never actually seen a laundromat in Singapore that was just embedded in the bottom level of a HDB block. I wonder why there aren’t more of them. I guess every home probably has its own washing machine anyway.

I also saw a couple playgrounds both on the way to Simei Station, and on the way back home later in the evening. Three of them in total I believe, though I only took pictures of two. These were notable to me because of the way they phrased the playground introduction on the signboard next to it — “Another playground by East Coast – Fengshan Town Council”. It gave me a rather passive-aggressive sort of mood. Like “Yeah, here’s yet another playground from us. Enjoy.”

I had lunch in one of two, possibly three, coffee shops/kopitiams located around the outside of the Simei MRT Station. Eastpoint, the mall attached to the train station, doesn’t have an actual food court located within it, which is rare for a REIT mall, though it has a good number of slightly overpriced restaurants inside of it. I’m not quite sure why, but maybe it’s due to the number of food places surrounding it. Or maybe it’s owned by a different group that just doesn’t prioritize it or something. I feel like Eastpoint has more of a feel of a “tier 2” sort of REIT mall rather than a big, central “tier 1” one like the ones in the Tampines Regional Centre, or downtown in Orchard Road, Raffles Place, or Marina Bay.

Anyway, the semi-outdoor place I had lunch at was called Hola cafe, and I joined a queue for a chicken rice store that I noticed had a queue of locals, which must mean that it was good, right?

The queue moved rather fast for how long it was, and I ended up with a bowl of Hainanese chicken rice for $4.50 in under 10 minutes. Yum. This was indeed a good meal.

I then took the East-West train way west, then swapped trains at City Hall MRT Station to the North-South line, heading north until I reached Bishan MRT Station. This station is three and four stops south of Khatib and Yishun Stations respectively, where most of my formative childhood years in Singapore were spent, and where I visited my last trip here  I know Bishan MRT Station as North 8, though it’s now known as NS17 since they started counting from the other end of the line when they renamed and renumbered everything. Most importantly though, I picked this station out of every other station on the line because my paternal grandparents, Ah Ma and Ah Kong, used to live in a house in Bishan, though I do not remember exactly where it was and no one in the family seems to remember what the address would have been even if the HDB block was still around, which it probably was not, and even if the extended family still owned the apartment, which we probably did not. (And even if they did, I had no intention of going there to visit them.) I do remember the stairs leading up to the apartment, and a little bit of the immediate vicinity around the building itself, but that was about it, and it was not nearly enough detailt to be searchable.

Yet, Bishan did hold a “tier 2” sort of special place in my heart, if that made sense, so I wanted to visit the place. I remember the train station being red brick themed, but that did not seem to be the case any longer, it was just a normal station now like any other. There was also, of course, a mall just outside the station now, which I do not think used to be there before. This mall was called Junction 8.

Perhaps the number 8 was chosen since Bishan used to be the North 8 station? Probably not, since a cursory search on Google Maps brings up a Junction 9 in Yishun, a Junction 10 in Bukit Panjang. Oddly, those are the only Junction [number] malls that I can find on a search. They’re all in the north side of Singapore. Weird. Anyway, this mall was sort of weirdly laid out, with a semi-outdoor walkway going through the middle of the ground floor of the mall that led to a bus interchange on the other side, and then entrances to the left and right that led to the air-conditioned mall proper, and a mall level above and I believe even below the ground floor that stretched above (and below) that tunnel walkway. In effect, the second floor of the mall felt more like the “ground floor” of the mall, in that the second floor was where the pit that the upper level circular walkways ended. And where there was a random sale going on. This was the second level down in the below picture.

And this, the view of the second level from an escalator between the third and fourth floors.

I took several other pictures from the mall and fluffed up the following gallery with them, because I have nothing better to say about them, except that for some reason one of the cafes in there had an outdoor roof garden attached to it.