The Name Is


Rachel10v15
2ndDecember1995
VictoriaJuniorCollege

Contents

1.
2.

The Lowdown

Created for the Singapore’s Natural Heritage elective 2011.
Picture credits: http://www.flickr.com/
photos/pfly/154053611

Archives

April 2011
May 2011

Parting Shot

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky
I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder to-day.
-Anne Bronte

Saturday, April 2, 2011













It must have been ten years ago, the last time (and the first, as a matter of fact) I climbed Bukit Timah hill. I don’t recall thinking much – I don’t recall thinking at all, really – back then; it was just a long trek up a longer road, taking pictures of the big rock at the top, and bang, back in the car listening to the Bee Gees and driving home. Nothing was so special about the flora and fauna around me such that it made an impact on my mind

I know with that statement I'm going to have angry ecologists and environmentalists trying to find out where I live, but in my defence I was six at the time. So as the bus pulled out of VJC heading towards that same long road, repatriations were the first thing on my mind,

Well, actually I was wondering when the thing was going to end so I could call my mom. But I digress.

We got off the bus and I went to put my bag in a locker – ‘stuff’ would be the more appropriate word – and placed the key very carefully in my pocket. Then onward and upward we charged, into the valley of not-much-death rode the noble fourteen and all that.

In my view there are three parts to an upward climb: the first where you’re all interested in what’s going on around you, the second when you’re reduced to wondering how you’re ever going to get down again, and the third where you hit the top and after a brief bit of euphoria you sit down and don’t feel like moving for the next couple hundred years. This hike pretty much confirmed that opinion. Before we got up to the South View Hut I was snapping pictures like Charlie Sheen snaps at the world in general.

It was, those first few minutes, magical. No sarcasm intended. Like when you’ve finished some mundane, boring introduction of 1984 and you turn the page and step into a whole new world (not a cue for Disney songs). And for the record, I did read that book.But we really were stepping into a new corner of Singapore, an almost untouched haven of greenery and all things nature, a quiet Amazonic paradise far from the strife and anger and failure of the real world. And it wasn’t one of those fake things that Singapore likes to build and get records (coughfakewaterfallcough) for either. This was the real deal.

For minutes on end we trekked in silence, once in a while stopping to see some oddities that Mr. Shi would point out along the way. Some of us, I think, were much too enraptured by the enchanting beauty of the true world; others were just trying not to talk for fear that various insects would land on them if they so much as uttered a word. A few of the more cautious ones were watching every step they take in case they ended up falling down a rabbit hole and be reduced to playing croquet with flamingos while trying to fend off homicidal Queens.

I’m not going to lie and say I was completely awed by the astounding properties of a forest I never knew Singapore had. It was like that for the first part, but then I began to move to the second part of my hiking mantra: the this-is-too-high-I’m-never-going-to-get-down-again bit. For most part of the trail, then, I was more preoccupied with my limited supply of water, the various ants crawling up my leg and the fact that this was turning into a mini-Mount Bintan.

But we got up all right, in the end, and it was all there the way I remembered it – that big random rock with the words ‘Bukit Timah Summit’ and the height and all that. Some sort of smile actually broke out on my face when I saw that rock. I didn’t say anything, just went to the bench nearby and sat down and drank from my water bottle. After some joking about what a mysterious triangle was doing carved on the rock (please, doesn’t everybody know that the Nula from planet Lionor always leave a triangle wherever they visit?) it was time to go back down again.

I’ll stop short of using the word(s?) ‘eye-opener’, but the trip was certainly meaningful and definitely memorable, if mostly for the way Marcus lay on top of the rock like a sun-bathing seal. It revealed a new side of Singapore, besides the exams and urban life and tall buildings, something tranquil, something almost ‘kampong’, left over from the old days. And it served as a solemn reminder to all how precious little we have left of Earth, and what we aren’t doing to save it.

Along the trail I saw empty plastic bottles. Aluminum cans. Crumpled paper. Empty bunkers. All these little signs of human disturbance, all these extrinsic objects, only made an empathetic point about what we have done to the world, hammered home the point of us biting the hand which has fed us. There was no way I could miss that, no way I could pretend I’m just being stupid and Bukit Timah hill isn’t going to die on us. So to answer the question, I’d change us. To let the flora and fauna flourish once more, to allow the vibrant growth of an environment and biodiversity pulsing with life…we have to stop making the same mistakes we’ve been for the past decades. We have to bring back a little more true, original nature, and put in a little less of our own.


2:19 AM