Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Here one day, gone the next (1)

Below are two photos of MacRitchie. The top one was taken in 2005 and the bottom one last month, July 2009. Can you spot the difference?





The Buah Suntol tree at MacRitchie Reservoir that Chuck and I blogged about some time ago is gone. What a waste! This type of fruit tree is very rare in Singapore you know. I wonder why they chopped it down. It wasn’t blocking any traffic like this one. And it’s such pleasure to see monkeys plucking the fruits.


Lots of changes have been happening at MacRitchie. A new multi-storey car park has been built where the previous Car Park (no 2?) and children’s playground stood. Coupled with the completion of the viaduct linking Lornie Road to Braddell Road, the stretch of Lornie Road outside MacRitchie is now much quieter and the situation has much improved.

1) Now it is possible to turn right from Lornie Road directly into MacRitchie. Previously you had to go up a kilometer of so and make a U-turn; which was always a trying experience during late afternoon peak hour.

2) Coming out of MacRitchie is also much easier now. Previously, you had to be very daring and shoot out because of the constant stream vehicles racing down Lornie Road towards the flyover. On one occasion, after a big event and the jam was so bad that many cars turned around and went out through the entrance (near the traffic lights junction).

The children’s playground that had been removed holds sweet memories for me of the time when my kids were young. We used to bring them here quite often. Whilst the children played, I would go jogging in preparation for my IPPT.

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older
When did they? ………
Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze.
(Sunrise Sunset, Fiddler on the Roof)

6 comments:

yg said...

chun see, apart from jalan lekar, where the sentul trees line both sides of the road, there are sentul trees at the southern ridges, near the end of the henderson wave on mt faber side and at zhenghua park in bukit panjang.

Lam Chun See said...

YG. I have been to Jln Lekar many times. My wife and son likes to buy their gardening stuff from a nursery there called Woon Leng. I have seen many roadside trees with big dark yellow fruits. Those aren't sentul are they? They are much bigger than the ones at MacRitchie. Even those that Chuck and I saw at the Thai supermarket in Golden Mile (Complex?) aren't so big.

Since you move around that area quite often, perhaps you can blog about this very interesting fruit which I never knew about until Chuck told me about it.

yg said...

chun see, the bigger yellow fruit that you see outside qian hu is the egg fruit. they are edible but nobody seems to want them.

this morning, i saw a few sentul trees at telok blangah park, near the public toilet.

Anonymous said...

Chuck says
Saw some sentul trees along Pasir Ris, several small ones around Compassvale Central and quite a number outside Meridien Junior College along Pasir Ris. Some trees are with the fruit.. pity did not get to shoot them down with my lastic as I did in my kampung many years back...

Roger said...

Motorists are happy with the easier access to MacRitchie. I'll miss the old cafe which had a commanding view of the reservoir. The new cafe has more pleasing toilets though.

Lam Chun See said...

Unfortunately these improvement came a bit too late fro me becos nowadays I don't go there so often now that my son has left school. But we can't have everything can we?