Christmas Day

After a dinner and KTV session on Christmas eve, I woke up to a sober Christmas day. It happens often, that the pre-celebration of some festival makes the actual day rather dull, or perhaps you sleep deep into the day because of the late night; and you realise that these holidays are just like any other day you get everyday.

I woke up to sunshine at noon, and that made me happy at least. I went down with skating gear to get lunch and then walked over to Bishan Park to skate immediately. Doing my rounds there, I realised that monkeys have since migrated from Lower Pierce reservoir to hang out at the end of the park now. I sneaked up behind one to get a better shot of its ass here -


Unexpectedly, I met Daoshen, a primary classmate and prime joker of the class then. He is now a bronzed botak who looked like he just came out from DB, and he was carrying this huge 10kg medicine ball with him, intending to carry it and run. He said he just signed up with SCDF and am going into the elite DART team, so need to do some training. Somehow, I was hit with this bout of nostalgia and melancholy sets in, that I lost my mood for skating soon after, and went home.

Next, I went to the void deck and played badminton against the wall, practicing my swing as well. When I got tired, I bought dinner, ate it, and went out to cycle after a rest. I intended to go up north to Kranji, Neo Tiew, down to Tuas and out of it again, before going east for the airport coastal road and back north via Tampines.

It was all fine and well except for the drenching I got at Kranji all the way to the end of Neo Tiew, but I gave myself a good break at Jalan Bahar to snack and rest after that. I went down to Pioneer road after that, and straight into Tuas.


It was a real eye-opener - the long flat and totally empty road stretched endlessly about 9km to Tuas, and a left turn to go to the southwestern end of the island took another 6.5km, and that's only one way! Very good training route for cyclists there, wonder how many people knows about this. You can incorporate sprints into the ride too; I got chased by dogs on 2 occasions, and saw a few more that didn't came to bother me. Don't even stop to look, sprint first!


The slight drizzle as I came out along Pioneer road turned into a downpour, and it was so bad water ran into my eyes and visibility was near zero as I reached the start of West coast highway. I had to stop at a petrol station, and after more half an hour of waiting/shivering without promise of the rain stopping, I called a cab and went home at 3pm. That was a smart thing to do, because the rain lasted all the way without stopping till the night after!

So, that was my Christmas, spent torturing myself physically for lack of better things to do.