Saturday, August 02, 2008

Footslogging Journal Update

FOOTSLOG!
A map detailing my journeys across the island on foot, excluding the Peirce Route (April 2008) and various route marches, which probably shouldn't be here anyway. All the same, please excuse me now for showing off.

I told my friends in camp about my slightly unusual hobby of taking long walks around rural and suburban Singapore, and they probably found it barking mad or something to prefer strolling in suburbia to strolling in Orchard, or to prefer walking at all to drinking onself shitless in nightclubs.

Also disturbing to them was my perceived going to all lengths to document everything little thing that I do, one of these that is the map here shown. It wasn't done yesterday; it's just updated, and since September 2007 there are two more routes drawn and one expanded, with the legend as follows:

Grey font - general localities
White font / coloured discs - key landmarks along routes
Blue font - water bodies
Yellow font - communes
glowing lines - routes

Violet: Sungei Buloh Route
One-off misadventure in December 2006 involving an initial jog through increasingly inhospitable territory, cumulating in an encounter with dogs, a dead end in the middle of nowhere, crossing a canal, emerging wet from a drain, two bus trips, many factories, a puny reservoir park, and finally Sungei Buloh itself, where crocodiles didn't roam on that day.

Amber: Old School Route (~8 km)
I used to take this route from Hazel Park to Hwa Chong. Details here
Also taken in the opposite direction a number of times from the Boarding School to Bukit Panjang LRT station (June 2007), for sentimental reasons.
Supermarkets are common along this route, with cheese abound!

Green: Saint Joseph Route (~10-16 km)
Denotes various routes that pass through Clementi Road and Upper Bukit Timah Road. There was this time I took the longest of them, starting with Sungei Ulu Pandan and ending with a trip all the way into Central Catchment (via Chestnut Drive) and back. There was a hot noontime sun, plenty of monkeys, an electric fence I walked around, and a corner of Upper Peirce Reservoir which I believed few (if at all) Singaporeans actually set eyes on. And then I saw the apartment flats peeping just over the far horizon over the water surface and thought, oh.

Grey-green: New School Route (~8 km)
The route I took when I needed to go to the art room from home, or vice versa. Also taken just to have breakfast in Jelita or Guthrie House, again for sentimental reasons. Ulu Pandan and Sixth Avenue are good places to walk, not too cluttered.

Blue: Reservoir Circuit (6.17 km per round)
I ran around here to prepare for Recruit training. It worked well, but not well enough. Details here

Purple: Clementi Route
I walked this two weeks ago, running a small errand for field camp along the way. Passed through Clementi Woods, which is not a bad place to go on a hot day.

Saint Ignatius Route (not in display)
Was in here with Yee Chien and Xiang and Yuan Yi to distribute flyers for our CIP project (July 2006?). The roads in here are desperately obfuscated, so I couldn't mark out the route. We went in at Oei Tiong Ham Road and came out at Farrer Road, passing by the Vietnamese Embassy, the Phillipines Embassy, some other Embassy, numerous mansions, and Saint Ignatius' Church, where fellow trainee Long John goes to.

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