The Long Way Under the Viaduct

There is a bus that would get me home in eleven minutes. I take the park connector instead and add twenty. My colleague asked why once and I said the steps count for something on my watch, which is true and also not the point.

The loop I like starts near the football field where the floodlights buzz even when nobody is playing. Dogs know this route better than people. They have their own timetable — the retriever at 7.10, the small brown one that pretends not to know you at 7.22. I nod at owners. They nod back. We have an agreement not to learn each other's names.

Choa Chu Kang Park smells different in the evening: cut grass cooling down, someone's dinner leaking out of a takeaway bag, the faint chlorine from the pool blocks away. Runners pass in both directions. Most wear earphones. One uncle still does brisk walking in office shirt and track pants, keys jingling like a metronome.

Where the path ducks under the LRT viaduct, the world compresses. Traffic noise drops. You hear the rails before you see the train — a thin singing in the metal. When a carriage passes overhead the shadow sweeps across the path like a hand moving over a table. I always look up even though there is nothing to see except the undercarriage blur and a few pigeons who live here rent-free.

On the far side the park opens again toward Keat Hong. Housing blocks rise in the familiar stacked geometry — laundry, air-con units, one window with a plant that has outgrown its pot. The covered walkway from here back to my block is where I rejoin the estate proper: more voices, more slippers, the evening sale at the minimart announced over a crackling speaker.

I walk this loop when my head is full of office email. Something about the viaduct section resets me — maybe because nobody expects anything of you under there except not to get in the way of cyclists. You are allowed to just move.

Last week a child on a scooter stopped in the middle of the underpass to listen to the train. His father waited patiently. I waited too because turning around felt rude. When the train passed the child said "again" and the father said "later lah." The child accepted this with the seriousness of someone negotiating a contract.

By the time I reach my block the corridor lights are on — that amber-tinged glow on the landings that makes every floor look slightly warmer than the one below. I take the stairs because the lift is usually crowded at this hour with marketing flyers and neighbours carrying economy rice.

Inside my flat I can still feel the viaduct's cool air on my arms for a minute or two. I put the kettle on. The long way home is not efficient. It is mine, though — every bend, every dog, every train shadow I have learned to expect.