One of the flowers we spotted at the park

After our Christmas celebration at my in-laws’ house (see Christmas Celebration-Lunch), we took a stroll back to our house with Darius sitting in his stroller. The homes of all our family members (my sister’s, my parents’, brother-in-law’s, in-laws’, ours) are all in the vicinity and they are all within walking distances or reachable via short bus trips. This convenient ‘coincidence’ was actually related to how Catherine and I met, since I had approached her after noticing her alighting at the same MRT station as me (long story cut short). ^^

Anyway when we were nearing our home, we walked past this neighbourhood park which had been under construction since many months back. Initially, it was stipulated to be completed in Q3′09 (i.e. latest by September) but till now, it has still not been officially opened to public, though it’s almost completed from the looks of it from the outside.

Though the park was barricaded with some nettings around it, we could see quite a number of residents already strolling in it and children playing at one of its playground. Looks like the workers (there were a few still working on parts of the park even on Christmas Day) were alright with people entering their ‘under construction’ park as long as they don’t vandalise the place. As such, we decided to take a peek of the park ourselves, since we had been pretty curious on how it looked from inside since a while back.

As we stepped across the nettings over one of the entrances, we stepped onto a rough, concrete path made up of rocks. We were quite disappointed with their choice of materials for the path as we wouldn’t want to risk Darius walking on such rough terrain and bruising himself badly when he falls.

When we took a look at one of its connecting paths however, we noticed that the side pathways were made up of a completely different material. At first glance, I thought it was made up of foam rubber, like those used on running tracks in stadiums. When we actually stepped onto it, we were surprised that there were actually made up of leaves and grass! I was initially wondering why there were so many leaves and grass pieces being littered onto the pathways, until we realised they were in fact used as the foundation for the soft, comfortable paths! What a nice innovation!

This is the first time we came across such paths

Carrying Darius out from his stroller and putitng him down on the path, he immediately ran along it excitedly, giggling happily when we chased after him from behind. With the ground so soft and the path free of obstacles, we knew it would be safe to let him run on it to his heart’s content. ^^

Though the park had its fair share of greenery, made up of a hilly layout and vegetation, we were hoping that there were bigger trees in it to provide more shading from the sun. All the trees were small-sized and could not offer any form of shading. Moreover, there was hardly any pavillion or shelter for resting or in case of a sudden downpour. Besides that though, I have no other complain since we’ve been longing for a neighbouring park in our area since we first moved in several years ago and I was thankful for them to finally setting one up.

As we moved on, we were pleasantly surprised that one of the playgrounds in the park had interesting things like the ‘flying fox’ gadget, where kids can glide from one end to the other using it. More interestingly, the playground is covered with sand instead of those synthetic rubber we usually see in our local playgrounds. We were thinking that we could bing our beach kit along next time so that Darius could play with the sand in this playground.

This reminded me of the Pasir Ris Park

As we continued walking with Darius, we spotted another playground in the park. From the look of it, this area was designed for younger kids since the slides etc were smaller in size. On the other hand, there was this rock climbing amentity for kids which would cater to slightly older kids.

Lastly, we came across a family of five hippos facing one another. Catherine noticed a hole in one of the hippos’ wide-opened mouth and thought there would be water spraying out from it when the park is officially opened.

When we checked with a friendly Indian worker who walked by later, he explained that the hole was actually used as a mouth piece for transmitting one’s voice to the other side, which were the ears of an adjacent hippo. The worker then demonstrated to us by speaking into the mouth while I listened through the other hippo’s ears. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear his voice through them. Well, probably it would work the next time round. ^^|

The Hippo family having a family meeting

Just earlier on while we were checking out the hippos, an elderly couple came into the park on their bicycles and was politely asked by the same worker to leave the park as he’s concerned that they might damage the park as they rode on their bicycles. The path through the path was narrow and really not for bicycles because it would not be safe for the people, especially children walking in it. However, the couple was uncooperative and one of them even uttered some vulgarities in Hokkien at him. We were quite disgusted by their behaviour, especially when they were senior citizens who should know better than to behave in such uncivilised manners, treating him as if he was lower class. They kept insisting on passing through a path which were blocked plainly with red plastic netting and muttered why the worker couldn’t just take the barrier down for them, as if they were VIPs.

After some insistence from the worker, they left unwillingly but the woman still insisted cycling through that very narrow path you can see in the picture above, moving very close to one of the hippos, which made us gasp at her ‘inconsideration’ and made the poor worker very worried. He said to us that if they damaged these hippos, he probably would have to pay his boss $5000 for one…he was so worried. He cheered up after we asked him what the Hippos were for and had fun shouting into the mouth.

With that, we left the park and headed for home, looking forward to return to the park again. Hopefully by then, it would be completely furnished and opened to public so that we won’t have to ‘trespass’ it again. ^^

No related posts.