National Day at Macritchie

The bedside clock said 4.30am. I should roll over and slip back into deep slumber. But instead, I felt all wound up. Why not start the day early and hit the trails of MacRitchie Reservoir? A full-blooded 12 km trek.  After all, it was our National Day and it might be more meaningful to commemorate the day with a good physical workout than sleeping in. Alright that is laughable. But it was a public holiday and I should make the most of the day.

At the reservoir, my iphone read 5.44am. The entire park was dark as night. What a fantastic time to have left my head-lamps back home just when I would need it most. Stepping into the forest, an ink black wall of darkness crashed upon me, forbiddingly and unwelcoming.  I could not even see the back of my hand, nor my feet or the track to take the next step forward. Thank goodness for modern day devices like our hand-phones and the blessed built-in torch-light. I immediately turned it on. The battery will be fast draining but I had no choice.  There was enough light emitted, faint and casting eerie shadows that danced in tandem to my hand-held light source. Now is not the time for imagination to freely wander or the mind to succumb to its own trickery. Behind the shadows are but lots of plant and shrubbery. Flora and fauna that is essentially non-threatening. Who’s afraid of the dark? Not me.

I assured myself that at some point the sky will eventually brighten up. Above all, I was not walking alone. I had my music companion. Spotify, delivering Mike Oldfield this time. His latest album “Man On the Rocks” is not half-bad and surprisingly very listenable.

And how often could I have the whole forest to myself? MacRitchie Reservoir is such a popular destination for trekkers and joggers, the trails were always crowded whenever I visited. But for this pre-dawn trek I seemed to have the trail all to myself. Or so I thought. Up ahead, I spied a faint glimmer of light. I was not alone. A group of three at least, teen-agers by their looks, the light from their smart-phones and hand-held torch piercing through the dark. But instead of striding ahead along the track like me, they appeared to be looking for some lost treasure in the forest. Of course they were. Pokemons, to be exact. The augmented reality app was launched in our country just two days before and many people fell under the spell. People crazy enough to venture deep into the forest just so to be the first to hunt down these virtual nothings. It is totally unreal except that it was happening. I brisked past the three of them. With their eyes glued to the screens, I felt like a ghost whisking past.

Early morning at the reservoir

After some 5km of walking the night sky eventually made way for morning. I turned off my hand-phone torchlight. Mike Oldfield was singing about the sense of time in one of his songs, entitled “Minutes”.

“Minutes seem like hours / And hours they seem like days / When the ones you want are missing / And they’ve gone their separate ways”.

So true for me. You would know what I mean. Since Jenny’s passing on, time seemed to slow to a crawl. I fill the time with every possible distraction I could think of but the days were long and hard to get through.

As I crossed the half-way mark of the trail, with the morning sky fully lit, more people began streaming into the reservoir. Many of the joggers were dressed in red and white, the colours of our national flag. There was at least one family of five, the two parents and their three young children in their sporting attire all colour coordinated. Wearing my usual blue dry-fit tee-shirt, my sense of patriotism appeared somewhat questionable by comparison. But that did not bother me much and soon, after slightly more than two hours, I completed the trek. My left ankle felt sore but overall I was pretty satisfied. And it was only around 8am in the morning. A great way to start the day.

I washed up and took a leisurely breakfast at the park café. Just then my handphone was flooding with several Whatsapp messages. Congratulatory notes coming from my colleagues. They found my name amid the list of National Day award winners, published in the newspaper on national day each year. After some 30 plus years in service, it was my turn to receive this award, I supposed. Still it came as a very pleasant surprise for me. I felt almost embarrassed replying to the endless shower of flattery that I was most unused to, thanking my colleagues profusely.  Some of the bolder ones demanded treats in the form of beer. I will need to concoct a plan for a small celebration but that will be a matter for another day. I was in no mood to enjoy the ego ride.

The sun was scorching down the reservoir, now bustling with fitness jocks and families out for picnic gatherings or just having a good time together. And of course, droves of pokemon hunters, mobile phones in hand. This is the second National Day spent without Jenny. So many people around, yet the park felt as empty as the time when I first arrived in the dark of dawn.

“Walking in a sunny garden empty like the moon / And birds that once could fly so high / Now sing a different tune”

-          Mike Oldfield, "Minutes"