the concept : starting from any of the stations, the related text will guide the reader to the next station (which may or may not follow the original sequence). eventually, the reader will be led home (hidden link) and the journey will come to an end. the experience will ideally differ from reader to reader.

boon lay

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done in earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power,
and the glory,
for ever.
Amen.— The Lord's Prayer, King James Version.

buona vista

you kissed her here first. it was not like that rainy afternoon on a bench in fort canning park, uncertainty clinging beneath your skin like the taste of beer that simmered on her tongue. not like the second time she kissed you, quiet and hushed behind the door of your room, twenty minutes before your father commented at dinner, how all girls' schools are rumoured to groom lesbians, not that he's worried in the case of you both, of course.her house was empty, the way she'd told you it would be. no one is ever home it's so quiet that it gets so loud i don't care what we do i wish i could have you here with me forever. you know Elysium played in the dark of the movie room but all you remembered from the screening was the way she pressed you into the armrest of the sofa, lips ghosting down your neck, wildfire. and later, while she combed the contents of a cheap boxed dye into your hair, why don't you ever kiss me first?hair wet from the shower, you did. the guitar laid abandoned at the foot of the bed in favour of her hands on your skin, caressing giddy laughter from your lips. she tasted of the strawberries you both dipped into chocolate in the kitchen earlier. you don't even like strawberries, but you didn't stop.two months later, she went through terminal 3 with her camera and aspirations, and left you all your memories locked in a single polaroid.

jurong east

nearly five years ago:"i've been waiting here for half an hour, where are you?""i've been here for half an hour too.""you said we're meeting at JEM?""yeah, where are you?""i'm here... wait, JEM is just another name for JCUBE, right?""no, they are two completely different malls, what the hell.""uh, i'll come over right now.""please venture out of the East more."

redhill

four years old with chocolate melting on your palms, tucked against your grandfather's frail chest. but that's merely hearsay, because you cannot remember the last of his smiling face. it did not matter the amount of fondness he held for you, it was no rival to the diabetes that slowed the pulse of his heart. sometimes, you wish you remembered more than the taoist chanting that terrified you on the day of his funeral. you wish you were there while he savoured the first half of the last plate of his favourite chicken rice.you pocket from here vague recollections of your grandmother making dumplings on the kitchen floor come mid-autumn festivals, and your small hands gave more trouble than help. yet she smiled and held them on morning visits to the wet market, pointing out to you where their old tailor's shop used to be, all those years ago.the incense burned strong and strange at the top of the cupboard, alongside a smiling buddha. the only time you saw that space empty was the day before they finally moved away.you remember the two times you took the wrong bus with your grandmother, just so she could glimpse for two seconds, the home she adored so much.she tells you about her dreams sometimes, you never had to ask her where the setting would be.

outram park

it is always a blur. most days you pass right by without a second thought. other times, you're walking as fast as you can to escape the mad rush hour crowd. everyone stands too close, and the distance between green and purple always seems to drag wider with your next step. tired feet, tired smile, tired of brushing shoulders with an adjacent stranger who's just as tired.

chinatown

your grandmother brought you to a temple here before you even knew how to pray.the dragons were intricate and coiled around the pillars. there was a lot of red, a lot of wood. and a lot of gold — a smiling buddha so big it stretched up to mere inches from the ceiling, and it wasn't even standing. here, you grew old enough to wonder how the future could be read off wooden sticks shaken out onto the floor by the altar; sat beside your grandmother as she sank deep into conversation with a monk, until the stick of incense in front of you curled down a good height.there was a time when you visited people's park complex nearly thrice a week, eating chee cheong fun and reading for hours while your grandmother and her friend chatted in dialect. you remember a shop that sold beads in small, colour-coordinated packets. chains in silver and gold, threads in nylon and cotton. but it wasn't there anymore when you visited again six months ago.if love could be a place, then you think it'd be here.you would define it in the spoonfuls of warm almond paste on a cool day, a queue snaking unrelentless outside the dessert shop. the lanterns are always beautiful, strung up a distance along pagoda street, and when you look hard enough, the remnants of old shophouses aren't very remnant at all. they think the only significance of this place is that you transfer trains here on your way to work from school. they don't know the way your chest brims, heart sighs, feet slow down just barely whenever you spot the exit.everything here is reminiscent of a childhood you hold bursting out of a crack in your heart. dialects punctuating the air, pushcarts selling blocks of ice cream served in plastic cups and the way your grandmother's eyes never fail to light up at first step out of the station.because before everything, there was here.

clarke quay

your achilles' heel for alcohol toes around a dislike for noise and crowds. on nights where socializing isn't a chore, you sit with a friend tucked into a corner of chupitos, reading stories on r/nosleep over whiskey and coke until the happy hour chimes to an end. across the road, liang court used to be a ghost town, kinokuniya nestled on the upper floors, where your first love brought you on your first date.

tanjong pagar

five months you woke to an alarm prelude to nine to six in an office cubicle with only a company-issued laptop and the fear of failing. your supervisor was twenty-nine and cared more about the end product than its process. growing up wasn't very special after all; he splurged way too much on food delivery, sometimes opted for three hour lunch breaks two stations away from the office, and never forgot to invite you along for the walk to the station where your favourite milk tea shop was. you remember most vividly the pockets of time you spent daydreaming in the pantry when you'd finished your tasks too fast, and no one had extra work to assign you. days trudged by slowly and all you wanted was to clock out before the rush hour. but you suppose, it was here where you realized that what you were doing, wasn't what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. and getting an A for your internship did not change that fact.

bugis

one of the only places that remained constant throughout your years was the national library, and two streets away, the mcdonald's where you sat with your books whenever you arrived too late for a spot at the library. post-exams, one street over, you found your favourite novels from $2.50 book carts at bras basah complex, have wandered every storey for hours on end.

paya lebar

mornings like these where the bus sighed quieter than the first whisper of dawn, you remember the windows misted over, and katong shopping centre would whisk by. remember the muffled beat of the music that drummed the air, between you and the stranger nodding off on your right. five minutes was plenty of time to make it through the school gates without earning you a late slip. first notes of the national anthem blaring from speakers; short squeak of your white sneakers skidding as you hurried to your classroom. these were easier times.easier times where the highlight of your eight hour days could be packed neatly into half an hour blocks; green benches, green blouses, green pinafores and green paint peeling off the railings at the stairwell whenever you ran a little late back to class after recess. post-exam days were lazy afternoons spent laughing over cup noodles in the video shop opposite of school, until someone would suggest heading to town.here, you spent most of your hours after classes for the first three years sprawled over every inch of the field, glove in your left hand and a softball in the other. here, you fell a hundred times but made up for each one with a lap around the field. here, coach pushed you past limits, trained you to have a louder voice and a louder presence, to hit hard in whatever you do and to dive without fear. and it is here, whenever the bus pulls up by the school building, still mid-renovation, where your chest squeezes a little tighter for not being around to attend her funeral last year.

kembangan

six times (or at least, the ones that you remember) you've had to pack your life into boxes and learn that to make your way home, you'd have to get off the train at a different station. but at least, home was always in the East. here was the fourth time you tried to force old sentiments into the crooks of ill-fitting walls. home was a little too far for comfort, ten minutes stretching into twenty at any wrong turn. all the backroads looked the same. gone was the crowd from what used to be a safe haven, it's a small ghost town here. perhaps you were too young to appreciate that then, but in those moments, the breeze ran phantom fingers through your hair; the shadows threatened to lead yours away by the hand.

bedok

memories of the recess bell, ten years old with your heart in your mouth whenever the discipline mistress decided to have a surprise spot-check. you had your nokia tucked into the coin purse despite the rules, your mother had insisted after the one time your father forgot to pick you up from school. the security guard stayed late that night, sharing hi-chew candies with you on the bench.there's bus number 17 that only pulled up every twenty minutes. sometimes, when you had to pick your brother up from school, you opted for half an hour strolls past the factories and stood watching cars on the overhead bridge. and on good days, the both of you heaped spare change and shared a cup of bubble tea between squabbles on the walk home.at present, here becomes late night cravings, idle chatter of tired mouths. the air boils into sweat on your skin. sometimes, all you need is good company, and a bowl of bak chor mee. the soup burns down your throat, but these are small sacrifices if the bad days melt away. your friend tells a joke. you laugh because they deserve it for sticking around.

tanah merah

some places are bridges and here, you pull together hours of sitting on the empty floors of terminal 3, dozing off on your math textbook a week before the gce o levels, the floor cold beneath your feet as your slippers laid upturned some distance away.that last day of 2016 where the train to changi airport was especially empty, and the only fireworks you heard was the exploding laughter of your friends in response to some dumb thing you said. legs stretched out in the viewing gallery as the night melted into morning. the time lapse video you took of the sunrise didn't come out perfect but at least the memories did."cross over to platform C for train service to expo and changi airport."these days you indulge in the two-stop ride just so you can pretend you're going elsewhere, doesn't matter if you still find yourself heading home in the end.

simei

they say that home is not just four walls and a roof, but you hadn't known what they'd meant until you stepped into the unit, fresh out of renovation. sour-sharp sting of new paint clung to the air even though all the windows were cranked wide open. it's strange how spaces are supposed to feel wider when they're empty, but the bare corners were piled up with claustrophobia. the wood still shone, your fingers rejected the lack of familiar scratches in the varnish. your hand came away dust-free when you swiped a palm over the shelf.again, from the beginning. you built the foundations, layering upon the feelings you wanted to keep. here, your sixteenth birthday passed. here, you met the neighbour from six floors down who would eventually attend the secondary school across the field from yours. you would run on the high of exchanging words through the gaps in the green fence. but you would learn that as the years dwindle by, some friends stay, and others don't.you took away from here the peppermint chocolate bubble tea you indulged from sweet talk whenever you could. the times you tried to sneak down a packet of fries on the three-minute walk home before dinner. exasperated purse of your grandmother's lips when she gripped your jaw with a gentle thumb and forefinger, telling you she could smell it on your breath.and if you'd had the option to pick, here was home more than the others had been. you wouldn't have chosen to leave.

tampines

it doesn't matter where you're going : school or work. both routes go by here. your 9:30am class is an hour and fifteen minutes' ride away, but you'd sacrifice an extra fifteen minutes to loop back from the end of the line, just so you won't have to stand all the way there. you don't realize how strange it is that the only things you remember about here are vague memories of rushing from the bus interchange to the train platform, until you actually think about it.coming and going.that is unfortunately, all there is for now.

pasir ris

a time of simpler pleasures; macaroni and cheese in the microwave, needing permission to spend an hour after dinner playing cart surfer on clubpenguin, saturday afternoons at the park opposite your block, coming home with your legs swollen from mosquito bites. the shelves were chocked full of your cousins' secondhand Enid Blyton, pages yellow and spotted from age. here, you made lanterns during mid-autumn festivals, out of red-lidded containers leftover from chinese new year. and downstairs, walked the entirety of the void deck with your younger siblings until the flame ate plastic instead of wax.

bencoolen

lazy sleep-riddled weekdays, packed into spoonfuls of three-dollar meals from the convenience store. your shift isn't until another hour. later, you pack coffee down like soil into round coffins. there's sugar on the floor again. faces come and go, you only remember the ones who forget to close the door behind them. in the backroom, the ice machine whirs. these hours spent perfecting pouring milk into picture, for your art to end up smeared on a stranger's lips at first sip. keep your head up, the chocolate sauce on your shoes can be washed off.

destination : home

some days, home is a station away. on other days, the train stops by fifteen other ones first, but all these journeys add up to a single convergent point. and as the years come and go, home stops being a location. home stops being four walls and a key, and doesn't promise to stay in the same place. houses come with a 99-year lease, and everything else an expiry date. keep your thoughts safe, tuck them into the crevices of familiar corners. but don't let them go.we'll build homes out of memories and the people in them. we'll remember them in the gaps between train and platform.end of ride : return to main or view author’s next project.