Happy Labour Day!

If you are sick of crowds and noises in the town area during weekends or public holidays, HortPark’s a place where you can enjoy tranquillity and fresh air for free (not including transportation fees to travel to this place). Miss Tan and I went to this park at Hyderabad Road a few weeks ago.

They call it ‘the gardening hub’, so you can expect a lot of mini gardens there. Various products for gardening purposes (seeds, tools, etc) are also available in their HortMart.

Opened in December last year, it has a huge variety of plants and flowers, mostly with labels to inform you of their scientific names. Most of the time I can’t be bothered to remember their names, haha. It’s kind of fun to try to read them out loud though, and wonder where those names came from.

This ultra hairy tree/plant from Cuba is called Coccothrinax crinita. Also known as ‘Old Man Palm’. I think I understand why it’s called ‘Old Man Palm’, heh heh heh!

The gardens there are designed by various companies, with different themes and combination of plants. So it’s quite like the garden-version of Ikea.

One of the designs that caught my attention is this one, which has a ‘baby theme’ to it.

So cute huh! They have a crib for putting in ‘baby’ plants!

Baby bottles for baby plants!

If you are willing to spend a bit more time to decorate and design your garden with some creativity, it can also be your playground for wacky ideas.

There’s also this garden named ‘Oasis’, which introduces desert plants. One of them is the Fountain Grass, which grows rapidly and produces large number of seeds after rainfall. It is food for cattle in deserts and is known to survive wildfires.

This is a photo of fountain grass, which I found online. Haha, that day I didn’t bother to take pictures of it at HortPark, because I thought some other plants there were more interesting to look at.

For example, this..

Very adorable isn’t it? They look like some hairy erected… worms, trying to pose for the photos. Lol.

Very ‘origami’ plant! It’s as if someone folded the leaves nicely and left them there.

Seductive cactus.

Magnificent looking, but very deadly too. Imagine yourself sitting on it.

(Sounds like this ‘Oasis’ area is a perfect place for killing people with all the cactuses in it. Just push your enemy in any direction forcefully and the plants will do the rest for you.)

If you are a lazy person like me, growing a cactus is super suitable! Because you don’t really need to take care of it very much, and they can survive very well. At their gardening store, you can actually purchase the baby cactuses for as low as a few dollars.

There’s this very nice chill out area where you can watch the sunset and chat with friends for the whole afternoon (if you don’t mind the sunlight).

I love unoccupied seats like these. Totally beats going to usual hangout places like Starbucks and other cafes in town, which are usually very crowded during weekends.

The best thing about this place is, it’s super ulu! We went to HortPark on a Sunday and the number of people (based on what I saw) was probably less than 30! I guess it’s because this place is not really known to many, and not very accessible too.

There’s a huge grass patch nearby. The grasses are soft and non-prickly enough for you to lie down on. When you lie down, all you see right before you is the sky, and nothing else.

Kids love this space. If you’ve always imagined yourself as a father or mother, playing and running around with your kids on some grass patch, having some great family time together, this is where you can make it come true!

Right outside HortPark’s entrance is a tall, long and gorgeous bridge that connects to Telok Blangah Hill Park. The bridge (also known as park connector) is like nothing I’ve ever seen in other parts of Singapore, and is a few kilometres long.

There was this ‘No Entry’ sign at the entrance of the bridge, which many people ignored, and so did we.

This is what you can see as you walk along the bridge. If you suffer from acrophobia, I’d advise you not to step onto this tree top walk.

At this level, this is probably what Tarzan sees as he swings from tree to tree. This is really a good opportunity for you to get closer to tree tops, to experience life ‘on top’. The air is fresher ‘up there’ too.

The distance from HortPark to Telok Blangah Hill Park via this connector is roughly 2.4km, which is ideal for people who want to train their stamina for running 2.4km during their NAPFA test. Haha. But I’m not sure if the structure is stable enough to support jogging/running.

As we approached Telok Blangah Hill Park, we came across this very holy path, which eventually led us to heaven the top of Telok Blangah Hill.

Here’s a panoramic photo from the hilltop, which I took with my handphone camera. It’s not very well-taken, but.. yea.. that’s one of the better photos I have. Click on it to see the photo in larger view. Anyway I think this free view beats spending $30 for 30 minutes in the Singapore Flyer, haha. =x

The worst thing that can happen when you are on the hilltop is to get hungry. That’s exactly what happened to Miss Tan when we reached the hilltop, haha. -_- In fact she already started feeling hungry when we were on the connector. And since we were in the middle of the connector, there was no other way to get out other than to continue walking.

So here’s a warning, do have a filling meal before you embark on this journey, or bring some food along with you just in case you get hungry. Oh, and the second warning is… do empty your bladder before you enter the connector. I don’t remember seeing any restrooms around.

For information on how to get to HortPark, click here. =)

—————————————————————–

I just watched The Forbidden Kingdom recently.

Despite several ‘warnings’ from Miss Huang, I still went ahead to watch it. Simply because all I wanted was some mindless action-pack entertainment. This movie accomplishes that.

Nevermind about the not-so-realistic effects sometimes, the weird English spoken by Jet Li and Jackie, or the so-so story.

Some parts were funny, and the soundtrack was great. I’m just not very used to seeing Jackie with such long hair, haha. And Liu Yi Fei is gorgeous………….. =p

6.5 / 10

—————————————————————–

Another movie I just watched is 5 Centimeters per Second.

The most beautiful anime movie I’ve seen this year, or perhaps in my whole life. The artwork and animation are just stunning.

This is the kind of movie that makes you want to reflect about your life, love, space, people, time, and cherish every thing around you, and every single moment.

It takes its time to slowly tell the story in 3 segments, which all add up to about an hour.

“The title 5 Centimeters Per Second comes from the speed at which cherry blossoms petals fall, petals being a metaphorical representation of humans, reminiscent of the slowness of life and how people often start together but slowly drift into their separate ways.” (taken from Wiki)

Ah, it deserves 8.5 / 10!

RSS 2.0 Feed | Leave a comment | Trackback URL