[ilikeoldchangke]

My throat was so dry and the first thing I did upon entering my place was to go to the kitchen. I started drinking from the tap directly, gulping down water beyond the point of thirst.

Panting and wiping my lips with the back of my arm. I went straight to the papers. Picking pieces of it up, I went to the section about the stabbing.

“Bloody hell.” I cursed out loud when I realised the article is gone.
It’s gone.
Just like that.

The article in it’s place is now about the chain collision along Bukit Timah road I passed by earlier. No one was hurt but it caused a bit of a jam. Flipping the paper front and back, I tried to figure out what kind of dark magic is going on.

I picked up the paper and held it against the light. Maybe it’s not normal materials the papers are printed on. Maybe it’s some high tech LCD screen or something that feels and look like paper.

You can then refresh it or something like a webpage of a connection.

I checked the front and back of the piece of paper before bringing it to my stove.

“ let’s see what the fuck are you made off.” I mumbled as I lit up my stove.

Blue flames danced in a nice circle around my underutilised stove and I held the paper to the flame. It ignited immediately, the fire consuming the paper, devouring and turning it into ashes within seconds.

I dropped the paper and watched the ashes crumple and fly about my kitchen.

It’s just paper.
I mean if it’s something high tech, surely it has some batteries involved. Even if there are no batteries, there should be an antenna where the device can be powered by a signal or something.

I grabbed another piece of the paper, careful to leave the part about Sulyani and her colleagues intact.
I tore up a section of the paper and looked at the fibres. I crunched up a portion and used it to wipe my sliding glass door.

So far, it looks like newspaper, it smells like newspaper, it burns like newspaper and it cleans like newspaper.
I dunk a ball of it into water and watched the some of the ink dissolve into the liquid.

It’s fucking newspaper.

Unsure of what other experiment to conduct, I took the full page news of the accident that is going to happen the next day and pin it up against a glass wall with blue tack.
I read the report twice. The accident happened right along the same street where I was staying. Practically right in front of Cluny court.
The time is not stated but it happened in the day.

I stuck pieces of blank paper along side the news report and brought out a box of coloured markers and bits of string like I’m about to solve the crime of the century.

There are several pictures of the accident and the damaged it caused scattered throughout the report. I went through each one until I found what I’m looking for.
A light post in the middle of a traffic island.
I’m interested in the shadow it’s casting on the grass beside it.
A shadow is the longest in the morning when the rises from the east, it’s the shortest around noon and long again when the sun sets in the west, casting the shadow on the other side.

Opening up google map, I used the street view function to drop the yellow man pin on the same street where the accident happened. I orientated the screen until I found an image taken on a sunny day with enough shadows for me to make my comparison.


Using the red true north arrow that allows me to turn the camera about, I repositioned the pin and thereby the screen, to display what I would see on the ground in the day, if I was standing due North.
Establishing my direction, I checked the shadow of the light post and confirmed my deduction that the accident happened in the early part of the morning. I adjusted the google street view to match the picture of the accident site so I can make an apple to apple comparison.

Glimpsing clues and cues from the reporting, I deduced that the accident happened quite early. At least earlier than the time when google last sent it’s engineering team to capture the street view footage for that stretch.
Pictures of the accident scenes showed a gathering of park goers in the background too.

Discounting the time for the emergency services to arrive, start their rescue operations, and for the police to set up their signature blue tent for fatalities, I estimate the time of the accident to be between 8am to 9am.

Why ? Why is it so important to know the time of the accident?

Since I stay along the same stretch, why can’t I fucking park myself on a stool and wait for it to happen?

Here’s the thing, I don’t want it to happen. I want to stop it from happening. And to do that, I need to know the time it happens.

There’s no telling how many trucks is going to pass by in the morning. If I wait until the point when I see Sulyani and Chan standing by the side of the road with a truck barrelling down towards them.
It’s going to be too late.

Enlarging the map on my laptop, I looked at the aerial view of the neighbourhood.

Cluny park road starts after the junction of Tyersall road and Cluny hill. It’s a total of 797m long. Assuming there are no cars in front of the truck, it would have almost 800m of uninterrupted drive to pick up speed and momentum.
However, there is a small roundabout at the turn towards Jalan Kembang Melati , this break in otherwise long stretch of road effectively reduced the distance the truck have to pick up speed to about 157m until the estimated point of impact.

No matter what car you drive, you simply can’t speed pass a roundabout. You still have to navigate the turn, lose a bit of speed before you pick it up again.

I scribbled over my sketches and notes beside the newspaper article.

Taking a few steps back, looked at the wall that is now filled with blue tacks and untidy scribbles that only I understand.

The truck that caused the accident is a Nissan cabstar. I fired up google again and looked at the specifications of the vehicle. With a fully laden weight of 3500Kg. It’s been modified and fitted with a cover at the back and during the time of accident, it was carrying old units of air con compressors together with some scrap metal.

I’ve never driven or been on one of these trucks before and I paced about the wall of information before grabbing my phone. I’m going to call a contractor I work with in the parks.

It’s late in the evening and I don’t know if he is going to pick up my call but I’m thankful he did.

“ Hello Jerry, don’t worry. House keeping all done swee swee ( perfectly ) , I never leave any of the dead trunks behind and I confirm plus chop my worker never litter their lunch box all over.” Uncle Sam immediately went on the defensive because everytime I called him, it’s to reflect how badly he maintained his area of work.

Sam is the owner of a small landscape company that we work with regularly.
His team of 6 workers helped maintain a section of the Botanic garden among other small jobs. He is also a pre-qualified term contractor of sort, sometimes he gets activated to clear trees that toppled over during a storm.

He makes it a point to send me pussy willow every Chinese new year every since I started managing him and his team. He doesn’t hate me but he tells people I’m difficult to work with simply because I do everything by the book.

There is no, ‘brother, brother, close one eye’ kind of stuff.
It’s by the book, as simple as that. He can ‘brother brother’ all he wants. It’s always by the books for me.

One thing I like about Sam is that he is very hands on. He knows everything and is capable of operating every single piece of equipment. I have seen him with a harness on, 15m up in a crane car and trimming the crown of a tree with a chain saw complete with a cigarette in his mouth.

I tried shouting at him not to smoke in the park and he had the cheek to tell me the smoke came from his saw, not the cigarette in his mouth.

“Uncle Sam, I need to ask you something.” I said.

“what is it ? “

“Your truck, the one you use everyday for work and to ferry workers.” I said while squinting my eyes at the article to look at the pictures.

“yeah, what about it ? “

“Can I check how fast you can accelerate to if you are fully loaded and have a track length of about 157m ? “

My question was met with an immediate silence on the phone.

5 seconds later, Sam asked if I’m drinking.

“ You drunk ar Jerry…? You siao ar ? ( crazy ) “

“No I’m not, how fast to go from 0 to 100 ? is there some standard to follow or something ? “


“Hello brother…. Lim pei drive Nissan Cabstar…. Not Nissan GTR.”

“Sam I just want to know how long it takes for the truck to be fast enough to knock someone down and be fatal.”

The silence on the line now stretched longer than 5 seconds.

“ Jerry, Jerry, Brother I tell you… I tell you… you write this down… write this down…. one second. “ Sam said
I grabbed a pen and paper.

“Ok go ahead” I said

“1800-221 4444” Sam recited over the phone.

“what is this ? “

“This one ahh.. is the national suicide hotline…You give me a second, I find the Tinkle friend one for you….”

“Uncle Sam, I’m not thinking of doing anything stupid. It’s for work and I just want to get a feel of the ideal travelling speed we are currently imposing on all maintenance vehicle in the parks around the island.” I lied so blatantly and smoothly without a change in my expression.

Sometimes I scare myself.

“Oh… cheyy… err… for me ah… i.. clutch down, push 1st gear, zhuarrr( accelerate) and drag, 30km/h for 1st gear is no sweat but I quickly change to 2nd gear. At 2nd, faster pickup and if I drag a bit, can hit 60km/h. From there I go 3rd, by then can hear the beep beep sound already if I drag also.” Sam said as he tried his best to describe his driving.

“No no no… I don’t mean this… errmm… say if you have 157m of straight road.”

“err ok..” Sam answered cautiously.

“At which point do you think you will get fast enough to ram up a kerb and pin someone against the wall ? “

“I am feeling a bit uncomfortable talking about this Jerry…. You ok bo ?