A personal blog · Singapore · Bukit Panjang
About me
I'm Mei. I live at Blk 273 Bangkit Road, #03-15 — a mid-floor flat where the corridor catches the afternoon sun and the lift sometimes hums like it is thinking about something else. I was born in Singapore and have spent most of my adult life in the west: first nearer Clementi, then here in Bukit Panjang, where the buses know your face if you ride them often enough and the hill feels like a neighbour you climb without ceremony.
I work part-time doing accounts for a small clinic near Bukit Timah — spreadsheets, invoices, the quiet arithmetic of keeping a front desk honest. The other days I walk, cook rice the way my mother taught me, help my aunt with groceries at the market, and sit at the kopitiam near the interchange with a notebook that is not always filled but is always in my bag.
LifeGlide started because I kept losing the texture of days. Not the headlines — those stick — but the way a window fogs before someone wipes it, the uncle who returns your change with both hands, the particular silence after a train door closes. I wanted one place to hold those impressions before they smoothed out. The name fits how I move through the estate: not rushing, not performing, just letting ordinary hours pass close enough to touch.
Bukit Panjang is where I live the daily mechanics — marketing day at the market, the Downtown Line when it is half empty, laundry that takes the whole afternoon because the breeze is polite but inconsistent. Bukit Timah is where I go when my head needs green: the old rail corridor, the slope paths, the smell of wet leaves after a shower that never quite reached my block. I know which bus turns feel long and which kopitiam tables wobble. I don't pretend to be a historian or a critic. I'm a resident with a habit of looking sideways at things other people walk past.
What I write about is ordinary on purpose. A cup that cools at the right speed. Mist sitting on stones where the tracks used to run. A night near Chin Swee where sirens changed the air and I still don't know what happened one block over. These are not essays with a lesson attached. They are notes from someone who was there, trying to be honest about what she noticed and careful about what she didn't.
I notice people in passing — not as characters in my story but as brief presences on a shared corridor. I try not to name anyone who hasn't asked to be named. I try not to invent facts where I only have gaps. If a piece ends unfinished, that's because the memory is unfinished too, and I'd rather leave the space open than fill it with something that isn't mine to claim.
I draft on my phone sometimes, on my laptop others, usually after the kitchen is quiet. Nothing here is commissioned, sponsored, or written on anyone else's behalf. LifeGlide is a personal journal I happen to publish — a place to keep small days before they glide away without a trace.
If something I've written doesn't match your memory of a place, tell me. Neighbourhoods are layered, and my view is only one layer. If you want to say hello, use the contact form or email me at [email protected]. I read everything, even if I can't always reply quickly.