Tuesday 31 January 2006

Fruitful quest


I've always been one to complain about Singapore lacking the resources and climate to grow beautiful babies like blueberries, strawberries, granny smith apples and what not. In New Zealand and Tasmania, I thoroughly enjoyed myself picking strawberries at the farm or even fiddling with the bright coloured wild fruits from trees dotting the roadsides. In a way, it makes a place seem more than just a city, more than just a cosmopolitan urban centre growing in its own success. To reap the fruits of your efforts.

After lunch, my dad wanted to go out to the quail farm to see if he could buy back a quail and hopefully get it to lay quail eggs for him. Of course, we couldn't find the farm because we were somewhere out in the remotest of places in Singapore - Lim Chu Kang. But it was still so fun because we ended up doing a bit of sightseeing in the car and plucking wild fruits.
Up at Lim Chu Kang Lane 4, we found Sarunam (i hope i've remembered the name correctly) Cherries! Goodness, they're juicy and sweet when they're ripe and red. The yellow and orange cherries are in their various stages of ripening and they're so terribly pretty they remind me of a liliputian pumpkin or maybe Thumbelina's pumpkin carriage (that is if someday she decides to roleplay Cinderella). On one of the trees, we even saw this lime green viper snake. And it was lazed on the branch with the reddest fruit. Ha, i couldn't help but think of 'TEMPTATION'. Get the sweetest of fruits and there you go, get a big poisonous bite from the serpent.
At Lane 2 or 3, we found egg fruits and monkey apple fruits and butter fruits. Gosh, it was so fun plucking them and sometimes not plucking them (cause they were too high up so we had to count on our throwing skills to hit em down). My dad told my sister and I about how these fruits were really tasty and unique tasting yada yada.
And then it hit me that, you don't need to have to grow fruits like apples and pears and berries to be considered bountiful. You don't define freshness from the chilled air of refridgerators or the waxed shine of imported apples. I live in a land of bounty, one that is bounteous in her own little special humble way and maybe that's just enough to keep me happy and satisfied. At least, today was something that would remain in my memory and would always keep me thinking that somewhere in me, there's a little wildness and old village girl that lives secretly.

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