Inkline

I am Raj. I live in Bishan and write these notes in the evenings when the block has gone quiet and the corridor lamp outside my door has switched on.

I work in an office that has nothing to do with writing, which means the sentences on this site arrive in the margins of a day rather than at its centre. That is not a complaint — it may be why the notes stay small. I am not trying to build an audience, a brand, or a second career. I am keeping a shelf of ordinary evenings because they dissolve faster than I expect.

What I write about: ordinary routes through Bishan — the flyover walk, the corner kopi, the canal at twilight, the platform when it empties. What I do not write about: products, programmes, services, advice columns, listicles, sponsored posts, or anything that would require me to pretend I know more than I do. Once I wrote about a night near Chin Swee Road because it stayed with me and honesty demanded a page.

I have lived in this block for seven years. Before that, Toa Payoh. The routes I walk are not scenic in any tourist sense — they are the routes of a person who needs to get from the station to the lift without thinking too hard, until one evening he decides to think anyway. That decision is usually enough for a page.

I read more than I write. I am slow to reply to email during quiet hours, which are evenings after work, SGT. If you write to correct a detail, I am grateful. If you write to ask me to write about something for you, I will probably decline politely.