Sunday, May 31, 2009

one tree hill at bukit panjang



what you see in the above picture is some new development taking place at bukit panjang new town. this area bounded by senja way and senja road will be called senja green. the housing and development board (hdb) is building 474 new flats in this area. in addition, some 300 rental flats will be built in the vicinity, nearer to woodlands road.

the new flats will be close to the 10th mile junction shopping complex, senja light rail transit (lrt) station and two schools - westview primary and westview secondary.

earthwork has started. they have almost completed hoarding up the work-site and the vegetation has been cleared almost totally, save for the tree you see in the picture. this used to be a semi-forested (secondary forest) area.

quiz question: why did they leave this tree alone?

is it a heritage tree?

is it a tree that was planted by the town mayor?

is there a plan to build a road circus around the tree?

can you think of any plausible explanation? (what is the reason?)

maybe the spi (s'pore paranormal investigators) might be interested to find out if there is a spirit residing in this tree. that's why the workers dare not 'touch' it?

maybe there is something else on this tree that is stopping them for cutting it down at this stage.

maybe they want to have a 'one tree hill' in bukit panjang.

i am going to be a copycat (not plagiarist) - to copy mr philip chew and mr victor koo, i will provide the answer in one week's time (by which time i will be in melbourne, victoria, australia).

10 comments:

Victor said...

I guess that they are not chopping down the tree because the construction workers need its shade to rest under and eat their packet food during lunchtime.

yg said...

victor, the contractors don't care where the foreign worker have their meals. how much shade can one tree provide?

Lam Chun See said...

Aiyah this one easy lah. This type of tree is called Senja tree. The area is called Senja-this, Senja-that becos this area used to have lots of Senja trees. So now they chin-chye preserve one lor.

ANDY: Pop Music Not Pills. © said...

There's a famous One Tree Hill in Auckland, New Zealand. There's also a TV series, a song and apparently there are a lot of cities with at least one road or street with the same name.
We have one off Grange Road?
Cheers.

yg said...

most of the roads in bukit panjang have malay names. senja means twilight; it is not the name of a tree. there is also a fajar road and fajar means dawn.
however, i must say that chun see is on the right track - the tree is still standing because it belongs to a certain species of tree.

yg said...

andy is right about our very own one tree hill which links paterson road to grange road. yes, when my family first visited new zealand in the 80s, we went hunting for the one tree hill.

peter said...

There is also in Singapore a "One Tree Hill Road" in the Patterson Road/Grange Road area.

Anonymous said...

thought it has to do with knowing how much has been dug up -something to do with the original height of the land... learning something!

Anonymous said...

Hi guys fyi if you take a closer look it's actually a durian tree (I'm currently stayin in senja grand)..saw some durian hanging guess the reason is that they want to wait for the durian to ripen first before chopping it down....or maybe they juz wanna leave it

yg said...

hi anonymous, i have already posted the answer on this page but the branch (in the answer picture) came from another tree.