*crow* we've got the northeast line! we've got the northeast line!

su-lin called me an airhead this morning for being excited about it, but we can't expect commoners *sniff* without a high-tech automated heavy rail line to understand. *much more humbly* see lah, none of you live on the northeast corridor. you've never taken a bus on upper serangoon road from punggol to town. and then suddenly, after years of this, to have the newest and most high-tech line on the island. 17 minutes to get from hougang to dhoby ghaut!!! that would have taken me 45mins by bus!

dhoby ghaut has been transformed. a deep well, light falling through to the bottom. levels on levels of crisscrossing escalators, gleaming new large faregates on different entry levels, and two long travellators to carry you to the north-south line. (along the travellators, there is a gallery of the "art in transit" works at each station. chinatown has floor calligraphy by tan swie hian! *jealous* ) the ez-link tap zones are angled rather than on top of the gates. on the trains there are flat screens embedded where the advertisements on the old trains are, displaying ads and giving station information, date and time, safety instructions. the orange and blue seats are wider than those on the mrt. above ground, the new atrium next to plaza singapura too buzzing with restaurants and shops - and today when i returned to the station, telepoint was pushing sony ericssons at their roadshow. and then there is sengkang - which emerges under some v nice condos, as well as compasspoint, which i yelped about last week, and it connects both to an underground bus terminal and the lrt. eeeeek.

just three days ago, i got on at city hall and was heading towards dhoby ghaut, and the reality of a line soon - so soon - brought sudden glee and i could hear it all so clearly in my head: "next stop, dhoby ghaut interchange. passengers going towards punggol and sengkang - please cross the platform and transfer to the northeast line!" (as a matter of fact, there isn't an announcement of the sort. they merely say: next stop, dhoby ghaut station.) but just three days ago it was looming and now i've been on it twice! incidentally i noticed that on the train recordings, hougang is pronounced hawgang. you can see angmokio will always be angmokio. hong mao qiao will never catch on, and that's a fact. whereas while our parents' generataion might still say ngee soon, our generation has grown up saying yishun. hougang is one of those in-betweeners. hougangers say aw-gang, in accordance to the teochew pronunciation, but it's never been spelt any other way than the pinyin hougang. non-hougangers know very well the vowel is pronounced "aw"; they've heard us say it a thousand times, but they can just as clearly see there is a h in the spelling, and saying awgang is just a bit too dialect-y, but hou4gang3 is too cina. so they all settle for hawgang. i digress.

oh and they're all such beautiful stations, deep cavernous beautiful stations. have people seen the changi airport station? that's what all the northeast line stations look like. i insist that everyone come to my house for a popiah party as soon as enough of you get back, and you can all take the train, yes?