farm visits are all the rage these days, i take it? so i did feel a little sheepish when last friday during the school hols my cousin, aunt, the two children and myself drove to lim chu kang to buy vegetables from this organic health farm. we saw chye sim patches, and large heads of lettuces, (you half expect to see peter rabbit or mr bunnsy somewhere among them) and long beans dangling from a frame, and kangkong growing in drains. someone was harvesting doumiao a very tiny handful at a time with a pair of scissors. (reaper man! i thought to myself.) sarah, every inch the city slicker, was visibly discouraged by the mud and cowpats, but ariel was a real kampung boy, racing along the fields delightedly, exclaiming at everything (cousin: aiyoh, so suaku!) and wanting to stay longer and explore more. at one point: "i spotted an organic butterfly!"

afterwards to sungei buloh and on, in ariel's term, "a mission" along the mangrove boardwalk. dozens of spot-tail needle fish darted about near the surface of the waters. crabs of several varieties covered nearly every tree, and ariel even spotted one that had crawled onto the underside of the boardwalk and was peering angrily at us. on a thick, lowlying bough a mudskipper and mud crab were crouched not two inches from each other, tableau-still, as if facing off in a brawl. (it was the crab who backed down, eventually.) a white ribbed shell slithered slowly past, leaving a light shimmery trail in its wake - the common nerita. a few moths fluttered amongst the mangrove. we saw no wading birds, nor estuary crocodiles (to ariel's intense disappointment: "how come no crocodiles?") but something extremely long and scaly whipped across the boardwalk. our only flash of intuitive peril. poor ariel, who would have loved to be confronted with danger at every turn (we were, after all, on a mission.) at the end of the circuit, he cried out: "we have finished our mission!" and immediately wanted to go on a different loop. (mother: no no. the army only lets soldiers go on one mission a day.)