Cross Island Line on Pale Blue Dot

Recall the number of minutes of travelling time we were told can be cut on the upcoming Cross Island (MRT) Line through our precious forest that we are willing to risk and then read Carl Sagan's reflection below. Would you not be laughing and crying at the same time?

Seen from about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles), Earth appears as a tiny dot within deep space: the blueish-white speck almost halfway up the brown band on the right.

Pale Blue Dot
- by Carl Sagan 1994

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

The house is burning down, Nero, and you are fiddling away?! Hahahaha. 

Read also: Celebrating Our Rain Forest in SG50.

Eternity of a Dream

One cool December morn 

I woke feeling the wind blowing 

the frosty sea in my heart 

and painterly chased 

the fleeting clouds 

over the lee of my dreams.

The real journey does happen in your mind and I have a little notebook for a conspirator to listen to all my secret longings. Can you feel my heart beating upon the canvas pouch? I do. I really do.

Relevance of the Coastal Hill Forest to the Marine Environment of Chek Jawa

Introduction
Rising steeply from the sandy beach to a height of 21m, the coastal hill at Chek Jawa may seemed remotely connected to the shallow sea beneath, where lush meadows of seaweed and sea grasses thrived in the shallow, well-lit and nutrient-rich waters. However, the link is very much alive though not easily perceivable unless one witnesses how rainwater runs down the hill during a monsoon downpour. 

Export of nutrients to the marine environment

Dissolved nutrients, along with guano, leaf detritus and rock minerals, trickle down with the rainwater to the beach below, where it is released slowly through the sand to the sea, and readily absorbed by the marine flora or consumed by detritus feeding fauna. 

Leached nutrients (Trono, 1997) and leaf detritus (Odum and Heald, 1975) are two of the most important elements in the food web that associating landforms (including mangrove) contribute to the vitality of the inter-tidal zone. The abundance of marine flora and fauna in Chek Jawa bears testimony to the importance of the coastal hill as a keystone community in the marine environment. 

Physical buffer and natural breakwaters 

Physically, the steep coastal hill is imposing. It is a natural fortress make up of large igneous boulders that goes right down to the beach, and act effectively as a buffer against casual intrusion to the sandy beaches from inland. The obscurity as well as the relatively undisturbed state of Chek Jawa owes much to this rugged feature that are almost impregnable when aided by the long hours of high tides. 

The coastline integrity of Chek Jawa owes much to the series of protective finger-like boulders jutting out to sea at the base of the hill. Like natural breakwaters, they offer protection against accretion of the sandy beach. Without doubt, the coastal morphology of Chek Jawa, predominantly truncated by these mighty boulders, had evolved with the tidal flow to create the unique marine features (including the lagoon) that we find today. 

Unique flora and beach-dependent terrestrial fauna 

Apart from being an ecological and protective partner to the marine environment, the rocky coastal hill forest is a special habitat by itself. It harbors a very unique primary flora that is distinctly different from the terrestrial vegetation found further inland. These are tenacious survivors in the plant kingdom, as equally adaptable as plants found in the deserts. Coastal trees such as the Seashore Nutmeg, Sea Mangosteen and the Sea Olive are constantly exposed to strong dry winds, salt sprays, high solar radiation and temperature, and scrounging a living from nutrients obtain from its own leaf detritus and animal guano. 

These are amongst the last remaining stand of littoral plants that have survived the centuries undisturbed, on extremely shallow soil found atop rock ledges and crevices, and sandy substrates. One such rare tree, Mischocarpus sundaicus, once common in Geylang, Changi and Ubin, cannot be found elsewhere in mainland Singapore now. 

A flock of over 50 native Red Junglefowls inhabits and breeds in this quiet coastal forest. At low tide, they flock to the beach to eat worms, mollusks and other organisms. They are dependent on the beach for food. The coastal forest, in turn, depends on them and other rooting birds for their nutrient-rich guano. The activities and life history of these animals are thus not compartmentalized or confined in their own habitat. Food webs are very complex and cross invisible ecological lines that separate adjacent ecosystems. 

In conclusion, Chek Jawa's six special habitats, namely coastal hill forest, sandy beaches, mangrove, lagoon (sand/mud flats), coral rubble and the rocky shore, represent an integrated system or community of linked ecosystems.  Physical and biological alterations will pose and adverse and irreversible consequence to the ecological balance in what is recognised as the marine environment of Chek Jawa. 

Footnote: 

The above paper was written for the group submission put together on the invitation by the Minister of National Development, Mr. Mah Bow Tan, in 2002. Lead authors were Professor Teh Tiong Sa, N. Sivasothi and my good self, with contributions from Ria Tan, Francis Lim and Yap Hui Boon. 

When Rain Meet Wind

There is a kind of abandonment
how you come meet the earth
and sparkle for just that little whilst
before glistening a teardrop farewell
down a quivering grass blade.

Still you remain till like a memory
stirred by a gentle wind
you rose invisible and
in shades of white
set the clouds in the brilliant sky.

Graced with fleeting lightness
you skip hither and tither
a young heart just born of gladness
only too clear that he the wind
is near.

He is there seen but unseen;
existed because you existed.
He guides the way you toss and heave
hand in hand paints white on blue
of imaginations wild and free.

When rain and wind meet
there’s sweetness in the air;
they are happy just being.
Though the grass may quiver once more
the days for skyward rendezvous are everlasting.

- Joseph Lai