A quiet Saturday in Tiong Bahru, on purpose

I used to treat weekends like a second job — a list of places to tick off, the “best” brunch booked weeks ahead, a quiet panic if we “wasted” a morning. Somewhere in there the rest stopped being restful. So this season I’ve been practising the opposite: one slow morning a week with no plan more ambitious than coffee.

Tiong Bahru is good for this. The old walk-up blocks, the market that has been there longer than I’ve been alive, a bakery queue you join only if it’s short. We read on a bench, bought bread, watched the cats that own the estate. By eleven we’d done almost nothing and it felt like a great deal.

I’m not romanticising idleness — there’s laundry waiting and a week ahead. But a city this fast needs deliberate slowness or it quietly takes everything. A morning with no agenda isn’t lost time. It is, I’ve decided, what keeps the rest of my week survivable — and lately it’s the part I look forward to most.