Picture an ordinary weekday evening. The LRT pulls into Riviera, you are through your own gate a couple of minutes later, and the light over Sungei Serangoon is going gold. Runners are coming off the park connector, someone is wheeling a bicycle back from the promenade, and the day's noise is already somewhere behind you. It is the kind of arrival that makes you a little grateful for where you live.
The neighbourhood around you has been settled for years. Punggol Plaza is a short walk away for the market, the groceries, the food court and the clinic, and Oasis Terraces, beside the Punggol Waterway, is nearby for a change of scene. When hunger strikes late, GM Food Centre on Punggol Field is nearby as well, and most of its stalls stay open through the night. Three primary schools are a short walk from the site, so the school mornings stay calm and unhurried.
Getting around begins at Riviera. The LRT links you to the North East Line at Punggol, the KPE and TPE are close at hand for the days you drive, and Changi Airport is about 12 minutes away by car. For the teenagers, the park connector is a way to cycle to friends in Sengkang and Hougang along the river. With a second rail line on its way to Riviera, the station at your gate will only open up more of the island over the years.
The home itself is the part still to come. Its layouts, facilities and finishes are all still ahead, and they will take shape on a site that already has the river on one side and the station on the other. Until then, there are still good evenings to be had by the water, on the very spot where the new homes will one day stand.
So thank you for the memories, Punggol East, for the evenings by the water, the rides out to the red bridge and the sunsets over Sungei Serangoon. Thank you, too, to a town that turned a quiet riverbank into somewhere so many people were happy to spend their weekends in barely a generation. The next memories get made a little closer to home, a few minutes from the river that gave us all of them.