About

I am Germaine Quek (Quek Jia Min). I grew up in Toa Payoh, live there still, with my parents, in a block older than I am, and work as a planner at a consultancy.

This site is where I put the walks. The rule I set myself is simple: walk it, time it, write it within the week, and draw the route from memory before checking it against a map. The sketch maps are schematic. They are meant to show what the walk felt like from the inside, not to get you there.

Why this, and not photographs

Because a photograph of a void deck tells you almost nothing about a void deck. What matters is the sequence — that the wake is two blocks from the wedding, that the shade runs out at exactly the point the road widens — and a sequence is a line, not a picture.

Language

I write each walk in English and in Chinese. The Chinese version is not a translation of the English one; some parts are rewritten, and occasionally there is a paragraph that only exists on one side. That is honest to how I think in each language.

How the site is made

Static HTML, generated from a script on my own machine and copied to a small server. No JavaScript, no trackers, no fonts loaded from anywhere, no comments. The maps are inline SVG and change colour with your system's light or dark setting.

Mail: hello@germainequek.com.