Five-Foot Way

Pen Lines is a personal blog — my small shelf of morning notes from a Mei Ling Street flat before the estate fully wakes. I write about walks under the arcade, the wet market before eight, the canal path towards Alexandra, the bus that goes the long way round, and once about a night near Chin Swee Road that I still carry carefully too. Nothing here is for sale. There is no studio, no course, no shop counter behind the name.

I am Yasmin. I have lived in Queenstown long enough to know which stall remembers my kopi order and which lift button sticks in humid weeks. I work an ordinary weekday and come home to a kitchen window that catches the first light. These pages are where spare observations go — not polished essays, just honest paragraphs about a specific city from a specific flat, written for me first.

The layout here is deliberately quiet. Five-Foot Way opens like a covered walk — thread rules, marginalia, a list of notes you can read in any order. The Chin Swee note sits at the root address because that is where I want it to live, not because it wears a badge. Every card below uses the same type, the same spacing, the same lead photograph as its article page. I dislike hero treatment for one piece when the rest are written with the same care.

If you are new, start anywhere. Read about kopi under the arcade, or the market before eight, or the morning habit at the kitchen window. When you want the full shelf, open the pigeonhole — notes are grouped by length, not by season. Own Words tells you what I leave out. Come By has my address and phone if you need to reach me. Nothing on this site asks you to subscribe, buy, or leave a comment.

This site is built on warm grey paper with oxblood thread rules because it matches the flat on overcast mornings — brown-black ink, quiet gutters, photographs sitting inside hairline frames rather than shouting over the text. Queenstown is not a backdrop here. Mei Ling, Stirling, the canal — they appear as rooms I walk through daily.

The five-foot way under the block is where rain never reaches the tables; the pigeonhole is where longer notes wait; the marginalia column is where side thoughts live without interrupting the main sentence. I hope it reads like a neighbour leaving the door ajar, not like a brand asking for your attention.

The cards below are the six notes from the pigeonhole, presented without badges or hero treatment. Click any title when you are ready. Queenstown mornings have a particular quality — lifts waking, kopi steam under the arcade, the first bus rounding Stirling with its headlights still on. These pages try to catch that quality without turning it into a brochure. Thank you for reading slowly — that is the only currency this blog asks for, and it is always enough.

→ open the pigeonhole