One Million Trees

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I haven't been blogging for over a year, although I have returned occasionally to read my entries from the past. Again, Life has thrown more curveballs for me to contend with, and these have contributed to the neglect of this blog. Nevertheless, here I am in February 2026, at the eve of the Lunar New Year, writing again.

I have entitled this blog entry 'One Million Trees', as this will talk of effort expended towards an aspiration, and perhaps of optimism and hope. In the past year, I have both experienced joyful insights and enthusiasm of what I could do upon leaving my present job, and wallowed in despair when some of these plans were cut short, or appeared unworkable.

The One Million Trees (OMT) programme is a citizen-initiated voluntary effort to plant trees as part of Singapore's greening, initiated among others by my former KE7 roommate, N Sivasothi, also known as Otterman. When I met Siva at the Festival of Biodiversity in 2025, I told him of my plans to participate in more of such activities in my Next Chapter.

In Feb this year, I was glad to finally begin the fulfilment of that pledge, by signing up for my first OMT activity at Sungai Buloh Wetland Park. While I was in the lab doing some work on that Saturday morning (Feb 6), I was unsure if the activity would still be held as planned, noting the ominous clouds gathering above. Perhaps more trivially, I was also worried that I was not attired in the right footwear, having donned my relatively new NLB running shoes when I left home for work in the morning! 

Nevertheless, I was there at the meeting place near Kranji Carpark by 3.30 pm, where a bus had been chartered to bring us to the tree planting site.



View from the bus on the way to the tree planting site in Lim Chu Kang



Our first five saplings in the ground!



Our second batch of plants (before the sudden downpour)



Posing with our new plants at the Sungai Buloh Wetland Reserve

When I first decided to volunteer for tree planting, I had a perhaps more selfish motive as well. I knew that I would need to continue to socialize in my next chapter, as human connections would keep me healthy in mind. Nevertheless, I did not know what to expect from my first tree planting, as Siva was the only person that I knew, from either the Toddycats or BFF.

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