My daily routine includes a bus ride that takes me, for fifteen or twenty minutes, on a long road that arcs northwards through shrublands and industrial areas.

Most of the time this part of the trip will be the smoothest ride. The road was once the spine of the whole city's north-south transport, and around it for long stretches the heavy traffic was followed by construction and inventions - rows of shophouses and kiosks to serve both vehicles and their people, coalescing into several long shopping malls.

With the importing and creating of highways, this road along which there were junctions and stops was no longer nationally significant. This of course meant it lost its local significance as well, so that within a decade the lands were mostly returned to nature, and the city moved on farther north still to open its new towns. Now there are few cars, and almost no jams, even though it is a long drive with just three lanes a side.

Whenever there have been night storms I fight sleep to gaze out the window along this stretch of the journey. The winds, coming from the exposed northeast, invariably cause damage to the area around the road - trees, lights, bus stops.

Once at 10 or so in the night, after a particularly long day at school, the homeward bus breaks down and deposits us a hundred metres away from what must have been a bus stop. The great storm last night, whose remnant clouds still light the sky purple now, had wrecked the makeshift bus shelter, the great roof slanted backwards into a drain.

We did not dare approach the remains, but stood nearby, waiting for the next bus in a pool of light. All the bus has to know is that we are here, beside a bus bay demarcated with yellow paint, and stop for us, which one does eventually.