Timber tumble

The weekend after I returned from Samui, my family and I were severely distressed to find some of the much beloved pine trees around our flat were chopped down. All that were left were their sad stumps. My brother and I marched up to question the contracted workers who were uprooting the trees but they said they were just ordered by the Town Council to do it. Che cazzo. Boiling mad, we decided to pen separate emails to the committee members - and I also cc-ed the major newspapers and TV news editors. Here's what I wrote which was carried in Today's forum page:

"Dear sir/ mdm,

I'm writing in to express my utmost shock and utter dismal at the felling of several mature handsome pine trees along Elias Road. We have been staying here for about 15 years and my family and neighbours take a lot of pride in these majestic willowy trees which add a lot of character to the quaint neighbourhood.

Even visiting friends, overseas guests and family members often comment on how beautiful they are. Very often we look out of the window and spot various breeds of exotic migratory birds resting and feeding on their pine fruits. It was such a pleasure to see them grow from 5-storey young trees to their current 14-storey height. They are one of the main reasons why we have chosen to stay here for many years. So you can imagine our horror this morning when we discovered that a team of workers have started chopping down a few trees and uprooted 2 of these gentle giants, leaving a huge gap in our landscape.

We do not see the reason why they should all be cut down as they are healthy and not causing any problems. When we approached the workers to find out why, the contractor asked us to refer to the Town Council (which is closed on weekend). They also informed us that they are going to chop down all these pine trees. We heard one of the possible reasons is a recent mosquito breeding problem but we don't see the relevance between the trees and mosquitoes breeding. In fact they are an important part of the eco-system and providing comforting shade and visual beauty for the residents here.

My family and neighbours are extremely upset that this has happened and hope to get a proper explanation for this insensitive action because there is no prior notice given to residents. Given we're a green Garden City, we should have more respect and consideration for these mature trees as well as our home setting. To quote MM's vision 'a City pleasant green and cool', we are seeking to advocate these trees to be heritage trees as part of the Heritage Trees Scheme in our Garden City. This is in line with promoting conservation of these mature trees to the community as they take decades to mature gracefully and beautify our landscape.

We hope through this urgent letter, we can prevent more of these irreplaceable trees from being chopped down because it takes decades for them to flourish but just minutes to cut them down. If there is a need, we will be happy to get a signed petition from the residents around the blocks at Elias Road.

Thank you and best regards. Your sincerely..."

I guess we did have a valid cause because the major papers picked up on this story. Lianhe Zaobao (Chinese), Shin Min (Chinese), The New Paper, Ch5 and Ch8 News (I was interviewed and my mandarin sucked!) as well as STOMP (ST blog) ran it. Yay! Viva gli aberi! Some people said 'why you so free ah? They're just trees.' Well, I think it's so easy to turn a blind eye and sweep things under the carpet but it's so hard to fight for what you believe in. Si, we couldn't save the ones which were fallen but at least we tried our best and managed to put up a good fight. Hoepfully they will think it through more carefully in future.