The school next to the Police Academy

Sandwiched on a small plot of land off the Whitley Road stretch of the Pan Island Expressway (PIE), between the old Police Academy and the now infamous Whitley Detention Centre, is a little known road, Onraet Raod. The road as well as its name, has an origin that has much to do with the Police Academy itself, as well as the detention centre, situated on a hill overlooking the road. Onraet Road was built to serve the Police flats that still sit somewhat obscurely in the background, and was named after a René Onraet, an Inspector General of the Straits Settlements Police from 1935 to 1939, who had made his mark in the fight against communism and gambling in the early part of the twentieth century. He was also credited with forming the Criminal Intelligence Department, which later became the Special Branch of the Police force, the predecessor of the dreaded Internal Security Department, which runs the Whitley Detention Centre, which was in the spotlight not too long ago for the audacious escape from it made by terrorist detainee Mas Selamat Kastari.

Looking at Onraet Road from the PIE, to the Police flats are. The empty area in the foreground was once occupied by Whitley Primary School.

The Police quarters housed many Policemen who had originated from Malacca.

Most of us would have probably forgotten the Whitley Road before the PIE came into being, swallowing a substantial portion of the road as it was then, which along with the Police Academy, was perhaps known better for the Chinese cemetery that dominated most of the area and some large bungalows that stood around it. Onraet Road itself had a small community of mainly tenants of the Police quarters, built to house the rank and file of the Police trainees undergoing training at the Police Training Centre in 1954 (along with the road named after Onraet), which became the Police Academy, which had a community centre and even a primary school, Whitley Primary School, housed in a three storey building built in the fashion of the schools of the early 1960s, wedged in a narrow strip of land off Onraet Road, between the Whitley Road, the Police Academy and the Police flats. It is a school that I remember well, as my father taught at the school in the early 1970s, right up to the time it closed in 1975. The premises were annexed to the Police Academy subsequently and the building was used by the Police for a while before being torn down. It is interesting to note that based on my father’s recollections, the students mainly came from the nearby Police quarters, and many of their fathers who were Policemen, had originated from Malacca. A common answer when asked where they were going off to for the holidays was “Malacca”!

Part of the PIE runs over what was a Whitley Road, known for the Chinese cemetery, the Police Academy and the Police flats on Onraet Road.

We see a very different Whitley Road today from the one in the 1970s.

The area has changed substantially with the PIE cutting through it, the distinctive Police flats are still there, as is the old Police Academy and its large parade square, on which I remember seeing parades and rehearsals being carried out for the Police Tattoo which I could watch from a distance from the grounds of the school and when passing by on Whitley Road. Much of the graves that could be seen around have also gone – with perhaps only the ones around the Detention Centre and its surroundings left intact. I am not sure what will become of the old Police Academy, also known for its large sports field where we could watch football matches being played during the weekends. I suspect it would soon be redeveloped, and another charming part of Singapore would go the way of the many others which only remain in the memories of some of us.

The old Police Academy and its large Parade Square could be seen from the school and the former Whitley Road.

Whitley Road had several large bungalows, some of which are still around.

It does take Diff’rent Strokes to move the world … thanks for the laughs Gary!

Most of those who grew up at the time I did, would remember cute little character Arnold Jackson in the Sitcom Diff’rent Strokes. Arnold was played by Gary Coleman and provided lots of laughter with his antics and his very popular catchphrase “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” … Sadly, Gary Coleman passed away from a brain hemorrhage following a fall at his home in Utah on Friday. He was 42. Rest in peace Gary, and thanks for the laughs you gave us!

RIP Gary Coleman
8 Feb 1968 to 28 May 2010

What'choo talking about, Willis?

Diff’rent Strokes

(Lyrics from the theme song)

Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
A man is born, he’s a man of means.
Then along come two, they got nothing but their jeans.

But they got, Diff’rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

Everybody’s got a special kind of story
Everybody finds a way to shine,
It don’t matter that you got not alot
So what,
They’ll have theirs, and you’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine.
And together we’ll be fine….

Because it takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.
Yes it does.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

Blood and politics at the Cape of Stakes

In writing a recent post relating to the news of the shift of the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, as well as in my recent wanderings around the Tanjong Pagar area, I was reminded me of two events in which the Tanjong Pagar area came can be said to have come under attack. The first, is a fourteenth, or perhaps fifteenth century tale from the Malay Annals, the Sejarah Melayu, a myth which has more recently been retold to our children as the story of how Redhill (Bukit Merah) got its name. The tale was perhaps better known previously as Singapura Dilanggar Todak, which was popularised by the Malay movie of the same name, made during the heydays of Malay cinema in the early 1960s, which was filmed on location at a beautiful coastal village in the north that Singapore has forgotten, one that I have my own fond memories of, Kampung Tanjung Irau. An record of this is provided by Salizah Mahmud in her tribute to her kampung.

Tanjong Pagar or the 'Cape of Stakes" is where one of the busiest posts in the world, the Port of Singapore, developed from., and laid the foundation for the many financial institutions in nearby Shenton Way.

The other attack was one that we are sure did happen, although advocates of opposition representation within the political system, were pinching themselves in disbelieve at what they had then witnessed. It was also one that shook the ruling party, and which took them a while to come to terms with. It was an event that was significant for its impact on the political landscape in Singapore, loosening the tight grip that the Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) had on Singapore’s Parliament. That was then 1981, when for some 15 years, the PAP had absolute control of Parliament, holding every seat. With the appointment of the late Mr. C. V. Devan Nair, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Anson (Anson Constituency had occupied the southern part of Tanjong Pagar), to the Presidency of the Republic of Singapore, a by-election was called, in which, much to the astonishment of the PAP whose campaign was led by Mr. Goh Chok Tong, the opposition candidate, the late Mr. Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam from the Workers’ Party (WP), overturned a huge majority in favour of that the PAP had garnered during the 1980 General Elections, to win with 51.9% of the votes. Mr. Jeyaretnam or Jeya as he was referred to, retained his seat in the next General Elections in 1984, before being disqualified as an MP, being jailed and fined for making a false declaration in accounts of the WP. What Jeya did though, was significant enough, and it removed the fear that many in Singapore who harboured disaffection with the political system, had for voting for the opposition. This led the way for other opposition candidates to fare better in the elections that followed, with some managing to increase opposition representation, albeit small, in Parliament, and the event can be said to be the catalyst for the more open style of government that we see today.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam at his moment of triumph in Anson in October1981.

Back to the myth of the Singapura Dilanggar Todak, the story is one that involves an attack on Singapore’s inhabitants by todak, which are described, in the recent interpretations of the tale, as swordfish, jumping out of the water. A barricade of men, placed by the ruler, Paduka Sri Maharaja, did little to stem the tide, and resulted only in further loss of lives. Desperate to save the local population, Paduka Sri Maharaja and his advisers took the advice of a young boy who suggested erecting a barricade of banana stems. When the swordfish did attack again, they were caught in the stems allowing the ruler’s men to kill the fish. Feeling threatened by the boys genius, the advisers persuaded the ruler to kill the boy, spilling his blood, as our modern interpretations of the tale would have it, on a hill which we now call Bukit Merah or Redhill.

The building blocks of the stakes of today, a skyscraper, being laid in Tanjong Pagar.

The name Tanjong Pagar, translated into the Cape of Stakes, is thought by some circles to have originated from this myth, the stockade of banana stems being the “stakes” in the name. Some would have it though that it was the kelongs in the area was known to have that gave Tanjong pagar its name, in reference to the fishing stakes of the kelongs, with Munshi Abdullah recording that the first kelong in Singapore was set up around the corner at Tanjong Malang (which I believe is the area where Mount Palmer is). Whatever it was, the name is quite appropriate. Tanjong Pagar is indeed a cape of stakes today … it is now dominated by the stakes of modern Singapore – the skyscrapers that we see in the area today.

Modern "stakes" now dominate the Tanjong Pagar area.

Have we knocked the Pedestrian Crossing Rules down?

In deciding where to cross the road these days, we have become so used to seeing a sign placed some 50 metres away from a pedestrian crossing that tells us where we should really be crossing that most us us choose to ignore it, unless of course, there are physical barriers or where traffic conditions make it a necessity to use a pedestrian crossing. It is fairly common to see pedestrians dashing across the road under underutilised overhead bridges, roads where underpasses are provided like along the stretch just in front of Lucky Plaza, and even sometimes even where traffic conditions make it highly dangerous to do so. For many of us motorists, it has become somewhat of a nuisance and even a danger to us, as we don’t just run the risk of knocking some foolhardy pedestrian down, but of injuring ourselves should we, in braking suddenly, be rammed from the back by an impatient driver that is all too common in Singapore. There have been some enforcement along Orchard Road – which may have reduced the problem without eliminating it altogether and whether in the longer term, the enforcement is effective, is a good question.

Why you should use a pedestrian crossing?

This brings me some thirty-five years or so back in time to the 1970s when there was a huge effort to eliminate the problem, starting with a pilot scheme in 1974 as part of a “Keep Singapore Accident-Free” campaign to educate the public on the dangers of jaywalking as a prelude to the introduction of an anti-jaywalking law. The first we saw of the signs, which were circular, featured a red band across the silhouette of a man with one foot on the road (as they do now), was when I had turned ten, at a historic pedestrian crossing, Singapore’s first overhead bridge at Collyer Quay near Clifford Pier (which was installed in 1964). Four signs were erected, 50 metres away on either side of the bridge, and on both sides of the road. With this, the road immediately below the bridge was made a no-crossing zone.

Singapore's first overhead bridge was installed across Collyer Quay in 1964 (source: www.singas.co.uk).

It was however only on 1 July 1977, that the Pedestrian Crossing Rules that were being mulled over in the 1970s, came into effect, and during a two month campaign that followed to introduce the new law making it an offence to jaywalk, a large number of pedestrians were booked by traffic police officers manning many of the pedestrian crossings in the city centre, and issued with a warning. It was the year when I started going to school at Bras Basah Road, and I remember seeing the blue uniformed officers standing with a clipboard at the four crossing points at the junction of Bras Basah Road and Waterloo Street, where I myself had a close shave crossing the road, on almost a daily basis. During the initial ten day period, close to 32,000 warnings were issued. After the two-month honeymoon period, full enforcement was carried out from 1 September 1977 and jaywalkers were liable to be fined up to $50, and it was common to read about hundreds of people being booked and fined each day, and we frequently saw people who were booked arguing with the traffic officers. This went on for a few months before the enforcement was reduced and while it may have been effective in the short term, and perhaps can be seen to have helped in reducing the problem greatly, it didn’t eliminate the problem of jaywalking completely. Over the years, we have seen less enforcement being carried out, to the extent that many of us have forgotten that it is actually an offence to jaywalk.

To market, to market

There are these things that you may not expect young boys to enjoy like going to the dentist, or perhaps having a haircut, or accompanying Mum to the market. I for one detested the visit to the dentist and the barber. For some strange reason though, I did, for a while at least, enjoy following my mother on her regular visits to the Lorong 4 market, which was located across the road from where we lived in Toa Payoh.

Street markets such as this one seen in Penang were a common sight in Singapore once upon a time.

Colourful street marketshad all but disappeared by the time I started accompanying my mother to the market.

Cha-kiak display at the museum.

By the time I got to do that, street markets had started to vanish from Singapore, and living in a spanking new HDB estate, we had the relative luxury of going to a covered market where market vendors were allocated a cubicle like space, complete with electricity and running water, from which they could sell their goods. Still though, going to the market could really be a rather unpleasant and sometimes traumatic experience for a four year old boy, having to tread over the wet slippery and rather messy looking floor tiles, at the risk of not just slipping and falling, but also of having ones toes being stomped on by a cha-kiak clad foot, as well as being forced to inhale the seemingly foul mix of smells that came from the live chickens and ducks, and displays of fish and fresh pork, that permeated the air. (Cha-kiaks are red painted wooden clogs that were popular as a choice of footwear for the common folk in the 1960s).

The now upgraded market at Lorong 4, Toa Payoh was a source of adventure for me some forty years ago.

Perhaps what first motivated me to follow my mother out when we had first moved to Toa Payoh, was the opportunity to put my gleaming new blue rubber wellingtons which I had acquired at a shop near the Lorong 7 market on the walk of discovery around the estate that we did upon moving in. That I insisted would have been the only way that I could keep the splatter of smelly water that would have come from trudging through the wet slippery floor. The market at Lorong 4, Toa Payoh, I was to discover, was a whole new world to explore, the sights and sounds of which are still very much etched in my memory. There would be fishmongers chopping, scaling and gutting, chickens being slaughtered by having their necks slit and drained of blood before being put in some cylindrical metal contraption that de-feathered the chickens, and fishballs being made by hand on the spot.

Live poultry in cages were once a common scene at the wet markets in Singapore.

The fishball vendors would sell a variety of foodstuff with displays of cubes of tofu soaking in water, and soft ones displayed on a platter, salted vegetables being soaked in an earthen pot of brine, and there would also be fishballs soaking in a basin of water which would be scooped up, water and all to be packed into a plastic bag. Fishballs were made in a trough on the floor outside the stalls, and I usually enjoy watching fish being scraped into the trough by a person sitting on a wooden stool, before being mixed with flour. Another thing that I was usually fascinated with was the spice vendor who could be seen mixing his colourful rempah (dry powder or wet paste of mixed spices) from which was always accompanied by the whiff of the wonderful aroma that came from the spices. What I never enjoyed being close to, was a quadrangle at centre of the market which was under a skylight which I suppose also served as an air well. The quadrangle was divided into four stall lots, with each occupied by chicken sellers and bounded by chicken cages filled with live chickens and ducks, which could be picked out, weighed and slaughtered. There was always the overpowering smell of chicken waste that filled the air (despite the ventilation offered by the air well) that I never liked taking in.

Chickens were slaughtered in the quadrangle of space at the centre of the market building below the skylight, now occupied by dining tables and chairs.

The skylight over the centre of the market building today.

The highlight of the trip to the market was always at the end of it, once my mother had finished her shopping. She would always sit me down for my favourite bowl of piping hot fishball kwayteow mee (noodles) for breakfast, which went for 50 cents a bowl then. That was a time when you could get a small portion of fried carrot cake for 20 cents, which was served on a leave. It would be 30 cents if you wanted egg fried with it or you could have a choice of saving on the price of the egg by bringing one of your own. Back then the market was laid out in such a way that the cooked food stalls were placed along the periphery facing the outside, such that tables and chairs could be arranged in the open spaces around the market building, so having breakfast there was always alfresco.

The periphery of the market building was were the stalls selling cooked food were, with tables and chairs laid out in the open spaces around the market.

One thing I noticed outside the market was the daily get together of elderly men who wore their shirts unbuttoned, exposing the white undershirts or singlets that they would wear underneath, as they sat sipping their coffee from the saucer. It was common back then to drink out of the saucer, as it allowed the hot beverage to cool more rapidly. On the warmer and muggier mornings, many of these elderly men would sit in their undershirts which would be rolled up exposing their bellies. Something else that was commonly seen was the numerous Nepali vendors who displayed their wares on a piece of cloth that was laid on the floor outside the market. You could see a variety of goods being laid out, including leather belts, belt buckles, trinkets, amulets, gemstones, cigarette lighters and a myriad of other small items.

The open spaces around the market used to be filled with tables and chairs and was where elderly men gathered sipping coffee from saucers, sometimes with their undershirts rolled up over their bellies.

The area where you might have once be greeted by diners having breakfast sitting and Nepali men laying sheets on which wares they were selling were displayed.

I did stop accompanying my mother eventually, perhaps when I was about five, not because I got bored with the market, but because she found me to be quite a handful as I would stop to look at whatever caught my attention. There was one occasion, when watching a fishball seller scraping fish, which his daughter who was about my age, somehow didn’t take kindly to. She gave me a hard push and I landed backside first, into a basin of brine and salted vegetables. So it was, that my adventures at the market ended, as abruptly as it had started, and all I could do then was to wait patiently in the relative safety of my home for the tiffin carrier of fishball kwayteow mee, with its lid overturned so as to hold the cut chilli that was usually served with it, that my mother would take back with her from the market.

The market aisle where I had my baptism of brine, where there used to be a row of fishball sellers on one side and vegetable vendors on the other.

Having to bid farewell to another old friend?

It was with sadness that I read the news about the impending closure of the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station in July next year, which was announced today. It has very much been a part of the Singapore that I grew up loving, one that I first became acquainted with on the makan trails that may parents led us on from the heights of Mount Faber. What the news release does not say is whether the station which has served for so long, providing many of us, including myself, with many memories of adventures on the railway to the Federation or Malaya as we may have referred to to it back then, will have to go, as both Malaysia, which owns the station and the railway land, and Singapore seek to jointly redevelop the parcels of land around the railway.

The entrance to Tanjong Pagar Railway Station with the four pillars of Malaya's economy, Agriculture, Commerce, Transport and Industry.

Transport, one of the four pillars.

The distinctive architectural style of the station hails from an era when European railway travel was at its height, as it is said to have been influenced by the architect behind Finland’s Helsinki Station. The station has stood as a landmark in the area since 1932, has survived much of the renewal that has swept through Tanjong Pagar, as up till now, the Malaysia government has resisted the many attempts by the Singapore government to persuade it to redevelop the railway land and the land on which the station stands. The station features four large statues on the four pillars at its entrance, each symbolising one of the then Malaya’s four economic pillars. The top of each of the pillars also bears one of the letters in the initials, FMSR, which stand for the Federated Malay States Railway, as it was known then.  The station has a very airy lobby which features batik styled mosaic mural panels which depict scenes around Malaya, which are reminiscent of the style of batik paintings that were once popular in Singapore and Malaysia.

The airy lobby features batik styled mosaic murals depicting scenes of Malayan life.

Moasic mural panels in the lobby.

Close up with a scene showing coconut plucking.

Close up of the mosaic panel depicting farmers planting padi in a padi field.

I have in my life passed through the lobby and the gates to the platform many times, and have many fond memories of the station as well as of the many railway journeys I had made to and from the station. I have also many fond memories of listening for the sound of the whistle and watching the comings and goings of trains from the vantage point of my aunt’s flat in Spottiswoode Park, each Lunar New Year’s eve where my extended family would gather for our reunion dinner. With the news, it would not be very long when the platforms that would come to life with the arrival and departure of the trains several times a day, would be left silent, as would the magnificent building that fronts the platforms. It may yet be a vain hope, but I do hope that the building is preserved in some form, not just for memories sake, but because it has for so long been so much a part of  the Tanjong Pagar area, and with the loss over the years of the many buildings we had come to associate with the area, it is one of the last remaining bits of heritage we have left in Tanjong Pagar.

The train platforms will soon fall silent.

A station clock on the exterior of the building.

A reminder of the romantic days of rail travel that the station served.

The timetable.

Hopefully the view of Singapore from what is technically a part of Malaysia will survive the relocation of the train station to Woodlands.

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The Star’s news release earlier today on the imminent shift of the station to Woodlands.

KTM Tg Pagar station will move to Woodlands in S’pore July 1, 2011

SINGAPORE: KTM Tanjung Pagar station will move to Woodlands in Singapore on July 1 next year, say Malaysian and Singaporean leaders.

The KTM land issue has bogged down ties in the past with both sides playing hardball diplomacy and having their own interpretations of the Points of Agreement (POA) signed in 1990, on the terms of development and status of the KTM land that expands from Woodlands in the north to Tanjung Pagar in the south of Singapore.

Under the POA, Malaysia and Singapore, among other things, agreed that the KTM railway station be moved from Tanjung Pagar to a location to be decided later.

However, over the years, negotiations stalled after both sides failed to agree on where the new location should be in Singapore.

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A pauper’s house under the jackfruit tree?

In Singapore, we have grown accustomed to the many names by which places could be referred to by the different ethnic groups. While this usually revolves around either a translation of what the name means in a different language or the pronunciation especially in the case where a proper name is involved. Once in a while, we do come across a set of names that when translated; takes meanings which seem completely different from one another, which is the case with an area that was once known as Rumah Miskin.

The area that was once called Rumah Miskin and also Mangka-kah, seen today.

I had become acquainted with the area early in my life, passing through on the back of a bechak (trishaw). This was on the many trips accompanying my maternal grandmother to an area a little further away that she referred to as Kampong Jawa. My impression of the area had always been that of the longish building with a staircase that had a wooden banister visible from Balestier Road. The building had been part of the Rumah Miskin Police Station, which had stood as a landmark at the corner of Serangoon Road and Balestier Road for many years. The name, Rumah Miskin translated as “Pauper’s House”, had always been a source of fascination for me. My grandmother, who had in all probability not put much thought into the origins of the name, was not able to offer much to satisfy my curiosity as to the origins of the area’s name. Unable to find an explanation, I allowed my imagination provide the explanation, and for a while, I had the impression that the building with the staircase must have once been that home for the poor.

Another view of the Rumah Miskin area today.

It was later in life that I learnt of another intriguing name by which the area had been referred to. Rumah Miskin was used by the Malay and English speaking communities, and the Chinese speaking community had referred to the area as Mangka-kah, which in Hokkien or Teochew, could be taken to mean “jackfruit leg” (possibly at the foot of or in the shadow of the jackfruit tree) or perhaps “mosquito bitten leg”. The former does seem quite plausible as an explanation of the origins of the name, and as some would have it, that came from jackfruit groves that were thought to have existed in the area. I was also told later that there was another interpretation of “jackfruit leg” that could provide another possible explanation for the name, which unrelated as it may sound, does seem to have something to do with the Malay name for the area.

The Rumah Miskin area is also where another landmark, the Kwang Wai Shiu Hospital, which had recently been in the news for the hefty increase in rent following a renewal on its 99 year lease, which expired this February, stands. The hospital was known as the Kwang Wai Shiu Free Hospital then, and did, as the name suggests, provide free treatment for the less fortunate. My grandmother had herself visited the outpatient clinic there on many occasions in the 1970s, when she found that it was more affordable (despite having to pay for the treatment) than the Rakyat Clinic that she used along Balestier Road. The hospital had started in 1910 with buildings that had been inherited from the original pauper’s hospital, Tan Tock Seng, when that moved to Moulmein Road in 1909. That set of buildings were demolished sometime in the early 1950s to make way for the hospital buildings that we see today. It was actually from the pauper’s hospital that the area took its name, the hospital being a home for infirmed and poor, hence the name Rumah Miskin. As to what this has got to do with the name Mangka-kah, the explanation was that the name originated with the sight of patients of the hospital hobbling around on their diseased legs which could be observed in the area – the wounds and sores on their legs of these patients were said to resemble a jackfruit, hence “jackfruit leg”. Whichever explanation for the origins of the name Mangka-kah, it would probably be difficult to establish today.

The Kwan Wai Shiu Hospital building was rebuilt in the early 1950s.

Information board on Kwan Wai Shiu Hospital.

Today, all we see is an empty plot of land at the junction where the Rumah Miskin Police Station had stood as a landmark. The buildings had been used as a halfway house for drug addicts by the Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association (SANA) when the Police Station closed its doors around 1975, and for a while later, became the premises of the Indian Fine Arts Society, before being demolished. With the demise of the buildings, the names Rumah Miskin and Mangka-kah seem to have perished as well – I have not heard of it being used for quite a long while now. With this, there is somehow a sense of loss and sadness, not just at the passing of another landmark, but also with a name that would soon be lost with time.

The buildings of the Rumah Miskin Police Station are conspicuously absent from the plot of land where they once served as a landmark.

Another view of the junction where the Rumah Miskin Police Station once stood.

Some old buildings still stand in the area ...

As wrecking equipment stand threateningly in the vicinity.

The gateway to the roads that lay to the south of Singapore

There was a time when embarking on a journey to not just a distant land, but to a destination that would now be considered closer to home, would mean saying goodbye not at the terminal building of Kallang or Paya Lebar Airport as it might have then been, but perhaps at a wharf in Tanjong Pagar or a pier along Collyer Quay. That was a time when the journey would invariably have had to be one made by sea, not with the intent of a leisurely cruise as we are inclined to do these days, but out of necessity. So it was that piers came into prominence as entry and exit points through which the many immigrants, some of whom were our ancestors, arriving in Singapore, and travellers setting off on their journey would pass.

Clifford Pier as seen today. The pier would have been the starting point for many a journey from Singapore back in the earlier part of the 20th Century.

View of the Roads in the 1950s from an old postcard. Clifford Pier, the Inner Roads, the Detached Mole (breakwater) and the Outer Roads beyond can be clearly seen (courtesy of Mr. Low Kam Hoong).

In those days, the inner harbour that would have greeted the immigrants to Singapore, or where those setting off on their journey from Singapore would have had a last glimpse of the island, would have appeared to be very different to what is in the area today. For much of the twentieth century, Singapore’s busy harbour been separated by a breakwater referred to as the “Detached Mole”, built in 1911, which ran parallel to the shoreline. This in the area where today, another breakwater of sorts, the reclaimed parcel of land which now forms part of the southern boundary of the Marina Bay reservoir, and on which the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort and part of the East Coast Parkway has been built on, now sits. The breakwater back then, separated what was referred to as the Roads – the Inner Roads within the breakwater where the smaller coastal vessels and the tongkangs and twakows (lighters and bumboats) and passenger launches could be safely anchored. The smaller boats ferried their cargoes of goods and people to and from the larger ocean going vessels, being less susceptible to the effects of waves and wind, anchored in the Outer Roads that lay beyond the breakwater.

Another view of Clifford Pier, the Inner Roads, and the Breakwater in the 1960s (source: www.singas.co.uk)

Map of Singapore Harbour in the 1950s showing the Detached Mole, Inner Roads and Outer Roads.

Where the limits of the Inner Roads, the Breakwater would have been. On this sits the reclaimed land on which the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort has being built on.

The starting point for many a journey would have taken place at Clifford Pier, named after Sir Hugh Charles Clifford, the Governor of the Straits Settlements from 1927 to 1929, which replaced the original Johnston’s Pier opposite Fullerton Square in 1933. The wonderfully built structure features a roof structure supported by beautiful concrete arched trusses designed by the Public Works Department, served as the arrival point for many immigrants as well as a departure point for many seafarers and travellers out of Singapore. It was one of my favourite places, growing up in Singapore in the 1970s, being first of all, across another favourite place of mine, Change Alley, on which Derek Tait has an interesting post on, and also being where I could, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the going-ons of the pier, observe the comings and goings of travellers and seafarers through the wide hall like deck of the pier, and up and down the numerous stairs at the pier’s end and sides from which the colourful wooden launches took or discharged their passengers. It was also where, I could catch the sea breeze on a muggy evening, standing by its open sides.

View of the Inner Roads from Collyer Quay in the 1960s with a fleet of passenger launches moored in the foreground (Source: www.singas.co.uk).

Looking across Marina Bay from the Esplanade Theatres by the Bay across the area that would have once been the Inner Roads.

Change Alley across from Clifford Pier as well as Clifford Pier, was one of my favourite places in the 1970s. I remember being greeted by the sound of the many Laughing Bags that the vendors set off filling the alley as you walked through it.

Clifford Pier would also have been where boats that would take us to what seemed then to me as the distant shores of the then inhabited islands that lay to the south could be boarded, with the promise of an adventure on the high seas that I would somehow associate with a trip to what I would see as my Islands in the Sun. It was also from Clifford Pier that I also later embarked on a voyage of adventure of my own, far beyond my Islands in the Sun, one which I would be describing in another post. It is also interesting to note that the pier is known to locals as Hong Ten Ma Tou 红灯码头, or Red Lamp Pier, named after a red lamp that was placed on it to serve as a navigation aid to seafarers, or so the information plaque says. It is thought however that it was actually hung on Johnston’s Pier and the locals continued the use of the name for the new pier when it replaced Johnston’s Pier.

The beautiful arched concrete trusses that support the roof of the pier.

A window in the façade of the pier.

It may be comforting to know that despite the large wave of land reclamation and redevelopment that has swept over much of the Inner Roads and the areas around Collyer Quay and has seen Clifford Pier cut off from the boats, ships and islands that provided it with a reason for her being. But alas, Clifford Pier is now, despite looking none the worse for wear, only a pale shadow of what it was in its heyday. Where the pier had once been alive with the continuous footsteps of seafarers, travellers and the many interested onlookers that pass through its deck, it is now devoid of life, surrounded by waters that can only lap sadly and silently onto the columns that hold it up.

Plaque commemorating the opening of Clifford Pier in 1933.

Information plaque on Clifford Pier.

Adventures with numbers

No, I don’t mean math! But I did have a lot of adventures associated with numbers back in the days of my childhood. It was back when we had the likes of Stanley Kramer’s madcap It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the lovable Volkswagen Beetle named Herbie that Disney gave us in the Love Bug (numbered 53), which perhaps laid the ground for my own adventures on wheels, or so I imagined. It was cretainly with the numbers on wheels that seemed to be the source of many an adventure then, from the ones I got with the long drives my father took us for in his Austin 1100 numbered 793 (that being the number on the car registration plate, SM 793) to the far flung corners of Singapore and to the hills and beaches that lay across the Causeway, to the adventures of my own on the minibus that carried me to school, numbered 388 (being CB 388). While sitting on the backseat (and roof) of the 793 did provide a fair bit of adventure, it was on the 388 that perhaps made life for a boy of school-going age a lot more fun, and looking back, school days at St. Michael’s School would certainly not have been complete and made all the more exciting if it wasn’t for the 388. It was on the 388 where we, the closet mischievous school boys that many of us were, could express this inclination, free from the watchful and critical eyes of our parents and teachers. There was a big adventure each day for us to look forward to; adventures through which bonds were built that have survived to this day.

On the roof of my father's SM 793, Changi Beach, early 1970s ... adventures weren't just confined to sitting on the backseat, but also on the roof. However, it was on the school bus CB 388 that I had most fun on.

For five out of the six years I spent in primary school, with the exception of Primary 4 during which my parents allowed me to venture on the public bus for the journey to school, the 388 was what carried me to and from school. There were a few occasions when I did skip taking the 388, as I did when my parents did decide to drop me off or pick me up, and that one occasion in Primary 3 when I made my way home on foot, having missed the bus (for reasons that have escaped me).

The staircase at the foot of Block 53 where the 388 would pick me up from.

The route that took me from the foot of Block 53 Toa Payoh where I lived, to St. Michael’s School each school day, brought me and my fellow passengers around much of Toa Payoh, with the last stop being the curved block (Block 157) at the corner of Lorong 1 and 2. Following this, the journey that would take us over the flyover to Jalan Toa Payoh, and out to the slip road that connected with Thomson Road non-stop to school. We would usually have to spend some time at the corner, having to wait in the traffic that often crawled into Thomson Road, during which I remember being fascinated by the comings and goings of the compound on which a zinc building stood (I can’t remember if it was built completely in zinc sheets, but it at least has a zinc roof), which gave me an impression of being used as a sawmill (or at least where wooden planks were stored), which I got from the numerous wooden planks that lay in stacks in the yard. This building occupied the little strip of land wedged between the slip road and the canalised Sungei Whampoa, on which perhaps the apartment block that occupies the space at the same corner has been built. It was from this point where our adventures would usually end, our mischievousness returning to the closets they came out from.

The area by the slip road from Jalan Toa Payoh to Thomson Road by Sungei Whampoa where the zince building stood.

Through the stops and starts of most of the journey through Toa Payoh, with the driver usually distracted by having to focus on negotiating through the busy road, and the slower speeds that the bus could travel at, we had the perfect opportunity to get away with almost anything. And got away we very often did with our weapons of mass irritation: water pistols, rubber bands and paper bullets, self-fashioned “pea-shooters” from straws with which a mouthful of green beans could be discharged through, with which we could take aim, and rain a barrage of beans, paper bullets and streams of water at unsuspecting motorists and pedestrians, from the relative security offered by the narrow windows of the minibus. There were a few occasions when, out of ammunition, some of the boys would aim a short shout of “chicken shit” or the like at a pedestrian, catching them off-guard and drawing nothing more serious than a bewildered stare. When the exercise of mischievousness did catch the eye of the driver, he did usually try to discipline us with his thin whip of rattan when traffic conditions permitted. This sometimes ended up going through the window or being broken in two. He would sometimes have to deal in the same way with the fights that often broke out between some of the boys, cheered on by the rest of the juvenile occupants of the minibus, with the cane often losing out in the same way.

Rubber Bands and Paper Bullets

Once out of Toa Payoh and onto Thomson Road, things usually settled down. For one, there was less pedestrian traffic along the short stretch of Thomson Road to school. This would also mean a relatively short journey which remained, putting us greater risk of incurring the wrath of the driver once we got to our destination. Back to our best behaviour, all we could do then was stare silently out the window, as we impatiently looked forward to getting to school where a different set of adventures would await us.

The rest of the journey down Thomson Road, which looked very different then, would be accompanied by a calm after the storm.

Macaroni under the flyover

On the subject of some of our lost makan (food or eating) places, there would be many that we can collectively remember, which could be the many stalls that lined much of the old streets of Singapore, or the ones that appeared in car parks in the evenings as they emptied of their day time occupants. In an effort to clean up the streets of Singapore and to improve hygiene of street food vendors, many of the hawkers were taken off the streets in the 1970s, moved to purpose the built food or hawker centres we are familiar with these days. With the food centres, proper rubbish disposal facilities and running water could be provided, as well as well maintained food preparation areas – a huge improvement on the pushcarts that were used, where leftovers could have been tossed into the drains, and the lack of running water often meant that water for washing was often reused. One such food centre that my parents were fond of going to, being close to where we lived in Toa Payoh, was the one that my parents referred to as “Under the Flyover” along Whitley Road. This was built to house hawkers at the end of Balestier Road near its junction with Thomson Road, and came into being sometime in the 1970s.

Under the flyover which once was a bustle of food stalls and diners. The original flyover is the one on the right of the picture.

The food Centre was referred to by my parents as “Under the Flyover” as it was literally located under the flyover that connected Jalan Toa Payoh to Whitley Road (now all part of the Pan Island Expressway or PIE – the original flyover is the one that now carries the west bound traffic on the expressway). Popular particularly with taxi drivers, it was well known for the stall which sold Prawn Noodles with large prawns, and another which served Pork Porridge and Macaroni Soup, Singapore style (usually Macaroni boiled in clear chicken broth, served with shredded pieces of chicken or with minced pork). My favourite stalls there were however the one that served cut fruits, for the triangular colourful pieces of jelly that was sold, the Won Ton noodle stall and the Char Siew Rice stall.

The location of the food centre under the flyover ...

Once a haunt of diners looking to fill their stomachs with their favourite hawker fare is now a forgotten plot of emptiness under the Thomson flyover.

During the year that I was in Primary Six, and equipped with a monthly bus pass, I had the freedom of hopping on and off the public buses as and when I wanted, and as the food centre was located conveniently along the public bus route home, I could often stop over at the food centre with my schoolmates on my way home from school. We would always head straight for the cut fruit stall – for its refreshing iced pineapple juice, displayed in a clear plastic container in which cut pieces of boiled cubed pineapple could be seen at the bottom of. Another favourite of ours was the Indian convenience store that operated out of one of the units close to the entrance from the bus stop where we could pick up Shoot! and our favourite snacks.

Part of the area where the food centre was is now a heavy vehicle parking area.

The food centre remained a popular choice of my parents for dinner or a late night supper even after we had moved further away from Toa Payoh. Sadly, the food centre has gone the way of many other things I loved about Singapore, disappearing sometime in the early 1990s, and what is left in its place is an empty plot of land which is used as a heavy vehicle park, and now, not one, but two flyovers (a newer flyover was constructed to carry eastbound traffic on the PIE) cross over the what had once been the food centre that had a hand in feeding the growing appetite of my youth.

The “bright” lights of Prince Edward Road and the Polytechnic by the sea

There was a time when my parents used to take us, my sister and me, to Mount Faber on quite a regular basis. The excursions were almost always, done in the evenings when it was a lot more pleasant, and would more often than not, culminate in a drive down Keppel Road for  dinner. Then, there were plenty of choices of street food, that seemed to taste a lot better then than it somehow does in the food centres of today. For reasons that have escaped me, my parents avoided going to nearby Chinatown, and Keppel Road seemed an obvious choice, as it was well known for the two dimly lit car parks which would came to life each evening, illuminated by the relatively bright lights of hawker stalls, the bustle of a hungry crowd and the metallic sounds of noodles being violently tossed in the wok. One of these was the car park in front of Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, one that we didn’t frequent as much as the one down by the east end of Keppel Road, at the large car park on Prince Edward Road.

Looking down Shenton Way and the former Quays towards Prince Edward Road in the early 1960s. The Singapore Polytechnic buildings can be seen at the top of the photograph (Source: www.singas.co.uk).

The car park that hosted the hawker stalls of the early 1970s?

I only have vague memories of where it was exactly, unable perhaps to make very much of the visual picture presented, beyond the distraction provided by the mess of hawker stalls, tables and chairs, seen in the half light that was filtered by the greasy smoke that filled the air with its pungent lard laden aroma. The car park I suppose would be the one opposite the old Singapore Polytechnic campus that we see today, or perhaps not, but what I did remember were the rows of lighted pushcarts from which there would have been a choice of everything the Singaporean hawkers were known to conjure up. There was the tomato ketchup stained mee goreng that I so loved, the starch laden oyster omelette that was a favourite of my father, and the spicy piping hot sup kambing that was my favourite. That was a place that perhaps I took for granted, never for once imagining that it would disappear one day. It did eventually, I don’t quite remember when, and in going the way of the many other street food places, flavour somehow gets lost in the relocation to the sanitised premises of the new food centres which were built to get the hawkers off the streets. Perhaps it was with the sanitary conditions that made the difference, where dish washing would have been done in basins of water next to opened drains into which flowed not just the washing water, but the contents of that were on the plates and bowls on which the drain’s residents would have thought of as a feast.

The Singapore Polytechnic operated at its former premises on Prince Edward Road from 1958 to the mid 1970s (photo courtesy of Mr Ma Yoke Long).

Prince Edward Road then, was also home to the premises of Singapore’s first Polytechnic, the unimaginatively named Singapore Polytechnic. The Polytechnic was established in 1954 with the passing of the Singapore Polytechnic Ordinance and classes began with an initial enrollment of 2800 students when the building was completed in late 1958 (it was officially opened in early 1959). The Polytechnic initially offered 58 different courses to train a pool of technicians for the developing economy of the island and remained at Prince Edward Road until the mid 1970s when it moved in stages to its present campus at Dover Road. The building that housed the Polytechnic still stands today as the Bestway Building, offering us a glimpse of an architectural style that is very typical of the era during which it was built. It was designed by Swan and MacLaren, which has had a hand in designing much of Singapore’s magnificent colonial buildings and civil infrastructure, and remains somewhat forgotten in a little pocket of land that time seems to have forgotten, at odds with the skyscraper infested financial centre that has sprouted up next to it. Whether it and the area around it would stand the test of time that many of the older buildings in the area have yielded to, perhaps only time will tell.

The original Singapore Polytechnic building has a new lease of life as the Bestway Building.

Another view of the building that was once the Singapore Polytechnic.

The premises of the former Singapore Polytechnic is still used as an education centre.

The basketball court of the former premises of the Singapore Polytechnic.

A view of one of the buildings that housed the Singapore Polytechnic.

Another view of the façade.

The “Corner House”

On the subject of our lost swimming pools, I was reminded of another one that I frequented in my early primary school days. It was one that I referred to as “Corner House” for sometime, before realising that its name was actually pronounced as “Connell House”. Connell House Swimming Pool belonged to Connell House, which, for a better part of half the twentieth century since 1925, a mission to seafarers. Situated conveniently at Anson Road, close to the old port area along Collyer Quay, where seafarers would come ashore and the newer port area of Tanjong Pagar, it offered lodging to seafarers in transit, as well as catering to the other needs of seafarers. The swimming pool was added in 1955, and operated for a few years after the seamen’s mission at Connell House shut in late 1971 as a private pool. It was during that period that my parents took me there on several occasions, accompanying one of my mother’s colleagues who liked to go to the pool as it was relatively quiet. The entrance fee for guest of members if I remember correctly was $2 which wasn’t cheap by standards back then.

The Fuji Xerox Towers (formerly IBM Towers) which I had mistakenly thought was the location of the former Connell House.

Where a 3 metre high diving platform once rose over a swimming pool, the towers of the Fuji Xerox Towers now rises 165m above the ground where the swimming pool and Connell House stood.

When Connell House shut its doors to seafarers in 1971, the building housed several Government departments and Statutory Boards including the Singapore Telephone Board (the original STB), the Telecommunication Authority of Singapore (TAS), and the Public Works Department (PWD) , until the colonial building was pulled down in the 1980s, to make way for the site’s present occupant, the Temasek Tower (former Treasury). I can’t quite remember when the pool closed, but I do remember visiting the pool right up to the time when I was in Primary 4 or 5 which was around 1974 to 1975.

Another view of the Fuji Xerox Towers.

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Correction:

I stand corrected on the location of Connell House, which Peter Chan has correctly placed opposite where International Plaza is today. I did remember it as being close to the Singapore Conference Hall, but was probably confused by its address which had it at 1 Anson Road, which is the address of the Fuji Xerox Towers today. It does appear from the photographs on the PICAS site that it was on the site of what was the cylindrical block that was the Treasury which is now the Temasek Building which rises 235 metres above the ground.

Erratum: Temasek Tower stands in place of Connell House.Where a 3 metre high diving platform once rose over a swimming pool, the towers of the Temasek Tower now rises 235m above the ground.

Farewell to the last of a trio

It was with a tinge of sadness that I realised that the last of a trio of landmarks that stood at the bottom of the southern slope of Fort Canning Hill has gone the way of two of its former companions. We have already lost two icons that once stood there, the National Theatre and Van Kleef Aquarium which remain only in the memories of those that knew them. The third, the River Valley Swimming Pool, not so much an icon, but a feature nonetheless at the foot of Singapore’s Forbidden Hill has somehow remained intact all these years after its closure in 2003, until recently. I had mentioned in a post on what I referred to as the far side of the hill, that the swimming pool, that once served as the pool where as a schoolboy going to Saint Joseph’s Institution not so far away, I had gone for swimming lessons that were conducted for our Physical Education (P.E.), was awaiting its end, hoping vainly that it would not. Alas, its end has come, and what remains where the pool had been, is now levelled with red earth that the two excavators which proudly sit atop it must have had a hand in filling.

The disused River Valley Swimming Pool seen from Fort Canning Hill in 2009 .

The entrance and exit of River Valley Swimming Pool seen early this year which is still largely intact.

The swimming pool, as I had previously posted, was built in the late 1950s by the Singapore City Council. Designed by a British architect, M. E. Crocker, it opened in 1959. Little did I know it when I was a schoolboy, the complex was a haunt of men of the alternative orientation. The swimming pool does hold many memories for my schoolmates and me. One fondly remembers frequenting the pool not because of the men, but to watch the Saint Nicholas Girls’ School swimming team train there.  The complex closed in 2003 and stood unused until the pools were filled up recently. At least, not all is lost, it does appear that the buildings that were part of the complex, are being refurbished. It is sad though to see that the pool is gone.

The life guard post of the disused swimming complex as seen through the entrance, that was still intact earlier this year.

A close up of the life guard post that is now gone.

The pools have now disappeared, levelled with the filling of red earth.

Two excavators stand proudly over the buried pools.

Singapore’s own secret agent

For all my brushes with Malay cinema in my early childhood which came to me on the black and white Setron television set whilst sitting beside my Bahasa Indonesia speaking grandmother, I somehow never realised until much later that there was a lot more to watch beyond the horror flicks in the form of the Pontianak, or maybe the Orang Minyak (Oily Man), and the occasional ones featuring the crooning P. Ramlee. It wasn’t until I was in secondary school that the exploits of Jefri Zain played by Jins Shamsuddin, our very own home grown secret agent came my attention, perhaps due to a greater awareness brought about by having been caught up with the double O seven craze that was sweeping through the school. My own introduction to Mr Bond was towards the end of my primary school days a few years before that, which came in the form of an Ian Fleming novel Dr No, which I received as a Christmas present.

Mat Bond Title Scene

Somehow, it was another local version of Bond that caught our attention as secondary schoolboys. Jefri Zain was perhaps a little too Bond like for us, and it was our Mr. Bond, the Secret, Secret Agent, Mat Bond that many of us became fans of. Mat Bond was a parody of James Bond and perhaps Jefri Zain, produced by a rival studio of the one that was producing Jefri Zain.

Mat Sentul as Mat Bond navigating through the bobby trapped opening scene.

Back in the fabulous fifties and swinging sixties, Singapore’s movie making industry was in its heyday, with two film studios the Shaw Malay Film Productions and Catahy Keris competing for the Malay speaking market. There were some fabulous productions, mostly made in black and white that had audiences enthralled, and out of this came productions such as Jefri Zain produced by Shaw and Mat Bond by Cathay Keris. We were great fans of Mat Bond, played by Mat Sentul, a Singaporean comedian known in the 1980s for his role as the title character Mat Yoyo in the popular Malay children’s television programme. He was never without his trusty umbrella – his secret weapon, which more often than not, came to his rescue when he found himself in a difficult situation.

Escape from being held in an aeroplane - Mat Bond flushes himself out of the toilet and uses his trusty umbrella as a parachute.

What made us fans of Mat Bond was perhaps the hilarity that the character brought, or perhaps the delivery of wonderful guitar soundtrack by The Pretenders, a Malay Pop Yeh Yeh band. The opening scene was brilliant and possibly set the mood for the parody, as we see Mat Bond navigating through a bobby trapped passageway, to reach a toilet where he pulls on the flush and down the toilet goes, into a secret chamber below. The most memorable scene had Mat Bond being held in a passenger jet from which he escapes by flushing himself out of the plane’s toilet, and once out into the air, his trusty umbrella opens as a parachute. I can’t help but think back to the many times I watched Mat Bond in action with a smile on my face. I certainly was grateful we had our very own secret agent, not for ridding the world of evil, but for giving us more than a few chuckles.

Eternal Spring 恆春

It was on a cold early April morning that I found myself in southern Taiwan, arriving by a red eyed chartered flight from Singapore. There was still a 100 kilometre journey to make, and sitting on the back of a long opened 13 ton truck wouldn’t have been the means most of us would have chosen to do it with had we realised that discomfort that the two hour journey would bring. But there wasn’t much of a choice for us, being part of a support group for a military exercise that lay some 2 months ahead. And so, at the break of dawn, having been kept wide awake by the continuous stream of the more than chilly April air perched on the back of the speeding 13 tonner, we were relieved to see the truck make the turn into the dirt track that served as the roadway into the army camp that was reserved for our use. In the half light of dawn, the sound of teeth chattering was broken by the excited howl of one of my companions announcing that he had spotted a horse. A few chuckles quickly followed as a quick scan of the open field that lay to the left of the track revealed a couple of cows and nothing much else.

Sorting the stores out, camp near Hengchun Taiwan, 1987.

Having been used to the relative comfort of the army bunks we had in Singapore, where at its worst, the creaky springs of the beds would sag at anything that weighed a little more than a feather, seeing where we were to spend the next few months came as a rude shock. What I saw reminded me of the scenes of the prisoner of war camps on the Burma railway that I had seen in the movies. Lined up against the opposite sides of the walls in the long bunk were two rows of double decked wooden platforms which served as beds. On this we were to be allocated a one metre wide space on which to sleep on and store our belongings. This didn’t seem so bad when I got to see the state that the toilets were in! We had a few weeks before the stores we were sent to maintain were to arrive by ship, giving us some time to get the place set up.

With nothing much to keep us occupied, with civilisation nowhere in sight as well as being confined to camp seven days a week with only an evening out, the “gift shop” which seemed worth visiting for the two beauties – the fair skinned local girls who manned the shop, became a focal point. In reality, there wasn’t really much on offer, save the instant noodles, Taiwanese style, sealed in a styrofoam bowl which were displayed in the glass counter, which could be filled at the hot water dispenser at the end of the counter. This was a novelty to many of us then – it wasn’t until later that the idea caught on in Singapore.

South Gate, Hengchun, April 1987.

We were allowed a three hours out once a week on Thursday evenings, when the night market came to town. Town we were to discover was Hengchun (恆春), which serves as the gateway to what must be one of the prettiest parts of Taiwan – the Kenting National Park. A walled town, Hengchun has most of its walls and gates still intact, and the area we often ended up in was close to the south gate. Apart from the night market, the town wasn’t notable for much except for the delicious street food and refreshing chilled red tea. The first evening I was there, I managed to get the essential sleeping bag which made the wooden platform I slept on a little more comfortable, visit to a mantou (steamed bun) shop, and fill my stomach with a hearty bowl of spicy beef noodles.

The night market always provided the locals as well as us with some form of entertainment. What would almost always greet the visitor was the pungent smell of fermented beancurd being toasted over the fire, and the greasy smell of Taiwanese sausages being grilled. There were always lots of stalls with nothing that seemed worth buying. Entertainment could usually be found at the corners of the market area – medicine and ointment vendors would always be ready to provide a show in an attempt to convince an eager audience of the positive effects of the medicines they were attempting to sell. There were those that placed red hot pieces of metal bare skin on various parts of the body and those that would attempt to inflict wounds using knives and chains to prove the protective benefits of their ointments. There were of course those that tried to draw the attention of a mainly male audience with skimpily dressed women who sometimes showed little bits of flesh that would make a gentleman blush!

El último beso con un abrazo roto: the Singapore grand premiere of Pedro Almodóvar’s Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces)

The European Union Film Festival (EUFF) in Singapore kicked off on Thursday evening at Golden Village VivoCity to a full house, in which the audience was treated to a screening of a Pedro Almodóvar movie, Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces), motivated in part by the striking image of a couple embracing unnoticed by the human eye amidst the desolate volcanic landscape of a beach on the Canary Islands. Much of the movie is built around cinematic iconology, on which Almodóvar uses powerful iconic images and symbolism as a somewhat sombre story in related through the “eyes” of a blind writer, Mateo Blanco who goes by a pseudonym Harry Caine, masterfully depicted by Lluis Homar.

The movie revloves around the striking image of a couple embracing amidst the vastness of the volcanic landscape of Golfo Beach, unnoticed by the human eye, but captured by the camera.

Notwithstanding the Sangria that flowed at the reception before the late night screening at a time when I would usually have been in bed after a long working day, I needed little effort in keeping awake, enthralled by the images that came with each scene that Almodóvar skillfully delivers. I was struck by a poignant scene at the end of the movie in which Harry Caine realises that it was not in a tight embrace, as he had long imagined, but with a last kiss, the last kiss or el último beso with which the love of his life, the beautiful and soulful Lena, whom Penélope Cruz expertly portrays, parts with his company in the violence of a road collision that breaks the silence of the night. The last kiss has always been a powerful symbolic icon, one in which the parting of company is associated with, a farewell to what we have grown accustomed to, what we can sometimes be reluctant to leave behind. It at that moment of the last kiss that transforms the life of Mateo, losing not only his beloved Lena, but his sight, on which being a film director, he depends very much on. Mateo survives by transforming himself into Harry, and it is only after his realisation that it was with that last kiss with which he had parted with Lena, that he could live as Mateo once again.

Los Abrazos Rotos is the fourth film in which Penélope Cruz collaborates with Pedro Almodóvar.

The symbolism of the last kiss fortunately for fans of European films, does not extend to film festival itself. Far from saying goodbye, interest in the EUFF is definitely growing, as was observed by Mr. Kenneth Tan, the chairman of the Singapore Film Society, in his opening address. Now in its 20th year, this year’s EUFF sees an overwhelming response, packing the cinema hall with what Mr. Tan noted, its biggest ever crowd for an EUFF opening. This translates to the public screenings of the 16 other films as well, with strong demand that sees 80% of seats sold even before the first movie had been screened. On another note, Mr. Tan also mentions that the EUFF partners with the local film making industry and will provide opportunities for local filmmakers to showcase their works with screenings of short films made by them alongside some of the EUFF screenings. It is interesting to note that a young local filmmaker, Boo Junfeng, who is less than 30 years old, will make a debut at the Cannes Film Festival next week.

Cruz gives a striking performance as she goes through a range of moods of the various scenes.

A full synopsis of Los Abrazos Rotos, which also features Blanca Portillo as Mateo’s long suffering agent Judit, José Luis Gómez as the brutally jealous Ernesto Martel who Lena is a mistress of, and Rubén Ochandiano as Judit’s son Diego, can be found at the EUFF website. Do look out for Los Abrazos Rotos as it would be released to local cinemas from 13 May 2010.

Photographs of Mateo and Lena embracing broken into thousands of pieces. Powerful images are used in a film that revolves around many symbolic images.

The treble-carriageway by the Promenade

As with many things in Singapore, names by which places or features that were once known by, have been lost with the passage of time and development. In some cases, the names would no longer be relevant, features after which the names were based on being altered by the wave of development that has swept over much of Singapore. There are many examples of this around the island, islands being lost – absorbed by larger entities, hills being flattened, and coastlines moving further into the sea. One of the victims of this is one of the prides of a self-governing Singapore, constructed through volunteer labour in an effort to reduce costs at a time when austerity was a necessity, the Peoples’ Promenade, also known as the Nicoll Highway Promenade, or The Promenade for short.

Nicoll Highway, seen in this photograph on the right with its centre carriageway, was built on land reclaimed in the 1920s. A promenade, dubbed the Peoples' Promenade, which ceased to exist due to further land reclamation in the area, was built using volunteer labour to save costs and was opened in 1959. (Source: www.singas.co.uk c. 1969).

The Promenade used to run along the coast by the Nicoll Highway, and started from where the Esplanade left off at the Stamford Canal, running along the length of what had been the coast to the Merdeka Bridge. The Promenade opened in 1959, and was a place where families could take evening walks and enjoy the sea breeze, or where one could do a spot of fishing. It was with us when I was growing up in the 1960s up to the 1970s when the commencement of land reclamation in 1971 saw the Promenade losing its appeal before being completely made irrelevant by the 67 hectares of land which was added to the area  of the sea where the Promenade was. This was part of a massive reclamation project which stretched from Prince Edward Road all the way eastward to Changi, giving Singapore a total of 1162 hectares of land along its southern coastline by the time it was completed in 1978.

Nicoll Highway and the Merdeka Bridge, looking westwards towards the city, seen here as a dual carriageway in the early 1960s. A third centre carriageway was added in the mid 1960s to cope with the increasing volume of traffic (Source: www.singas.co.uk).

The Nicoll Highway by which the Promenade ran along was itself constructed on land reclaimed in the early 1900s known as the Beach Road reclamation. It opened together with Merdeka Bridge in 1956 to provide a necessary arterial road from the East into the city to alleviate congestion on the roads bringing traffic from the heavily populated eastern shoreline to the city centre. Built originally as a dual carriageway, with two lanes on each carriageway, it later needed to be expanded in the mid 1960s to cope with the increased volume of traffic. Hence a third carriageway was built, right smack in the centre of the highway, providing three additional lanes on which flow could be reversed to regulate flow based on the direction of the peak hour traffic. The third carriageway was opened only to the faster vehicles, opened to city-bound traffic in the mornings and east-bound traffic moving away from the city in the evenings. The idea for a flow reversible centre carriageway on a highway wasn’t new by itself, with similar systems being mooted as far back as the 1930s in the more advanced countries. This system lasted right up to the early 1990s when Nicoll Highway was converted back into a dual carriageway that is it today.

The Nicoll Highway, Singapore

An aerial view of Nicoll Highway in 1958 over the area where the Golden Mile Complex stands today(Source: National Archives of Singapore).

The Golden Mile Complex seen from Nicoll Highway opened in 1973 as an integrated mixed use complex, to much acclaim within architectural circles.

Where you would have once seen the sea. The area south of Nicoll Highway and the Promenade is now reclaimed on which the Marina Complex has been erected.

The Merdeka Bridge opened in 1956 as part of the much needed Nicoll Highway, providing a link from the populated eastern shoreline of Singapore to the city centre over the Kallang River.

The Kallang Basin seen from the Merdeka Bridge, looking a lot cleaner than it would have when the bridge opened in 1956.

My Days in the Sun. Part 2: Epok-Epok, sports days and the marvels of MILO

My second year at primary school provided me with a very different experience from the one I had in my first year. This was possibly because of two things, the first being having to attend school in the afternoon session (I had hitherto only attended school and kindergarten in the mornings); and the other was that I was able to relate much better to my fellow classmates and surroundings, having spent a year with them. While going to school in the morning session had provided me with the rest of the afternoon to finish up my homework and still have the time to have a game of football and watch Vic Morrow in Combat! after dinner, the afternoon session seemed to rob me of the day, having to spend a greater part of the morning finishing up homework and getting ready for school, with barely enough time to have an early lunch. I could on many days also squeeze a visit to my neighbour, Mr. Singh’s flat on the seventeenth storey, where for tea time promptly at four each afternoon, I would be greeted by wonderfully rich smell of strong tea being brewed and of heated ghee on chapati, as Mrs. Singh rolled the balls of dough out into flat circular shapes that was to become chapati as it heated on the flat iron pan manned by one of her daughters.

St. Michael's School has an especially large field for us to play football on.

The afternoon session, despite robbing me of much of my play time, did provide other opportunities for fun. Arriving earlier before school started than would have been possible with the morning session, did allow us to have that game of football that many of us itched to have. Playing under the gaze of the midday sun didn’t seem to cause us any discomfort as it would probably have today, and many of us would arrive for class drenched in perspiration brought about by the midday exertions, and a little too disheveled for the liking of our disapproving form teacher. This was possibly a contributing factor to it being more difficult to keep one’s concentration in the afternoons. The afternoon heat also played its part – I would sometimes feel inclined to indulge in a siesta, even though I did not have the habit of taking an afternoon nap. The afternoons seemed to drag on forever, broken only by too short a recess time during which the field rather than the tuckshop appealed to most of us. In any case, by the logic of a seven year old, the 30 cents that I got for my daily allowance would better spent on the Jolly Lolly from the ice cream vendor at the end of the day.

The end of the school day was always looked to in anticipation for most of us, not just for the release it provided from the shackles of the classroom, but for the chance to grab that tied up plastic bag of sweet coloured and flavoured cold drinks, or what is till this day, the best epok-epok (fried puffs of pastry with potato or sardine curry fillings) that I had ever sunk my teeth into. This could be when requested, filled with a generous amount of chilli sauce that made the epok-epok taste just so good! I always watched with keen interest as the epok-epok man dispensed the chilli sauce from a bottle topped with a spout, which he violently poked into the potato curry filled cavity of the epok-epok. The vendors lined the fence which ran along the edge of the car park where the school buses waited for their passengers, along the big drain, and the place always seemed to be bustling with activity, almost like a market place. There we would have had to tread carefully to avoid stepping on the foul smelling noni fruit that seemed to litter the ground. Besides ice cream, cold drinks and epok-epok, there was this man who sometimes came on a bicycle with a glass fronted tin mounted at the back of his bicycle. The tin had three compartments, each filled with keropok (crackers) of a different flavour: fish, prawn and tapioca. That I would rather spend my allowance on epok-epok rather than the keropok that everyone seemed to associate me with, is probably a testament to how good the epok-epok really was!

I was, somewhere through the year in Primary 2, conferred with the nick name of Keropok by the driver of the mini bus I took to school. He explained later that it was because I was always seen clasping a packet of keropok – my favourite being the rounded fish flavoured keropok that I still enjoy these days. My bus mates caught on to it, and would later take to chanting ”Keropok, Keropok, Keropok” as the bus passed on the other side of the road before making a U-turn to pick me up.

The Sack Race was a favourite event during lower primary school sports days.

The year spent in Primary 2 was also memorable for the introduction it provided me to sports. Our Physical Education (P.E.) lessons had, in Primary 1, been something less than enjoyable. In Primary 2,  Mr. George Kheng our P.E. teacher, a keen football fan, organised the four houses into teams named after popular English clubs. There was Everton, Tottenham Hotspurs, another team which I can’t quite remember (could have been Coventry City) and Liverpool (Thomas or Blue house which I belonged to). I suppose that this contributed greatly to me supporting Liverpool Football Club. P. E. lessons besides becoming a lot more football centered, also became a lot more fun.

Relay race with a ball.

Primary 2 was a year for which Sports Day was something to look forward to. Where in Primary 1, I was caught up in the awe and excitement of the occasion, I was probably able to take it all in a little better in Primary 2. We had all kinds of events that allowed mass participation, such as the sack race and another which had us balancing an egg on a teaspoon as we raced across the field. Sports day was for many of us, best remembered for the MILO van, which seemed to be a feature of every sports day then. Somehow, sports days just wouldn’t be sports days without it being around. I can’t quite remember if it actually a van or a small truck which was opened up at the sides, but what was certain was that it always meant the little green paper cups of chilled chocolate flavoured fluid that we would gratefully quench our thirsty throats with. It certainly felt marvellous what MILO could do for us!

Ice Cold Milo served in little green paper cups was a great thirst quencher during our school sports days.

Shadows and a show of flowers in the telling of time

I had a fascination with shadows ever since I was little, well before my introduction to shadow puppetry by my Grandmother. My shadow was, for a while, a friend to me, following me when the light did shine, seemingly afraid, as I was of its larger sibling that was darkness. The fascination also extended to an implement with which shadows were used, one that was present in a garden which my parents frequented in the early days of my life. The whitewashed pedestal like structure that stood in the the Botanic Gardens, which my parents referred to as “Botanics”, inscribed with the words “WHAT THOU SEEKEST IS A SHADOW” on its four faces, and topped with a simple gnomon which cast a shadow onto a plate is the well known sundial, which many visitors to the Botanic Gardens would have come across.

My introduction to the sundial at the Botanical Gardens in 1966.

The sundial.

Today, the pedestal still stands, telling the time as it did all those years back, and given a place of honour in its own part of the gardens, the Sundial Garden. It is now topped with a more elaborate gnomon and furniture, one that perhaps attracts a lot more interest to the sundial than it back then.

The well maintained sundial today topped with a new gnomon and furniture.

The sundial is given a place of honour in a garden of its own.

Lily pads in the Sundial Garden.

Besides the sundial, I enjoyed visiting an object which told time in a brighter way. There were these two floral clocks that I remember, one which was in the Botanic Gardens, and another on the western slope of Fort Canning Hill. These clocks were quite common in public parks and gardens the 1960s and 1970s, and I remember seeing them in Malaysia as well. Decorated by brightly coloured flowers, they remain only in memory. It would be nice to see them again, but it must have taken quite a fair bit of effort to maintain them, and this would probably be the reason why we won’t see them anymore. At least, I still have my old friend the sundial, who I do visit from time to time.

A preview of the 20th European Union Film Festival (6 to 16 May 2010)

The 20th European Union Film Festival (EUFF) caught my attention with an invitation to a bloggers’ preview at the Spanish Embassy, during which a Sam Garbarski movie, Irina Palm, as screened. The tragicomedy which made its debut at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival,  although directed by the Francophone Garbarski who hails from Belgium, comes into the festival as a Luxembourg entry and is in English and filmed entirely in an English setting, having been co-produced by Belgium, Luxembourg, Britain, Germany and France. The movie revolves around the main character, Maggie, a self described frumpy middle-aged grandmother played by Marianne Faithfull, who, by the circumstances surrounding her, is driven to accepting a job in one of the sleazy joints that London’s Soho district is known for. Marianne Faithfull gives a splendidly touching performance as Maggie in this heartwarming story in which Maggie’s grandson, Olly (Corey Burke), requires life saving treatment in Australia. Olly’s parents, Maggie’s son Tom (Kevin Bishop) and daughter-in-law, Sarah (Siobhán Hewlett) have no means of paying for the passage to Australia. Maggie desperately seeks a way to raise the required sum, and is unsuccessful in her attempts to persuade the banks to lend her the required amount. This does not stop her and she stumbles to Sexy World, a private club in Soho, where she sees a “Hostess Wanted” sign outside the door. In her desperation, Maggie naively walks through the door to discover that “Hostess”, as explained by club owner Miki (Miki Manojlovic), is a euphemism for “Whore”. Accepting a position offered, she eventually finds success as Irina Palm, eventually being able to raise the required sum.

Marianne Faithfull gives a splendid performance as Maggie a.k.a. Irina Palm for which she was nominated for the Best Actress Award at the European Film Awards in 2007.

Irina Palm is one of the delightful movies being lined up for the EUFF, which returns for its 20th year, and follows on its sell-out success last year. The festival aims to bring to local audiences a visual odyssey through the rich and diverse cultures of the European Union through 17 critically acclaimed films that have won awards and nominations in prestigious festivals such as Sundance, Cannes, and even includes an Oscar nominee.

The 20th EUFF is on at GV VivoCity from 6 to 16 May.

The EUFF also sees the EU encouraging cinematic exchange and fostering closer cultural exchange between Europe and Singapore, and will this year see the partnership of  Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Film and Media Studies (in screening some of its students’ best short films before the start of selected feature films) providing promising young filmmakers with an opportunity to see their works on the big screen alongside those of acclaimed directors, while offering the local audiences a glimpse of some of the young cinematic talents in Singapore.

The Programme for the 20th EUFF. 17 European films will be screened over 11 days.

Highlights of the festival include the opening film and gala premiere of Broken Embraces (Spain) by famed director Pedro Almodóvar, starring Penelope Cruz (one week ahead of its commercial launch); The Father of my Children (France), winner of a Special Jury Award at Cannes Film Festival in 2009; Unmade Beds (UK) – nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival; and The Secret of Kells (Ireland), an Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature Film in 2010. The Festival will be officially opened on 6 May 2010 at Golden Village VivoCity by Guest-of-Honour Mr Sam Tan, Parliamentary Secretary for Information, Communications and the Arts, and will run until at Golden Village VivoCity until 16 May 2010. More information on the EUFF and a synopsis of each of the films can be found at its website www.euff.sg. Tickets go on sale from 22 April 2010.

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About the EUFF:

The European Union Film Festival is an annual event that showcases a collection of films which draws on the diverse and rich culture of Europe. The film festival, now in its twentieth year, is a window into the intriguing world of European cinema. The films showcased in this festival may belong to a specific country, but they are all representative of Europe’s common cultural heritage. The richness of Europe’s culture is world renowned. Language, literature, performing arts, visual arts, architecture, crafts, broadcasting and of course, cinema all celebrates Europe’s cultural diversity and history.