Welcoming the first of May

It is for this treat that was a most beautiful welcome to the new day that I am glad that I resisted the urge to have a sleep-in on the first of May – despite having arrived back in Singapore late the night before.

6.35 am.

6.39 am.

6.43 am.

6.47 am.

6.59 am.

7.03 am.

7.06 am.

7.09 am.

A sunrise to remember

A sunrise to remember in a part of Singapore we may soon have to forget, the un-manicured and rather wild looking shores of northern Singapore, off the former Kampong Wak Hassan.

First light, 6.35 am 30 March 2013.

Colours before the sunrise, 6.45 am 30 March 2013.

Colours, 6.55 am 30 March 2013.

Colours, 6.58 am 30 March 2013.

Colours, 7.07am 30 March 2013.

The rising sun, 7.11am 30 March 2013.

The rising sun, 7.12 am, 30 March 2013.

The rising sun, 7.14 am, 30 March 2013.

A sun rise on another strange horizon

Another strange horizon where the sun has risen on is one to the west of the city, and one which includes the island of Sentosa, once a military garrison named Pulau Blakang Mati and now a playground on which one of Singapore’s two integrated resorts has been built. It is across from the western end of the island – close to the area where the western rock of the “Dragon’s Teeth Gate” or “Batu Berlayer” at Tanjong Berlayer which together with another rocky outcrop, marked the ancient entrance to the harbour, that we now see the rising of the sun against silhouettes which are of another strange and unfamiliar world.

Another strange horizon that the sun rises on is at the historic Keppel Harbour. 6.51 am 22 March 2013.

Dominating the view across the horizon, are the six distinctive towers of the recently completed residential development “Reflections at Keppel Bay”, seemingly bowing to welcome the new day. That is the last of the developments to be completed on a 32 hectare site that was originally what may have been seen as a dirty and grimy shiprepair yard, Keppel Shipyard. The yard, besides being Singapore’s most established repair yard, boasted of having the oldest graving (dry) docks in Singapore, inheriting the docks from Port of Singapore Authority when its shiprepair operations were privatised in 1968.

Keppel Shipyard post 1983. Pulau Keppel in the foreground was developed after the land on which Victoria and Albert Docks to the east were taken over for an expansion of the Tanjong Pagar Container Terminal (photo on the Keppel Offshore and Marine website).

At the point that the yard vacated the area , which was in 1996 to move to Tuas allowing the land on which it stood to be redeveloped, four graving docks remained. This included Singapore’s very first graving dock, Dock No. 1. This was built by a British mariner, Captain William Cloughton, on land purchased in 1855 from the Temenggong of Singapore at what had been called  Pantai Chermin or “Mirror Beach”. Completed in 1859, it was Cloughton’s second attempt at constructing a dock there. The dock came under the Patent Slip and Dock Company when that was formed in 1861. A second dock company, the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company, added a second dock close by at Tanjong Pagar in 1868, Victoria Dock. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 also saw demand for ship repair increase. Patent build their second dock, Dock No. 2 in 1870. Tanjong Pagar followed with Albert Dock in 1879. Both Albert and Victoria Docks were filled in at the end of 1983, when the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) took them over to allow an expansion of the container terminal at Tanjong Pagar.

Map of Singapore Harbour in the 1950s. The location of the Victoria and Albert Docks as well as Docks No. 1, No. 2 and King’s Dock can be seen in relation to the coastline.

The two rival dock companies were to merge in 1881. Patent, which had been renamed New Harbour Dock Company, came under the control of Tanjong Pagar. This private entity was expropriated by the colonial authorities in 1905, passing control of the docks to the Tanjong Pagar Dock Board. The Singapore Harbour Board took over the operations of the shipping related activities along the waterfront in 1913, launching King’s Dock, in the same year. At 272 metres in length, it was reportedly the largest graving dock east of Suez and the second largest graving dock in the world at the time of its build. A last graving dock was to be added in 1956 – the Queen’s Dock. The PSA took over from the Harbour Board in 1963, before control of the shiprepair docks were transferred to Keppel Shipyard in 1968.

Kings Dock at the time of its completion in 1913.

The development of Reflections at Keppel Bay, on the plot of land west of Queen’s Dock, was preceded by other developments in the area vacated by Keppel Shipyard. On Keppel Island (or Pulau Keppel), a marina, the Marina at Keppel Bay was completed in 2008. The island is linked to the mainland by Keppel Bay Bridge, completed in 2007.  Pulau Keppel, which was previously known as Pulau Hantu (one of two Pulau Hantu or “Ghost Islands” in our southern islands group), was itself a more recent development. An extension to the shipyard was built on it in 1983 when Victoria and Albert Docks were transferred to the PSA for redevelopment. It was renamed Pulau Keppel at the same time. Another development in the area is another residential one, the Carribbean at Keppel Bay. This was completed in 2004 and occupies the area around the oldest docks, No. 1 and No. 2. The four rather historic docks, have been retained in some form, and are now water channels within the developments.

Singapore Harbour Board Map, c. 1920s.

For the area, the year 1983 is one that will probably be remembered less for the development of the former Pulau Hantu or the loss of the historically significant Victoria and Albert Docks, but for the tragic events of the evening of the 29th of January.  On the evening of the fateful day, a drillship, the Eniwetok, leaving Keppel Shipyard, drifted into the Sentosa cable car system. Its drilling derrick became entangled in a cable causing two cabins to fall into the sea killing seven people. Another four were left dangling precariously with some 13 terrified passengers trapped inside. A daring but successful rescue attempt directed by our present Prime Minister, then Colonel Lee Hsien Loong, was mounted involving the use of two helicopters operating in high winds from which rescue personnel were winched down to the cabins to pull the 13 to safety, one-by-one.

It is no longer cranes, workshops, keel blocks and large ships around the dock that we see today (a photograph of a graving dock at the former Keppel Shipyard posted on the Captain’s Voyage Forum).

Waking up to a Keppel Harbour today in which there is little to remind us of the world that once was. With the docks now disguised to blend into the new world that has been built around them, we will soon forget what they were and the contribution they made to the development of the port on which much of Singapore’s early success was built. The four docks (as well as the two to the east) were also very much the stepping stones over which the shiprepair industry, an important source of jobs in the post independent economy of Singapore, was built. It is a fate that will probably befall the place where another leading pioneer shiprepair company, Sembawang Shipyard, now operates at. That yard, together with its historic docks built to support the huge British Naval Base, was the subject of a recent Land Use Plan released to support the much talked about Population White Paper. It is mentioned in the plan that “new waterfront land along the Sembawang Coastline being freed up once existing shipyard facilities are phased out” to provide land for new business activities and it may not be far away before we would have yet another strange horizon for the sun to rise up to.

The sun rises on a strange horizon

A sunrise over a strange and unfamiliar horizon, 7.08 am 20 March 2013, taken from the mouth of the Kallang River. It wasn’t so long ago that the view would have been towards the pods of the former Oasis Restaurant; the silhouettes not of the clutter of tower cranes that have become all too common a sight in Singapore, but that of the floodlight towers of the old National Stadium.

The old stadium, home of the once feared Kallang Roar, with its many memories of days when football was played and supported for the love of the game, has since been torn down, and out of the ashes of the well loved grand old dame,  a new stadium – the Singapore Sports Hub is rising. That is scheduled to be opened in April 2014.

The sun will soon rise over the Singapore Sports Hub (currently under construction).

A sunrise over the new Singapore

Singapore has, in close to half a century of its existence as an independent nation, seen a dramatic transformation not just as a nation but in the development of the city. There is nowhere, perhaps, where the change is as striking as it is in the new city that has risen from the sea – the Marina City Centre, built on land reclaimed on what had once been the old harbour. The new world is also perhaps where some of the more dramatic sunrises over the city can be observed, particularly against the silhouettes of what has certainly become one of the most photographed places in Singapore, the very iconic Marina Bay Sands complex.

Sunrise over the new world 7.29 am 8 February 2013.

Another Wak Hassan sunrise

This morning’s sunrise taken at 6.57 am and 7.22 am:

Mornings far from the madding crowds

A place I am glad is there – at least for now, in which I find an escape from the unbearably overcrowded world Singapore has become, is a quiet and somewhat forgotten corner of northern Singapore where the former Kampong Wak Hassan once was. It has become for me not just a world where I run off to for that rare moment of calm, but also where I am able to take in the joy and the surprise that the break of day brings in the changing hues at sunrise …

6.53 am 28 January 2013.

6.59 am 29 January 2013.

A sunrise over the rail corridor

It was around the time of Sunday’s sunrise under the red lightening sky that a long train snaked its way out of Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, a little more than a year and a half after the last train left the station. Sunday’s train wasn’t one that was pulled along by a locomotive of course – most of the railway tracks along the rail corridor have since been removed, but a human train of runners pulled along by a Kenyan who led from start to finish in what is the inaugural Green Corridor Run which is thought to have attracted as many as 6,000 runners. The race took runners along the rail corridor on a 10.5 km route from Tanjong Pagar to the former Bukit Railway Station – a distance which the trains would cover in about fifteen minutes. The race winner, Samson Tenai, 32, need just a little more than double that – he covered the distance in a time of 34 minutes 11 seconds.

7.09 am : Colours of sunrise.

7.14 am : A plane is seen over the container cranes against the sunrise coloured sky.

The entire rail corridor which stretches some 26 km from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands has been the subject of much interest since the agreement to handover the land on which the Malaysian Government owned railway, Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM), operated a railway line, was announced in May 2010.

7.20 am : The first runners are seen already building up a lead over the chasing pack. Seen in the lead is Kenyan Samson Tenai, the eventual winner of the race who completed the 10.5 km course in about 34 minutes.

Relatively untouched by urban development for some 79 years of the rail’s operation through much of it, the corridor features large tracts of greenery. Interest groups and individuals have called for the preservation of the corridor for its heritage and potential for community use such as a running course, and as a unbroken bicycle path that takes one from the north of the island to an area close to the city with possible links to the park connector network. The Minister for National Development, Mr Khaw Boon Wan, announced plans to preserve the rail corridor in July 2011. Since then, a Rail Corridor Partnership has been formed with stakeholders from both Government Agencies, interest groups and members of the public involved. Plans are currently being formulated for future use of the rail corridor.

7.20 am : The rush of runners. Some 6000 runners are thought to have participated in the run.

7.22 am : The chasing pack makes it way past the former signal hut at Tanjong Pagar.

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More information on the former Railway and the Rail Corridor:

• Journeys through Tanjong Pagar (a collection of posts on journeys made through the rail corridor)
• Support The Green Corridor (a collection of posts related to the call to preserve the corridor’s greenery)

A sunrise from 5 years ago

It was close to the time of when this photograph of the sunrise over the South Channel separating the island of Penang from the mainland was taken that I wrote the first words of this blog. That was some five years ago today on 20 January 2008, which does make it the blog’s 5th Anniversary today (although I only began actively maintaining it from May 2009).

A sunrise 5 years ago.

Sunrise on a day some said the sun would not rise

7.04am 21 December 2012. Sunrise over the Straits of Johor.

Two December’s Sunrises

This year’s North-East Monsoons has brought us lots of rain, so much so that the sky at dawn has more often than not been covered in a pall of grey cloud with spectacular shows of colour at sunrise being very much a rarity this month. The pall did seem to lift the last two mornings which did result with two very different and unusual celebrations of the new day:

6.46 am , 19 Dec 2012, Kampong Wak Hassan.

7.03 am 20 December 2012, Upper Seletar Reservoir.

Seeing the light

Colours at the break of day at 6.45 am on 4 November 2012 and on 7 November 2012:

The sun sets as dawn breaks

It has been a while since I last took the effort to welcome the new day. The haze filtered sunrises of late have been somewhat subdued and rather uninspiring. One sunrise that I did manage to catch was on the morning of Hari Raya Haji, as the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha is known to us in Singapore, at what has become one of my favourite spots to welcome the day in Singapore, the water’s edge where the former Kampong Wak Hassan once was. The show of colours that accompanied the sunrise were not one of the more spectacular shows that I have observed at the spot. It was however one that was unusual – the cloud laden sky that might have provided the canvas for a dull pink and grey painting did instead find itself decorated with a purple hue at first light, with pockets of gold in places where the clouds had parted.

6.25 am, 26 October 2012.

7.09am, 26 October 2012.

In the glow of the light of the rising sun, I am for a brief moment fooled into thinking that I had found myself in the world that once. I see the silhouette of a man standing by a net. It is not the net of fishermen however that I see, but one of the modern world to keep us from a part of the sea wall which is in imminent danger of collapsing. The sea wall is perhaps one of the last that’s standing in the area to remind us of that world that once was, its resistance against not just the forces of the environment but also of the winds of change, proving somewhat futile. The winds of change do in fact seem to be blowing in the direction of the area – a large part of undeveloped land to the south of the former kampong has been placed behind hoardings – possibly being cleared for the beginnings of the huge sea of grey that is to be Simpang New Town, a new Housing and Development Board (HDB) estate planned for the area that will stretch eastwards to Sungei Seletar (Seletar River).

It is not the nets of fishermen that we now see.

The sea wall at the former Kampong Wak Hassan is collapsing.

The land which has been placed behind hoardings was for a while a wild and partly wooded area. Cleared out at the end of the 1980s, it had been a piece of land in an area dominated by rivers that ran through it, the swamp land around the coastal and estuarine areas, fish ponds that were carved out of the swamps, kampongs, rubber plantations and coconut groves. It was one hidden from most of us and one that I have very little knowledge of, except for the stretch on the northern coast where Kampong Wak Hassan was, eastwards to Tanjong Irau at the mouth of Sungei Simpang.

A once beautiful area seen which is now being cleared for possibly what is the beginnings of the HDB’s new Simpang estate, 1 April 2012.

My first encounters with the piece of land were in the mid 1990s. It was not more than a barren piece of land then, land which had just been cleared and levelled of the undulations that had once shaped the landscape that was then used for military training. Each encounter was one that required a bumpy passage, which, when seated at the back of a 3-tonner, often meant inhaling an unhealthy dose of dust that the trucks threw up.

A different mood on a misty morning, 28 August 2012.

My brief encounters with the piece of land in more recent times had been happier ones. Besides it being a wonderful place to catch the varying moods that accompany the brightening of the new day, it also is a piece of greenery in which I could find great peace in. I am greatly saddened that as with another place not so far away that I had enjoyed celebrating the new day in, it may never again be.

The view out the window this morning

It is always a wonderful thing to be able to wake up to a magical sunrise as the one I got up to this morning in a world other than one I am familiar with …

The last time ever I saw your face

In a Singapore that is changing too fast, it is not only places from the distant past, but also places that we have become acquainted with in more recent times to in more recent times, that are disappearing all to quickly. One such place is a little corner of the new Sembawang, a mostly residential neighbourhood that has risen out of the ashes of parts of what had been Chong Pang Village. The corner was an area that had for a while been left undeveloped with a few mature trees on it, silhouettes of which against the backdrop of the break of day to the east, made for an especially pretty sight. It will however, not be the silhouettes of trees that we now will see, but that of bulldozers that uprooted the trees at the end of the last week, silhouettes that will, as were those of the trees, be all but temporary – the dark shadows cast by a cold grey industrial building will all too soon dominate the once pretty view. And when those shadows are cast, I will be glad to have seen the corners as it once was, for it will not be the shadows or the cold grey structure that I see, but that of my memory of it in its former glory.

The fire in the sky, 18 February 2012.

Sunrise, 28 February 2012.

Sunrise, 10 March 2012.

Sunrise, 19 May 2012.

Sailing off into the sunrise

The rising sun, 7.16 am, 14 August 2012.

The sun rises on independent Singapore’s 47th birthday

Photographs of the spectacular break of day I was very fortunate to have witnessed on the morning of Singapore’s 47th birthday. The first photograph was taken at 6.41 am and the last at 7.15 am and were taken at a natural beach along Singapore’s northern coastline that I hope will be left as it is …

The joy of the morning

Dawn is a time that never fails to bring much pleasure to me. It is a time when the day is fresh, calm and free from anger … a time to pause and reflect before the rush of the day begins. It is also a time which always surprises, sometimes with that quiet celebration that can accompany the break of day, one that is expressed in a show of joy that paints the canvas that is the sky in a way that only the dawn is able to.

The celebration of the new day, 6.50 am, 24 June 2012.

A different day, a different celebration, 6.57 am, 22 June 2012.

A face in the cloud

A face that, if you look closely, can be seen in the clouds during sunrise on 18 June 2012.

Changing moods of a changing face

Marina Bay is where the most dramatic of changes that the city of Singapore has seen over the last 30 years has probably taken place. It is now a showcase of the new Singapore – one that reflects how the mood of a nation that emerged out of uncertain times to where it finds itself now, proudly standing on its own. The bay as it is referred to now, was once the harbour – the harbour on which modern Singapore was founded on and from which much of its people and its wealth came in from. Cut off from the sea that brought it life by the reclamation of land and the construction of the Marina Barrage, the old harbour is now part of a large body of fresh water – an important reserve of the important resource that Singapore has always struggled with. Beyond that, it has also become the showcase of Singapore’s transformation with several rather iconic developments rising around the bay that has given the area a ‘wow’ factor. Even as I struggle to come to grips with this new world that has replaced much of what I loved of the Singapore that I grew up in, I must admit that I find myself in celebration of this new world. The new world in reflecting the changed mood of the nation is probably also where it is best to capture the changing mood of each day at daybreak – which I have tried to do on four out of five working days this week … the photographs that follow are taken at about the same time on each of the four days, each capturing a very different mood.

The calm after the storm

28 May 2012, 6.37 am.

A clear day

30 May 2012, 6.36 am.

The calm before the storm

31 May 2012, 6.38 am.

In the midst of a storm

1 June 2012, 6.39 am.