Dawn in the new world

6.38 am on 23 July 2013. The colours of the breaking day illuminate the icons of the new Singapore, which the Merlion probably best represents. The body of water, Marina Bay, now a reservoir of fresh water, had once been the sea where the inner harbour, the Inner Roads, once fed Singapore with its immigrants and with goods from east and west , the foundation on which Singapore’s early success was built upon.

Strange Horizons: The giant spinning tops off Tampines Road

What does look like two giant spinning tops from the bottom of a grassy slope along Tampines Road are actually two concrete inverted cone shaped storage tanks built to each hold 8448 cubic metres of NEWater – water recycled from waste treated to become drinking quality water. The elevated tanks which measure 43 metres in diameter at the top, make up the Tampines NEWater Service Reservoir maintained by the Public Utilities Board (PUB) provide storage for NEWater produced nearby for use by nearby electronic chip manufacturing factories which require very clean water.

Strange Horizons: A mound of sand where the sea once was

A somewhat curious sight that greets a drive or a ride through Pulau Punggol Timor, is the mound that is seen in the photograph. The mound is one of two very obvious one found on a man-made island off the northeastern coast of Singapore, Pulau Punggol Timor. The island is one of two which came out of a huge land reclamation project along the Northeastern coastline of Singapore that took place from 1985 to 1990 to provide land primarily for future public housing, the other island being Pulau Punggol Barat.  The reclamation project which added a land area of some 685 ha. was also supposed to have seen Coney Island or Pulau Serangoon joined to the mainland, but that part of the project was deferred. The islands are located off the coast just north of the area where an old world, that of the former Seletar Camp, had once existed, between the mouths of the Sungei Seletar to the wast and Sungei Punggol to the east (both of which have since been dammed). The camp which came out of the former RAF Seletar was home to several army units including Combat Engineer units is in the midst of being transformed into the Seletar Aerospace Park.

Since 2009, the otherwise undeveloped Pulau Punggol Timor, has played host to a construction aggregates receiving terminal (which moved there from Lorong Halus), as well a storage area for the aggregates. Besides the mound of sand – a mound of granite can also be seen.