If we could gaze into the past, we would be able to see this make shift barber shop here.(The picture should show a Malay barber with a small lion's mane....but I cannot find anything from the NET leh).
This original "Express Cut" shop was located just behind my grandma's home. (Now the Link Hotel).
This was where my grandma would send my younger brother and me for our monthly haircut.
I still remember I hated the solution they apply on your skin before shaving it. My skin itched like crazy after that.
Today, the place is just a void and there is nothing there to remind anyone of what existed here before.
Keeping a piece of our roots alive may be just as important as modernisation By Tessa Wong
WHILE the crowds at Marina Bay jostled to catch the National Day Parade last Thursday, I watched a different national spectacle in the cinema just across the road. It was Royston Tan's 881, the colourful getai flick which unabashedly celebrates all things heartlander. While both were equally imbued with national pride, they couldn't be more different in meaning.
To me, a young Singaporean, they also represented a subtle ongoing war of ideology waged on behalf of our young.
With its fancy military displays and dazzling high-tech special effects, the parade championed our relentless march towards progress set against emblems of the future, the Central Business District skyline and the ongoing construction of the New Downtown at Marina Bay.
The film 881 was, on the other hand, a showcase of our homegrown culture set against a nostalgic view of Singapore, complete with crumbling buildings and retro 70s costumes.
It is, perhaps, an example of the increasing hunger among some young Singaporeans to capture and preserve our heritage against the onslaught of modernisation.
This is not necessarily restricted to professional artists or filmmakers.
Even ordinary youths are doing it, from history students who contribute to the blog Citizen
Historian, to amateur photographers who visit forgotten spaces in Singapore and post pictures on photo-sharing website Flickr.
One notable grassroots example is the Magical Spaces Project by the online magazine Five Foot Way.
Inspired by a column written by Straits Times journalist Hong Xinyi, the project encourages people to submit written or drawn expressions of what they think are 'magical spaces', or ordinary places which are of special significance, in Singapore.
Cynics may find such obsessions a waste of time, or worse, twee and faddish, akin to teens crazy about vintage clothing and 80s indie music because it's the 'in' thing now.
But I think such earnest efforts to defend, or at least preserve, our cultural heritage in small but significant ways, are touching.
Their core message, that Singapore with all its flaws is still worthy of treasuring, runs counter to what our materialistic society preaches - that a shiny modern future ruled by progress is the way forward.
I don't doubt the need for constant innovation to stay competitive.
But there is a price for such efforts, and I'm not sure whether this is really being taught or learnt at all when places of significance, such as Clifford Pier and the National Library, are knocked down for the sake of 'national progress'. Or, when the current en bloc fever demolishes homes left, right and centre.
What is the point of being taught in school that our history is important when your favourite haunt disappears, or when your home has to make way for a spanking new skyscraper?
Showing you care for Singapore goes beyond the nationalistic pomp and pageantry of National Day. It is also about recognising that modernisation inevitably costs us important parts of our heritage.
The generations who come after us need to know this in order to make the right decisions for this country's future. Who better to teach this than youth like ourselves?
Preparation for the Hungry Ghost festival has begun island wide. Designated custodians of the tradition has started stocking up the tentages with offerings and stuff to be blessed.
For the TiongBahru estate, the venue is at the badminton court in between block 38 and 49 Kim Pong road.
The welcome party for the "good brothers" will commence tomorrow evening while the annual "dinner and dance" will be held on Tuesday night. But not sure if there's gonna be any dance (GETAI) as my source told me that there is lesser participation and contribution and that event might be scrapped due to a lack of funds.
I guess the demographics in TiongBahru are fast changing and the newer residents here are not active participants.
But if there is a GETAI performance, many of us will become passive participants. Since it is free, we just go, watch and be entertained lah.
Before the old TiongBahru market was demolished to make way for the existing one, no one could missed this neatly dressed fortune teller along Kim Cheng Street.
If you have him for a neighbour, you would have no problem believing that he is a TOWKAY or someone who works in the Shenton Way area just from his dressing and the accessories he carries.
Crisp shirt, trendy pants, and a POWER briefcase. (This is the man who may have inspired all the PORTA-thingy that was to come.)
After opening his briefcase to "touch base" with his bosses, he is ready for business. (Actually he looks like some middle management kinda guy as he is the conduit between the people and his bosses. )
As his office is ALFRESCO inspired, his work hours is quite short too. I think he leaves for home after lunch as he cannot TAHAN the heat from his job. But his bosses never complaint about him skiving on the job. So I supposed they must be quite pleased with his work competence.
I think there was another "fortune" teller along this street and he differentiate himself from the competition with a parrot. That parrot would help pick some divine sticks to predict the client's future.
My grandma used to patronise these folks with the hopes of getting some divine numbers to improve her probability at "CHAP JIKEE". Whenever she "strike", she would share her winning with me by giving me 50 cents. I never had many 50 cents from her.
This would have been the spot where the Porta-Deity consultant would have sat today.
I AM neither an architect nor a history buff. However, a part of me died a little when I read the story, Here Today, Gone Tomorrow (LifeStyle, Aug 5).
I am only in my mid-30s and I cannot show my young children the library and the live theatre I used to visit. Growing up in Chinatown, I saw how the life and soul of the area were taken away and reduced to what many see today - a tourist trap.
I saw beautiful pre-war houses in Teo Hong Road and New Bridge Road - homes to average folk - being taken away, only to make way for carparks. I do not deny that many buildings in Chinatown have been preserved, and elsewhere too, but for whom and to what extent? Were our pre-war houses painted in bright multi-colours like you see today? Did they house mostly bars, pubs and restaurants? Did the shopkeepers sell keychains, T-shirts and CDs? Is it not an irony that we spend money telling the world that we are 'Uniquely Singapore' yet we keep on destroying what is uniquely Singaporean?
We have replaced uniquely Singaporean architecture with 'iconic' modern buildings built by foreign talents.
While I understand that Singapore needs attractive man-made attractions like theme parks and casinos to attract tourists to stay economically healthy, I hope that the authorities would realise that it is the human geography of a country that touches the hearts of many visitors. It is what gives a place authenticity and culture, and which will win the hearts of people.
With Singapore-style architecture disappearing, our indigenous identity is on its way to a slow demise.
Singapore’s history is already young. With the architectural heritage weakening, the day will come when instead of showing my grandchildren the places I used to go or have fond memories of, they would be showing me their latest playgrounds instead.
Meanwhile, I will spend my next weekend visiting the horse-shoe Pearl Bank Apartments to show my daughters that this is the place where Mummy first earned her keep as a young student tutor.
I was watching 前线追踪 (FRONTLINE) on channel 8 at 10:30pm just now and saw a story being done on TiongBahru.
This time around, the story about TiongBahru was not all sugar, spice and everything nice. Instead, it focused on the pent up frustrations of a TiongBahru resident here.
What was the frustration about? Illegal roofs on the ground floors and illegal occupation of common areas....namely the common courtyard.
There are basically 2 types of ground floor units in TiongBahru. One type are those with an EXCLUSIVE courtyard while the other types are those WITHOUT the courtyard.
I have come across many buyers, including agents, who thought that all the courtyards are taken over by the owners illegally. THIS IS NOT TRUE.
Some courtyard have the fire escape staircases that leads all the way to the back wall while some fire escape staircases ended in the middle of the courtyard. Because these staircases ended in the middle, such courtyards cannot be closed up and the courtyard remains a common area. (Some residents have built their own perimeter walls in these type of courtyard. The considerate ones will create a walkway to the back door for the residents above to use while some.....well, you can just discern that they hardly or never spare a thought for their neighbours.)
Another type of courtyard found here are those blocks built on high gradient grounds. If you walk around block 78,79 or 80, you may have noticed that the ground floor units from the front are actually located on level two from the rear.
I think the British wanted to built bomb shelters all around block 78,79 and 80 but probably changed their mind halfway through the construction. This has resulted in many ORPHANED courtyards around here.
Why ORPHANED? Because no one would use them as they are located one floor below the ground floor unit. The story tonight is about these ORPHANED courtyards.
A resident living in Block 78 Yong Siak Street alerted MediaCorp about someone using the common courtyard illegally. He claimed that he has complained to the town council and HDB branch office but till today, no action has been taken. So he has no choice but to take drastic action.
He claimed that he has no issues with the illegal usage of the common area within the courtyard space as it could be kept clean in the past. But when illegal user padlocked the courtyard and installed some barb-wires on top of the roofs, the cleaners could not access the area and a lot of thrash has accumulated there. That really irked him a great deal. The tons of rubbish seems to have come from level 3 and 4 which are tenanted to nurses and workers. Even the ground floor unit is currently tenanted.
The reporter investigated and found out that the ground floor owner who has illegally used the common area runs a provision shop a few doors away and the reporter brought in the camera.
Initially the shopkeeper was cordial and claimed that the roofs are all temporary structures and can be taken down at a moment's notice. She also admitted to storing her display racks there (I think they have all rusted).
Then the shopkeeper became annoyed and asked who ratted on her. You could sense her restrained anger when she was told that it was her neighbours upstairs who squealed on her. She immediately telephone her neighbour and ask why she brought in the media circus without prior notice. (Quite hilarious actually).
Her elderly neighbour then appear and tried to shift the blame to her brother. After which, everyone went to her home to check out the situation. Indeed there were a lot of trash on the roof. The reporter also interviewed the family next door and that lady immediately accuse all the tenants of the misdeeds. She claimed that it was the nurses and workers who smokes and drinks and litter all over the place.
The reporter then confronted the nurses and workers. The nurse seems decent and I kinda believe that they don't smoke or drink. But when one of the workers was interviewed, he kept shaking his head and said that they were not responsible. And after much probing, he says he was not sure as he never saw anyone smoked or drank and so he assumed that it was not his flatmates.
Anyway, the story ended off by saying that HDB and the TanjongPagar Town Council will look into the matter and take appropriate actions.
I think the irate resident has gotten his point across loud and clear tonight. But in the process, he may have lost a neighbour and a friend.
Let's hope residents in TiongBahru will never resort to using National TV to wash all their dirty linens again.
Note : (As I do not have a DVD recorder, I scrambled to record the documentary from my digital camera but.......my camera memory space ran out after 2 minutes. Sorry folks. maybe you can watch it from MobTV. In future, if you need to record any local channel shows in advance, you can do so at RecordTV. By the way, there is a re-run next Tuesday afternoon and I have preset RecordTV to record it. Hopefully I can update this post with a full video)
Tiong Bahru Estate is just 17 minutes North of the equator........in nautical terms.
This place is just 2 minutes away from the higher profile marina club, ONEº15.
Though Tiong Bahru may not be the EXISTING playground for the rich, famous and successful, it was probably once a home to these rich, famous and successful people.
I heard from a long time resident here that one of Singapore's most successful banker once lived in the Tiong Bahru Estate when he arrived here from China.
