Because at yesterday.sg, people and memories as treasures – and so you could say that this picture is a treasure-map! It first glance, it’s a map of Geylang today, but the hand-drawn markings by Uncle Dicko are of Siang Lim Park, which is now occupied by the condos Sunny Spring and the Waterina. Before 1955, Siang Lim Park was occupied by rows of Terrace Houses, and one of them (marked by #1) was where Uncle Dicko and his family lived.
The sunrays of the morning are the first to rouse you from your sleepy state. Stretch, stifle a yawn…would you have thought how different it was for those who lived through the war-torn days of 1942 Singapore?
War On Wheels is now open for the first time to the public. You have read the written posts, watched the episodes filmed and browsed through the photos taken in the last trial run. The War On Wheels programme has been revisited, tweaked and fine-tuned, just for you. Invasion Singapore!, the day journey brings you to non-mainstream venues including the Kranji War Memorial, Memories at Old Ford Factory, and Reflections at Bukit Chandu begins this November 14th, and again on 21st and the 28th.
Night owls might prefer to hoot along to Singapore Under the Gun, the evening tour. Listen to tear-stained stories of Changi Museum and Chapel, weep along to the unjustified deaths at the Sook Ching Massacre site (never again will Changi Beach seem the same to you) and dwell deep beneath in an underground bunker left behind under Fort Canning at the Battle Box. The giant monster gun at Johore Battery stands silently admist the stillness of surrounding palm trees, as a fatal reminder to the dark days of the Japanese Occupation.
Get a taste of it through our test-run and war-related stories …
Fantasies of the Unconscious: Sunshine Ain’t Free
Fantasies of the Unconscious: Fire in the Sky
A Do or Die decision
What’s Important to You?
We are living in the summer of your sacrifice
Lest we forget
Or watch this episode of Heritage TV that captured the experience of War on Wheels in May 2009.
Cast your fate to memories more than 60 years ago – get your tickets now!
It was 1975.
Skaters whizzed furiously pass her on the ice as she precariously tried to skate on her own. Dressed in a dark velvet jacket, she was determined to maintain a graceful poise despite her awkward moves. A nice young man who watched the girl from afar, glided towards her. With a warm smile, he offered to teach her the basic steps to ice-skating.
He was 23, she was 17.
They got married nine years later.
I’m sure I had been told the story before … probably years ago but it was since forgotten.
The subject came up purely by chance a few weeks back during one of my long-overdue visits to my mother’s place.
“I’m going next week to the Kranji War Memorial,” I announced. Well up to that point it was a rather dull conversation so even an intended visit to graveyard had an edge of excitement!
“Don’t forget to visit your grandfather” she intoned.
“Huh?” was my reply.
Mum rolls her eyes to heaven (yeah sarcasm runs deep in the family) … and so the story was retold…
I wrote recently about the value of historical novels in raising awareness of the past. Well!
An unabashed historical novel has just won the Man Booker Prize.
It’s a little Eurocentric, but that’s not the point. The article says it all. People discover history through the historical novel.
Follow the links for a great exposition of why people read historical novels.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6866930.ece
Shouldn’t Singapore embrace the historical novel and involve young people in their history?
EDITOR’S NOTE:::
Dawn Farnham is an author of two books of historical fiction based in Singapore, The Red Thread and The Shallow Seas, which are Book One and Book Two in a series. She is currently working on Book Three, The Hills of Singapore. Do read her blog post where she speaks of her books here.
“So, are you a digital native?”, my biology lecturer asked the class. Save for a few students who knew what he was talking about, the rest of us, brow-wrinkled, pondered on how that was even remotely linked to what we were about to study during our first week of school.
Thankfully, he clarified himself and wanted to know how comfortable we were completing online quizzes as part of our module. Indeed, Seoul, where my lecturer is from, is among the best in Asia when it comes to wiring up homes to the Internet. The last time I was there, most homes and many city subway stations were Internet-connected. As more wireless hot spots have sprung up across our little island, it is easy to see how the Internet has made a permanent change in the way the people work, study and live.
Computers of old - bulky and very chunky. (Courtesy of Google Images)
Stemming from a government initiative more than a decade ago, Singapore has benefitted tremendously from the Internet revolution. While I have been a digital migrant from a very young age, I still remember the times when the closest thing we had to the Internet was the Teleview, which was a program one could access from terminals at various shopping centres. At that time, I remembered using some text-based services – very much like the Teletext today – to send mails, at a cost, of course. And all this when I was still in kindergarten!
Not too long after that experience, I realised that my personal computer had a dial-up modem installed and I quickly started reading up on what I could do with it. Lo and behold, I found out that I could access Teleview from my computer and managed to get some telephone numbers off Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) – a computer software that allows users to download programmes, read news and exchange messages. At that time, I probably didn’t understand how things worked or what was happening; much less, what the entire picture was all about.
A concrete jungle such as Singapore is more inclined to feature modern structures streaking towards the sky than lush foliage. The Singapore Botanic Gardens, however, is one of the few places in our cosmopolitan city that is dedicated to showcasing our country’s flora and fauna.
Founded by Sir Stamford Raffles who was a keen naturalist, the original Botanic Gardens was first established on Fort Canning Hill in 1822. He had aimed to introduce the cultivation of economic crops such as cocoa and nutmeg but due to insufficient funding, the garden was closed in 1829 after Raffles’ death. With the help of the Agri-Horticultural Society, the gardens moved to its present site Cluny Road in 1859 and has since provided a place for horticultural research and development.
When the Heritage TV team made a trip down to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, the skies were overcast and grey clouds loomed with vengence. We didn’t complain much because the lack of sun meant we wouldn’t be sweating buckets as we usually did when filming.
In this vivid recollection, Freddy Neo writes about growing up near the Pierce Reservoir and passing the time catching freshwater crabs and fish. How many kids today can claim to do the same?
Are you a Night Person?
Are you a Day Person?
Or are you both?
Experience Singapore Literature is NLB’s initiative to create an accessible platform for the showcase of Singapore Literature. We believe that literature is best encountered and remembered through experience, and have adopted an experiential approach towards the delivery of this suite of programmes. With the theme ‘Uncovering Singapore’, discover and learn more about local literary content through a set of immersive experiences and inspirations.
Join us for a Symposium on 30 & 31 October! Forget about sitting and listening to boring discussions. We will be bringing you unique Experiences which are more exciting and on a bigger scale! As the name suggests, we want YOU to Experience literature. Come along and meet the ‘greats’ of the literary circles!
A thing is not beautiful because it is beautiful, it is beautiful because one likes it.
And that may very well be true. We’ve arrived at a time where art comes in form of a dead shark disintegrating in formaldehyde…
Damien Hirst
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
…lights that go on and off every five seconds in an empty room
Martin Creed
Work No. 227, the lights going on and off
…and an unmade bed littered with cigarette stubs and used condoms on its side.
Tracey Emin
My Bed
While you might wrinkle your nose in distaste, these artists have been nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize at one point in their lives and have made critically acclaimed works in the last two decades.
You might wonder, do artists these days just have a tendency to out-shock and out-mortify one another, that contemporary works no longer exude a quiet beauty about them? Art school grads are equipped with knowledge to better understand conceptual works like these, but are prone to knowing too much to fully appreciate them. What about the man on the street?
