On the occasion of Chun See’s daughter passing her driving test, Chun See blogs about taking his own journey on learning how to drive at the now-defunct Queenstown Driving Test Centre.

I took my driving lessons from a driving school located at Niven Road, near to the former Rex Theatre, and opposite the Selegie Complex. Those days, we have the ‘pow chia’ or ‘guarantee pass’ system whereby you paid a fixed fee and they will keep training you until you passed your driving test.

My instructor was a very nasty and hot-tempered fellow who drove like a demon. I often got verbally abused by him. As an engineering undergrad in the local university, being called stupid wasn’t exactly ego-boosting. Some more, when I finally passed, the guy had the gall to hint that I should give him a tip saying that his other students often gave up him a big ang pow. No way man! Not when I paid for the driving lessons and tests with my hard-earned money from giving maths tuition during my long vacation.

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Most of my lessons were held in the vicinity of the Queenstown Driving Test Centre at Commonwealth Avenue, just next to the present Queenstown MRT station. But for my first lesson, my instructor brought me to a secluded spot near a graveyard along Kheam Hock Road. It was here that we practised how to do parking with the wooden poles as guide posts.

Read the full post here.

Tags: driving, Good Morning Yesterday, Queenstown Driving Test Centre