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The dragon comes alive for Mid-Autumn
The Dragon has been brought to life for the third time this year, being fired up this time around for an international gathering of clay artists in Singapore for the International Chawan Exposition....
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The three last stages of Singapore
A structure that often featured in the rural landscape during the days of my childhood, was the wayang stage. Constructed usually out of wood, the wayang stage was often found in the vicinity of a...
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Remnants of a lost forest
The first Sunday in October had me paddling a kayak through what turned out to be a surprisingly area of mangroves in a part of Singapore where nature has long abandoned. Described by the Nature...
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The burning boat
One evening a year, a burning boat lights up the dark and forgotten shores of Kampong Wak Hassan. The fire burns quickly, its flames completely consuming the boat ‘s paper shell and its wooden frame in...
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One hundred steps to a new heaven?
It has been a while since I last ventured to the once magical world of Mount Sophia. Perched one hundred feet above the city, scaling its heights was best done on foot via a flight of one hundred steps...
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Horses dancing on the Istana’s lawn
One of the memories that connects me to Tanah Merah, a magical place that I dearly miss by the sea, is of seeing what had first appeared to me to be grown men at play on cardboard horses. Tanah Merah...
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A crestfallen ghost of the past
In a part in Singapore that is haunted by many of its ghosts of the past, is one that is quite a visible reminder of a time we may have forgotten. The area, temporarily a haven for trees and the winged...
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In passing: the former driving test centre
Built more to be functional than for any aesthetic appeal, the plain looking building along Commonwealth Avenue just across from where the Queenstown MRT Station is, is one that a generation or two of...
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The Fire Dragon’s Lair
It is in the last remnant of the village of sand that we find the lair of the fire dragon. The dragon, the only one in Singapore, lies in wait , its mouth wide open, expelling not a breath of fire, but...
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A paddle through the Jalan Gemala Nature Area
The Jalan Gemala area at Lim Chu Kang is as remote and wild as it can possibly get on the island of Singapore. Set along the banks of the upper reaches of the Sungei Kranji, once a tidal river lined...
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The tanks at Tanjong Berlayer
The impressions I have long held of the Tanjong Berlayer area were ones formed by the road journeys to the area of my early years. That came at the end of the 1960s when the squat cylindrical tanks at...
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New Year at the old harbour
An occasion that is celebrated in a big way in Singapore in the New Year, which since 2005, sees fireworks illuminate the night sky against the backdrop of the ultra modern skyline at Marina Bay. The...
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How the west was lost
The mention of Tuas, a far flung location in the west of Singapore, conjures up an image of its bleak and rather uninspiring industrial landscape, a patchwork of dull and faceless buildings within...
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Fragments of the old tiong
In a Singapore where we seem to be fond of displacing both the living and the dead, it always is a nice surprise when bits and pieces of the displace turn up in a space whose use has evolved. A recent...
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The Royal Singapore Flying Club at Kallang
It isn’t only a playable surface, the tolerance that both players and spectators had for the rain, and the roar that has been lost with the building of the new National Stadium at Kallang. The Royal...
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Where once there were trees …
Where trees once spoke to me, and birds rejoiced in the colours of the new day, there will now be no tomorrows, for the songs of yesterday … The magic of the new day, 18 February 2012, corner of Gambas...
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The magazine under Talbot’s Hill
An area of Singapore that still has much history buried under it is the area where the former British Naval Base was. Under parts of the former base, which covered an area stretching from the Causeway...
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Still in the dark, where the darkness began this Sunday, 73 years ago
In the darkness of a Sunday night, 73 years ago today, the end was to begin for Singapore. Just after 8 pm on 8 February 1942, the first wave of landings were made by Japanese troops along the poorly...
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Digging the Empress up in search of Singapura
Just six months or so after the dust seemed to have settled on Empress Place with completion of a four-year long refurbishment of the now almost too clean looking Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, the...
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Stumbling upon a Tiger’s lair …
The last tiger in Singapore may have roamed the island some eight decades ago. It does however appear that the island’s secondary forests still conceal a few tigers from a less distant past. I stumbled...
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