Category: History

Retracing the Jurong railway line extension

Clementi Road

I recently went on a trek led by the Singapore Adventurers’ Club to retrace the Jurong railway line extension. It was built in the 1960s to freight supplies from Malaysia to the newly established Jurong Industrial Estate and branched out from the existing railway line just after the Bukit Timah station. By the 1990s, a declining usage of this extension led to its shutdown and this segment of the railway line was abandoned and left to be reclaimed by nature, squatters and most recently, the state.

By July this year, the railway’s station at Tanjong Pagar station will be relocated to Woodlands as part of a land swap deal between the Singapore and Malaysia governments. Now the question on the minds of many, is what will happen to the existing railway line and lands? The Nature Society (Singapore) has put up an interesting proposal to reclaim it as a ‘green corridor’, but it may already be too late.

Read about the latest development on Reclaim Land and retrace a railway now filled with the wonders of nature, forgotten communities, and memories of Singapore’s yesteryear.

A forgotten medium of graphic design in S’pore

Matchboxes were once commonly given out free in restaurants, banks and hotels in Singapore. They were a common item used by smokers, but also an everyday source of heat and light before electricity and gas became widely available here. On these 5.5cm x 3.5cm boxes also contained graphic art of the times, as organisations used them to promote their companies.

I learnt about them recently through local matchbox collector Yeo Hong Eng, who recently gave a talk about his collection at Bedok library. He was also featured in the Straits Times. Yeo has kindly shared these images of his matchboxes with me. If you’re interested to see more of his collection and hear him give a short presentation on the history of these matchboxes, register for his talk at Ang Mo Kio Library on 12 Feb 2011.

D'amigo

Duke-Hotel

HSBC

PrimaTower

PrinceRoomRestaurant

 

A late tribute to Dr Milton Tan

miltontan

 

On 8 November 2010, one of Singapore’s design pioneers, Dr Milton Tan, passed away. While working on a project recently, I got to learn more about the man, his efforts in promoting design through the government’s DesignSingapore Council (Dsg), and most of all, his ideas about design and creativity. This is my humble efforts to share his legacy with more people out there.

I never realised I had actually spoken to Dr Milton Tan until I decided to write this tribute to him last night. I was searching for some e-mail conversations I had with a friend about him when I found an e-mail that Dr Tan wrote to me six years ago. I was then an undergraduate working on a school project evaluating the Renaissance City proposal where for some reason I wrote straight to him — the Executive Director of Dsg — to ask for facts and figures about our arts and the economy. He did reply, and referred me to the right person to write to.

The only problem: it was nine months after I had sent the e-mail.

By then I had already turned to other sources for information, and in a fit of frustration at bureaucracy, I fired back an e-mail pointing out how ridiculous it was that I had to wait so long for a reply. To my surprise, he wrote back and agreed that it was unacceptable for me to receive a reply so late.

On hindsight, I think it’s actually amazing that Dr Tan even bothered to write back after nine months. To do so after so long suggests he genuinely wanted to help in some way. He could have just ignored my e-mail, and quite safely assumed that it had all been forgotten. But he didn’t.

Six years on, our paths crossed again. This time, I read about him in an upcoming article written by his former colleague and friend for The Design Society Journal. It’s a moving tribute about a man who helped lay the foundation for the government’s strategy for design promotion in Singapore in the new millennium. Dr Tan also kept a blog of his thoughts about design and creativity, and even talked about publishing a book. I’m not sure if the book will become a reality now that he has passed.

Here is a selection of some of his writings from his blog that really piqued my mind:

Hopefully, one day, these and more of his writings can be put together in a book to be shared with more. The last thing I have to say is to Dr Tan:

I’m sorry that this tribute came so late, “I agree that it is not acceptable for you to wait.”