I'll read your posts in detail and let you know if I have any specific questions.
Thanks again!
Stan
Ryan Lee wrote:
Siglap's a wonderful place to live! Eastside! My grandparents live pretty close there (Frankel) and I love the area. Wasn't around 1960s though.. But growing up I used to hear stories of how the sea used to come up to their doorstep (before land reclamation put a good kilometre between them and the sea today..)
Oh and Tiger Balm Gardens aka Haw Par Villa.. *shudder* So not my place. Not even sure if it's still there. Supposed to scare people into the right path I assume. Not too sure about Hindu funerals, but they still have Thaipusam. That's the one where male devotees, mostly Indian, do feats of endurance to prove their devotion. One of these feats is that metal spike cage which they carry on their skin. Another one is pulling a cart of sorts, if I remember correctly, with spikes in their back. Other festivals for the Indians include Deepavali in November, the festival of lights, I'm not sure if it's at this one that they walk across charring coals..
For the Chinese, there is the Chinese New Year period, sometime in February I think, but that's lots of customs, tradition, decorations etc.
For the Muslims (mostly ethnic Malay) there's Hari Raya Puasa (Hari Raya Aidil-fitri), the end of the fasting period Ramadan, sometime in November. Also there's Hari Raya Haji, celeberating pilgrimage I think, early Feb.
And of course there's Easter and Christmas too.
For those of you who might not know, Singapore's a bit of a cultural melting pot with 4 national languages, English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil; with 4 main ethnicities, Chinese, Malay, Indian, Eurasian. This peppered with the expatriate population, it's pretty cosmopolitan. And everyone coexists quite happily (religions side by side too) and there's a lot of goodwill between different cultures, especially during festive periods. Kinda hard to do much else under the strict govt. But I must say they've got a good formula worked out. Occasionally it does produce anomalies like banning chewing gum (illegal to sell, not illegal to chew) because it messied up public transport, but can't have everything can ya :) Glad you mentioned LKY too, he's someone I respect tremendously.
Cheers, Ryan
PS. Glad someone read some of that previous post! The scrollbar got pretty tiny :-) PPS. Bob, I like how you added the soundtrack of the day.. really created an atmosphere didn't it!
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob W" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 3:01 AM
Subject: Re: Singapore? (Very long: A reasonably detailed walkthrough..)
Hi,
Grew up there, so I guess I've got some license. I'm now in Brisbane, Australia, but Singapore's so tiny I may have memorised it :-)
Har! yet another of the places I lived in when I was a kid. We were posted to Changi for a couple of years, and lived in a house in Siglap (Beaumont Rd or Gardens, I can still remember). It was the early 1960s. Lee Kwan Yew was quite new as the PM, or became PM while we were there. There was rioting in the streets, and 'She Loves You' was the new Beatles record.
I think Singapore has probably changed a bit since then. We wouldn't go to the beaches because they were covered in dead dogs and gulls - we went to Changi swimming pool every afternoon instead. The street we lived on didn't have a made-up road, just a dirt track. My mother used to buy live chickens from a cart and the chicken man would cut their heads off and let them run around the garden for a bit. Then he would cut the feet off and give them to us boys to play with.
We had a very nice ama called Ann. Once she took us to her home in a place called Kampong and I was horrified by the poverty and the squalor she lived in. I don't know if it was truly like that, or just my childish perception.
A place I particularly remember which could still be there is the Tiger Balm Gardens, with a horrific display of people suffering torments in Hell. There were also a lot of interesting Hindu funerals, and festival parades where people ran metal spikes through their bodies.
-- Cheers, Bob
