2010 New Year Greetings

It has been a fulfilling year for Second Shot with all the exploration and blogging and of course a surprise appearance in the paper. I thank the reporter Lu Caixia who made it happen. I also thank readers who visited this blog to show me their support. Keep your comments coming!

The backlog is growing and so is my list of places to explore, so you can expect more variety and original topics in future. Perhaps they are not meant so much to educate than to take stock of what I have learnt about Old Singapore and our world in general.

I will be away from 1 to 7 so this will be my last post in 2009.

See you in 2010!

They are tearing down Queenstown Central!

Have you read the news? Our gahman will be tearing down Queenstown Central coming July.

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"The fishes sink, the geese plunge, the moon and flower retreat in shame" - Searching for the Four Beauties in Simei

Most of us would consider Simei ("See-May") a small heartlander estate. With a general hospital and learning hub at Eastpoint Mall but no cinema, the estate is not a crowd-puller unlike neighboring Tampines. But the estate has a little secret. Hidden among the housing blocks are the legendary four beauties in Chinese history who reputedly gave the estate its name. Not many people know of their existence, much less seen all four of them.

In November '08, I combed the whole estate to "uncover" the beauties.

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From Soo Bee to See-May

The last time I counted, four MRT stations had hanyu-pinyin mandarin names, out of the 70-odd stations in operation today. You may enumerate them - Yishun, Bishan, Hougang, Simei - and recall their old dialect identities - Nee Soon, Peck San, Ow Kang .... wait a minute, what's the last one again?

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