Tongue Twister Road Names of Simei, the Four Beauties Revisited

Artist's impression of the four classical beauties

After I blogged about the toponymy of Simei here and here, a journalist from U Weekly emailed me about his work on the same topic. It is no coincidence that Jin and I are both males and interested in the four renowned beauties of ancient China who gave the estate its name. His work never came to fruition unfortunately and I lost the chance to read a more professional presentation on the topic. Thankfully Jin shared with me his research and tipped me on two most important piece of information.

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The Old East Coast (3) - On the Seashore in front of 23 Amber Road

23 Amber Road (Photo credit: Google Street View)

You know what? While rummaging through my hard drive last week, I finally found my precious photos taken in June 2007 behind Butterfly House. Yay!

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The Old East Coast (2) - Remains of Cemetery "Kubor Lansam" at Siglap

It is the occassional chinese tomb in the wild that gets reported while not much is written about their Muslim counterparts. Hence I was delighted when Siew Min alerted me to a pair of solitary Muslim tombs in Siglap area.

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2nd Shot: The MacDonald House Bombing, 45 Years Later

March 10 is the 45th anniversary of the MacDonald House Bombing. In our Singapore annals of terrorism this attack is the worst, claiming three innocent civilian lives and injuring even more people. Windows were shattered, cars were damaged; MacDonald House itself suffered $250,000 in bomb damage. For most post-65er, the bombing remains our only impression of Konfrontasi. My other impression is that some of our fathers were drafted into the vigilante corps to "beat the rats" (or something like that). The more I read about the incident in textbooks and articles, the more I am intrigued about one aspect of the account - where exactly did the bomb explode?

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The Old East Coast (1) - Original Fence Wall at Nallur Road

Collecting ang pow and stuffing yourself silly with bak kwa or pineapple tarts are traditional New Year activities for youngsters. The more "outgoing" ones may visit the Istana and Museum for free during the annual Open House. I was more "outrageous", visiting the ex-cemetery at Jalan Tanah Puteh which I blogged about here, to Victor's bewilderment. On the same day I also visited Marine Parade, to begin my search for the original coastline of East Coast, Singapore.

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