9th August 2008, 43th Singapore National Day

9th August 2008 : 43th National Day for the republic of Singapore. A country of migrants fore-fathers from Indonesia, Malaysia, India, China and Arab world streaming in since the 1820's. One hundred years later, my paternal grandmother came from Guangzhou Province and business herself as a contractor in civil work, supplying workmen for the building sector then... primarily to build roads, shop houses, zinc roofed factory with cemented support pillars.

Immigrants were travelling the world in search of a livelihood. The picture on the left is a TRAVELLER PALM; it was the covering page of a 280 pages photo book produced 24 years ago saluting the 25years of Self Rule of Singapore since 1959. The photographs are of Singapore scenery taken by 41 world top photographers then. It was a mammoth project then. The Traveller Palm grows freely on this island and it traps and retains rain water easily...so it was what early travellers look for when they are thirty... thus its name.

As I went through the pages, daily scenes that we take for granted then become rare, young faces that grace the pages then are your aunties and uncles now. The uncle in the picture here with a trishaw load of paper mac hes would have left human abode then. Those
who have seen him does remembered. As a young boy and youth, this uncle with a trademark beard plies his trade along the old city routes, pushing and cycling his trishaw at the edge of the road. His colorful array of paper face masks is hard to miss, it spices up our imaginations of faces we read in Chinese story books. I had seen him along the road in Macpherson, Geylang road, Chinatown of course, Tiong Bahru, Redhill. This is his city route, but actually it is the PIE in its original version from east to west city roads. I patronised him twice in his life time, I cannot afford to buy those masks then, he offered a game of luck where you pay him 10 cents and you dipped your hand into a cloth bag containing various colored balls. You win a simple paper face mask if you pick up 3 balls of the same colour. I don't think I won but the chance to play give me a pretext to examine all those tiger, buffalo, Disney faces characters at close range, which is suffice.

Anyone reading these have memories of him, email me a note. Believe he have no successor to take over his skill of making these crafts. I remembered there was an article on him in the paper... but then again... we just read and past on, only now that when we dwell on memory and yet found information scare.

There were many interesting photographs beside these which can look back with pride as to where we have travelled from. On this National Day, am I to sell this book which can only add value as the years goes by... next year 2009 will be 50 years of self rule nationhood. The book costs me S$70.00 in 1984 which is not a small sum I forked out then. Let us see what value beside money this will worth many years down this nation road.