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ANSWERS
No. 1 used to house the Singapore
Family Planning and Population Board located at the junction of Dunearn Road and
Gilstead Road. When I was studying in ACS in the 1960s, I often walked past
this place to get to Newton Circus from where I would take a Tay Koh Yat bus to
my home at Lorong Chuan.
No. 2 was a cluster of
buildings which housed the SAF Married Quarters at Upper Jurong Road. Located
near the junction with Benoi Road, it is today a dormitory for foreign workers –
judging from the laundry hanging out to dry when I took that photo a couple of
weeks ago. But back in the early 1970s, it was the only sign of civilization in
that part of Singapore. For us NS boys serving in SAFTI at that time, the sight
of this place and the bright lights of Safti, would cause our spirits to sink
right to the floor of the Green Bus no. 175 as it turned the corner of Upper
Jurong Road and brought us back every Sunday night to begin another week of
drudgery.
My friend and regular guest
blogger, Peter Chan, recalls doing guard duty here – which for some strange
reason, I never did.
“The SAF Married Quarters guard duty was less exciting except that when it came to food we
had this coffee-shop at one of the unoccupied four blocks. There was one
Hokkien Mee food vendor and so you had little choice except to eat many bowls of
Hokkien Mee soup.
Doing prowler duties at Married Quarters was boring. I still can
remember one Sunday during SSL I was assigned to Married Quarters duty.
The only sound I could hear by day was our radio set. By nightfall, there
was no sound except crickets. In our time, the blocks were totally
unoccupied so the silence was to be expected. There was nothing much to
do except to read the newspapers over and over again. The arrival of the
lunch ration land Rover from SAFTI only temporarily brought cheers to us.
The one sickening part of doing guard duty at this place was the long walk
along old Upper Jurong Road because Married Quarters was outside the SAFTI
compound. We took a good 15 minutes to march in single-file back to SAFTI
main gate because of the narrow 2-lane road and on a busy Monday morning at
0700 hours was certainly a bad start to a new week.”
9 comments:
#1. Now the Breast Cancer Foundation. Formerly was Family Planning Unit. My Primary school was close by
#2. Could these two blocks be the ones near to SAFTI since the early 1970's ?
#1 - near newton area? agree that it was formerly the Family Planning Unit. Often pass by when my dad send me home after school
#2 - also agree is the block of flats opp old SAFTI. Now is some kind of dormitory i think.
Yes. You guys got the correct answer. I just updated the article.
A friend at Facebook reminded me that No. 2 was known as the Safti Hilton.
Correct me if I'm wrong. During my time at SAFTI in 1978 (doing my SISL), I think the flats were used to house the female OCS cadets. I used to see them going back and forth from the quarters.
Joseph Wong remembers correctly about the female OCS cadets. I think we had some discussion about them in an earlier article a few years ago. What I remember was they came very early to our OCS block at Charlie Coy to draw arms. One of my section mates whose room was just next to the armskote room continued to walk around the corridors in his briefs; unperturbed by their presence.
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