Saturday, December 28, 2013

Old Buildings Quiz #19

Here are 2 buildings built in the 1960s.



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:

Unknown said...

#1. Now the Breast Cancer Foundation. Formerly was Family Planning Unit. My Primary school was close by

Lye Khuen Way said...

#2. Could these two blocks be the ones near to SAFTI since the early 1970's ?

TheSounDOne said...

#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.

Lam Chun See said...

Yes. You guys got the correct answer. I just updated the article.

Lam Chun See said...

A friend at Facebook reminded me that No. 2 was known as the Safti Hilton.

Joseph Wong said...

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.

Lam Chun See said...

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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