Remembering 911

At 8:46am, 25 years later, the images of September 11, 2001, permanently imprinted on my memory as I was on top of WTC on 26 Aug that year. I also stood in the crowd to cheer for the trucks going in and out of ground zero in the following weeks. Missing but not forgotten.

My Birth Place

This is my birth place!

I did a sketch of the old Salmon Maternity Home at 110 Prinsep Street with "Tuesday Report" by Channel 8, Mediacorp released on 13 Nov 2018, I edited the video for record here.

I did an even earlier sketch in 2009 here.

More details about my birth place at this link.

Dr Salmon's daughter, Prof Yvonne Salmon, was staying at this building when she retired from KK Hospital. Her great, great grandfather, John Kinsey Salmon was one of the three officers of the East India Company directed personally by Sir Stamford Raffles to come from Bencoolen to Singapore to assist in the administration of Singapore. Prof Yvonne M Salmon passed away on 28 October 2020.

A video of the interior is here.

11 years ago on this day

This photo pop out in my Facebook as one of the memories on this day 11 July 2011. The resotred Bukit Timah Railway Staion was officially opened on 1 July. More details at this link.

I didn't remember I was there contributing to the green corridor under an organisaion called "Ideas Worth Doing.Org". 

A check found out that it was related to TEDx

SIA Design Award 1992

A Children Art Competition

Click here to see more

Packing - found these old photos when we celebrated our first anniversary at the new campus with a children art competition. Principal & Chief Executive Officer on stage with the winners and a photo with Mdm Chan Phek Gek, my late colleague working with me on this event. She is missed and loved by many. These children should be around 40 years old!

Finally all done!

Packing for retirement

Packing office files

Box Prints

Packing - found these old prints in IKEA small box frames size 14x14x4.5cm. They don’t sell these frames anymore but I love them so much that I kept three. The box prints were all sold out when we had our pop up store at the now defunct Varidian House at the old River Valley Swimming Pool.

Wood-fired tiles

Memories - Annaul Report 2011

Midori Journals

A page in my old Journal

I clean the dust off my old Midori journals, here is a page in the middle, doodling and reading, reading a lot but can't recall what I read, all digested well I guess. John Dewey, Maxine Greene, B.F. Skinner and "Emphasis Art" by Robert Clements and Frank Wachowiak. No smart phone then, always good to keep a journal at all times.

2002 in New York.

It's a Wrap!

It's a wrap for this semester teaching. I am now with International Relations that runs an academic centre called Centre for TransCultural Studies. CTS offers very diversed languages and cultural subjects for all students to choose as a "Cross Disciplinary Subject". Here are two out of five groups of my classes with students from very diversed background. We have Malays, Indians, Eurasians, Cambodians, Burmese, Arabs, Philippinas and also a British student in my classes. They are making me feel energetic and young again.

my home in the 70s

I sketched my birth place, my first home and now another place I call home when I was slighter older.

Did this sketch of my old home from the public corridor of block 239, Lorong 1 Toa Payoh. My home in the 1970s, block 53 Lorong 4 Toa Payoh was the first high rise public housing flat in Singapore under the 'home ownership' programme. Cannot remember the unit number but we stayed on the 11th storey at the left corner unit. It was quite an unique design with a cylindrical water tank on the roof top. I remember it was painted in green which I'd done here. The pitched roofs and pointed facades were added later which I think the original character of the building block was lost. Oops!

You can see city skyline here, from the left - Concourse, Flyer, Marina Bay Sands to UOB and OCBC buildings. WOW!

Oh yes, the block was visited by The British royal family in the 70s - a significant but forgotten event in our public housing history. Read a very well written post here.

my childhood place

These two pieces are not the sketches that I first completed in 2011. However, these are done during our first sketchwalk at my childhood place - Margaret Drive in Queenstown!

I have always wanted to sketch my old homes or places that down my memory lane before they were demolished and gone forever. Some of them were here and here. We went to Margaret Drive to sketch becoz the hawker centre will be demolished to make way for new housing flats by end of Jan. Block 38 with its parabolic roof will be retained but the food centre or block 40A, the cinema block and the rest of the old tall flats will be demolished. I have lots of memories for block 38 which used to be a wet market that my mother brought me there almost everyday when our home was just a block down this market during the 1960s. At that time, ducks and chickens were slaughtered here and their feathers were dried in the open space outside the market. My old home in the 1960s from my childhood years was long gone, see photo below!

old flats where I grew up

I lost my Hero M86 fountain pen. I might have lost it after I did the last sketch. So I used Zig calligraphy pens - black and grey to do the outline of the flats after the watercolours. I quite like the watercolour effect on the yellowish smooth moleskine card surface.

I did a post on my birthplace here. I wanted to sketch places I grew up and schools I studied. Unfortunately the old flats I grew up at Queenstown were demolished but my first home look like the one here. This old neigbourhood at Commonwealth is now the foreign students' hostel as I saw them walking in and out of the flats with backpacks and groceries plastic bags. The railway track is just next to the flats and the train only appeared once as I was sketching. The ants and mosquitos were everywhere that I had to leave early and finish the flat details at home. There must be at least ten mosquitos bites on both of my arms and feet.

I will need to get another fountain pen and I will add a small bottle of insect repellent on my art material list.

memories

Almost forgot, I taught a class at the High School of Art and Design at NYC in 2002, this picture was prepared for a sharing session cum talk that never took place when I came back to work in 2003.

I wonder how are Ms Mary Ann Denino, the Assistant Principal and Mr Paul Chinelli, the art teacher?

on sketchcrawl day

Busy with work in the past two weeks and I felt really guilty for not able to arrange or go out for a sketchcrawl. So, I decided to sketch at home on 24th world sketchcrawl day. Yes, I have a grand piano at home but I can't play. It's for my talented children. I like the zip light on the left, it can be tranformed into two flat sheets of plastic and leather after unzipping the zips at the back. They can be kept in a A2 folio. Great design. While sketching, I can also remove the cluttered items which cannot be done if I were to take a photograph.

Plus, I have a horseshoe on the main door on the right so my home is blessed and happy.

this is where I was born!

This is an old building in art-deco architectural style with very attractive yellow door, geometrical window grilles and art nouveau mild steel balustrade design. It has a special place in my heart simply because I was born here. It used to be a very famous private hospital founded by the late Professor A.V. Salmon whose aged daughter is still staying at this building with her helper. I last met her a year ago and briefly chatted with her at the building entrance. Dr Yvonne Salmon is the longest serving staff of the then government run Kandang Kerbau Hospital which has been transformed into today's KK Women's and Children's Hospital. Both father and daughter are the who's who in the history of obstetrics and gynecology in our country.

The building has just been given a new coat of paint. I wish it will not fall prey to urbanisation and modernisation which already seen quite a number of beautiful old buildings been demolished in the vicinity.