Old Singapore Quiz (7) - Answers

Thanks for your guesses. All of you who attempted Old Singapore Quiz (7) got the answers correct. It must have been an easy one, eh?

Answers to Old Singapore Quiz (7):

1. What is the name of this place in Singapore?

A: Toa Payoh Town Park


2. What was its old name?

A: Toa Payoh Town Garden


3. What was it popularly used for in the 1970s?

A: Outdoor wedding photography


4. What is the name of the eatery located there?

A: The Oasis


5. Where was the eatery formerly located?

A: Kallang Basin


The following paragraph was extracted from Wikipedia:

"Toa Payoh Town Garden was partially closed in 1999 to make way for a temporary bus interchange. After the new Toa Payoh Bus Interchange at the HDB Hub was completed in June 2002, the temporary bus interchange was converted to a landscaped park. Toa Payoh Town Garden was subsequently renamed as Toa Payoh Town Park."

So it looks like the garden had been rebuilt.

Toa Payoh Town Garden was one of the earliest public parks to be built in an HDB new town. According to this blog, the beautifully landscaped Toa Payoh Town Garden was completed in September 1973 for the SEAP Games. (In comparison, the Chinese Garden was completed in 1975.)

Toa Payoh Town Garden was a very popular venue for outdoor photography shoots with wedding couples at that time. My brother did just that in 1976:


The photos are a bit faded. My brother's suit was maroon, a favourite colour of choice for bridegrooms at that time. (The masks are not part of the wedding attire though. They are something I made my brother and sister-in-law wear to protect their identities. But frankly, I doubt anyone can recognise them 33 years later even if they are unmasked. :p)

Note: You can see the restaurant building in the background in the right photo above. The building has been renovated and it is now occupied by The Oasis restaurant which serves Taiwanese porridge:


Previously (before May 2008), the restaurant was at Kallang Basin (in the round structures in the photo below). As correctly pointed out by Polestar, the left portion of the restaurant in the photo below was also a popular place to hold Chinese wedding dinners in the 1970/80s:


Here are more photos of Toa Payoh Town Park:

The distinctive hexagonal guardrails

The 27-m viewing tower

The 3 arch bridges

Each watching you like an unblinking eye

You can read more about Toa Payoh here and here.

New Words/Meanings I've Learnt (3)

A fellow blogger (name deleted to protect the innocent) sent me an email titled 'Sayings Of Wives'. It was interesting and humorous but at first, I didn't want to blog about it because such information is likely to be available somewhere on the web. However, after I forwarded the first email to another blogger (name deleted to avoid implicating anyone), I received what looked like a 'veiled threat' email titled 'Warning' from her. Its content was just a few cryptic Chinese characters. When translated into English, they roughly meant 'knowing got tiger in jungle and you still want to venture in'. I asked her to elaborate what she meant but as of last night, she didn't.

As I am by nature a fearless, playful and defiant monkey blogger, I purposely want to blog about the first email. I think that email must be the reason why the female blogger sent me that threatening email. The first email is about our (men's) take on wives and marriages.

As usual, for those of you who have read this before, please skip the first half of this post but don't miss the second half. I believe most of the second half is original and has never been published before. Under no circumstances should you complain or say that the jokes are 'so lame' because they are not my own.

Men, you are welcome to add yours here in the comments. However, please note that any defamatory remarks, racist comments and personal attacks will be blogged blocked by the blog owner (that's me lah) and the originator will be forever banned from commenting on this blog. However, risque and sexist remarks are perfectly fine. In fact, they are most welcome.

"When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her." (Sacha Guitry)

"After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together." (Hemant Joshi)

"By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher." (Socrates)

"Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them." (Dumas)

"The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, 'What does a woman want?' " (Sigmund Freud)

"I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me." (Anonymous)

"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays." (Henry Youngman)

"I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years." (Sam Kinison)

"There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage." (James Holt McGavran)

"I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn't." (Patrick Murray)

"Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming 1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it, 2. Whenever you're right, shut up." (Nash)

"The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once..." (Anonymous)

"You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to." (Henny Youngman)

"My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met." (Rodney Dangerfield).

"A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong." (Milton Berle).

"Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy." (Anonymous)

"A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: 'Wife wanted'. Next day he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: "You can have mine." (Anonymous)

"First Guy (proudly): 'My wife's an angel!'
Second Guy: 'You're lucky, mine's still alive.' "

Here are more similar wise sayings from my other blogo-friends:

"The most difficult part of a marriage is when you're in it." (Anonymous)

"In an argument, always let your wife have the last word. Because anything you say after that is the beginning of another argument." (From the husband with an argumentative wife.)

"Instructions for men: If a woman asks you, 'Am I fat?', under no circumstances should you answer because whatever reason you give will be a wrong one. Not answering by walking away or pretending not to hear the question are also wrong. No matter what you do, she will not talk to you for at least one week after asking that question." (Sources cannot be revealed to protect the 2 thin husbands who probably have rather 'heavy' wives.)

"There is never a dialogue with a wife. It's more like a multiple-choice Q&A session. She asks you a question, you need 10 words to give your reply but before you could utter 5 words, she shoots another question. Then you pause and answer the second question and before you could say 5 words, a third question pops up. The whole thing goes on for 5 minutes and before long, you find that her mood changes and she becomes aggressive and accuses you of not listening to her." (Source cannot be revealed to protect the poor hen-pecked husband from further verbal abuse.)

"She asks you whether you think she is heavy. (She either never admits she's fat or insists that it's the wrong word to use. If you dare correct her choice of word, you'll be terribly abused verbally.) If you choose to agree, you are in trouble. She heads for the latest "slimming and spa" joint where she ends up buying a package worth $5K. After $5K is spent (and you know that she still can't fit into those clothes - yesterday, it was size 5; today, it is more like size 8), she asks you whether you see any 'progress'." (From a husband speaking from bad experience.)

"She warns you not to eat too much ice cream. 'It's not good for your health', she says but she buys a tub from NTUC Fairprice because it's on 'special offer' for today. Then you open the fridge and you find out from your maid that it's your 'Missus' and child who helped themselves to the ice cream first. Now who puts on weight?" (From an underweight husband.)

"Wives are meant to be loved not understood because the 'good book' says, 'Husbands, love your wives.' It doesn't say we have to understand them." (From a god-fearing husband.)

I thank all my blogo-friends who 'contributed' the above wise sayings. I apologise for not seeking your permission before posting them in my blog. If my cheeky remarks touches a nerve, I seek your forgiveness. They are all uttered in jest. However, should any of you think that I should take them down, just let me know, okay?