22 October 2010

Old Singapore Quiz (19) - Another Old Cannon


I stumbled upon another old cannon yesterday. (The other old cannon is here. Well, sort of.)

Incidentally, did you know that 車大炮 ("cheh dai pao" in Cantonese or "che da pao" in Mandarin) means to lie?

So here are my questions for this quiz:

1. Where does this cannon lie (pun intended)?

2. Who presented this cannon?

3. When was it presented? (Just the year will do.)

Of course, to prevent eagled-eyed readers like Icemoon from having an unfair advantage, I have painted over the plaque in front of the stand. Not with real paint but digitally with Photoshop.

Answers will be revealed in a week's time. And they won't be lies, I can assure you.

11 October 2010

Then And Now (2)

I had been very busy lately as I was attending a 2-month part-time course at the Singapore Polytechnic. As this course was sponsored by my office, it was important that I pass it otherwise I don't know where to hide my face. Hence, please accept my sincere apologies for having disappeared for some time.

To hold the fort for a while, here is another "Then And Now" post. The following photo, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore, shows the junction of Rochor Road and North Bridge Road in 1986:


It shows the 7th Storey hotel which I blogged about here and here. This old hotel was demolished in 2009 to make way for the Downtown MRT Line. This location was also where the DHL balloon was sited. The bubble was burst balloon was taken down sometime last year too.


The photo below shows how the same junction looked like a few months ago. You can see the ongoing construction work being carried out on the right side of the photo. (I have placed the old photo of the junction directly below the newer one for comparison purpose.)