Peninsula Evangelical Free Church

The Church

Peninsula Evengelical Free Church had its first official service on Sunday October 11 1987 at the Crystal Ballroom, Peninsula Hotel. Our church had a humble beginning. It started without a Pastor. Preaching of God’s words were given by guests speakers each Sunday. Nevertheless, the church grew and the Crystall Ballroom was filled to capacity. I remembered the back partitioned wall was moved backwards to make space for the worshippers. In 1988 a young couple got married at the church. 

In February 1989, God sent Pastor Ong Seow Heng to shepherd His sheep. The congregation welcomed him and gave him much encouragement. The elders and deacons worked closely with him. In his own words “…………my ministry is strengthened by this group of dedicated and committed people God has given me to work alongside with.” 

Pastor Ong Seow Heng

After the church service we had fellowships outside the sanctuary. There were coffee, tea and cakes for all. There were  many baptisms including my family.

 Crystal Ballroom Peninsula Hotel

On August 5 1990 the church moved to Ebenezer Chapel at Dempsy Hill (39C Harding Road). It was an old chapel with wide open space outside the building. I liked the fresh air with plenty of greenery. There was a church wedding in 1991.

The church building is on the left background

                           Ebenezer Chapel

                            Photo credit to Lanya.wordpress.com

The church next home was the Methodist Girls School auditorium at Upper Bukit Timah Road. It was a quiet place on Sunday with ample parking lots and a canteen with large refreshment area for fellowships, discussions and other activities. I remembered a young couple from China who came to our church got married there. Alice Rogers, Magdelene Ng, Katherine Cox and many others helped them to make their marriage a memorable one. There were flower arrangements, buntings, decorations, buffet lunch etc. Soon after they left for US to further their studies.

School canteen

East Care Group 

The church had four cell groups in different part of the island. I was in the East Care Group (ECG). Majority of our members lived in the east with a few exception. We met regularly for bible studies and was very close  to each other. Two young mothers got their first born child and experienced mother went to assist.  ECG organised their own retreat in Malaysia in addition to our church camp.

Here are some pictures of the church camp as well as ECG retreat in Malaysia.

                             Church Camp

 Genting View Resort 1994

Meleka Park Plaza Resort 1995

Fraser's Hill 1996

East Care Group Retreat

Tanjong Puteri Golf Resort Johor

Century Mahkota Resort Malacca

One of the church's memorable event was Easter Sunrise Service and pot luck at East Coast Park. Having church service in the open air and by the sea was a blessing. Many believers got their baptism by immersion. Every year we looked forward to Easter. All good things never last forever. The authority stopped giving permits for such gathering. 

Easter Sunrise Service on Good Friday 24 March 1989

East Coast Park

Christmas Eve

Another memorable event was celebrating Christmas eve at the American International School. We sang Christmas hymns followed by skits depicting the  birth of Christ  from the children.

Christmas dinner was catered by the school chef. We had traditional roast turkey with chestnut stuffing, honey baked ham, cranberry sauce, log cakes and many more yummy items.

                                 Christmas eve bulletin cover 

Worship bullutin for Christmas eve

Christmas Eve Celebration 1990

American School at King's Road

Above pictures were taken more than 20 years ago. Small boys and girls then are now young adults. Tony and Lay were not married during PEFC early days. Now they are grand-parents. Time and tide wait for no man.

Hope you enjoy the PEFC story.

Itinerant Hawkers

Photos credit to NLB






Before World War II Singapore has no food centre or food court except wet markets. In fact, it was not necessary to have them. In those days, there was no fixed hawker stalls to go to. Instead, they brought the whole ‘stalls’ to your door. The stall consisted of two loads before the end of a wooden  pole which was placed across his shoulder. All the paraphernalia including a stove, food and water for washing were in the loads. He moved from place to place calling out loudly the food he was selling and he stopped at a place only to serve his customers. Indian hawker selling ready to eat food like bread, curry puffs, puttu mayam, carried the load on his head.        

I was living at Joo Chiat Road between Joo Chiat Complex and Joo Chiat Terrace. In the morning there was an Indian roti hawker. He was selling bread spread with kaya or butter as well as curry puffs freshly baked from the bakery at Onan Road. A kampong Malay boy was selling nasi lemak and kueh lopes. 

                            Kueh lopes with syrup

I loved to eat Kueh lopes with coffee for the tastes blended very well. Kueh lopes is made of glutinous rice and coated  with fresh coconut shavings. It is triangular in shape and eat with brown syrup made of gula meleka. 

A braised duck hawker acted by James Seah

I remembered the braised duck hawker, a Teochew guy who allowed his customers to play a game of chance to win his braised duck instead of buying the duck which cost very much more. Chinese named the game  ‘si gor  luck ( 4, 5 & 6). For thirty cents a customer could win a quarter duck. He could also double or quit the game. A lucky winner could walk away with a whole duck including gravy and home make chilly sauce for only thirty cents. 

                             Dice game: Si Gor Luck

The game is played with 3 dices roll inside a large bowl. Only the number on top of each dice is counted. When 2 dices show the same number only the third dice number is taken into account. When there is no paired number, it is replayed until there is a paired number. Each player has a turn to roll the dices in the bowl. The player with the highest number wins the first round. The game is played the best of three. A player wins out-right when the dices number is 4,5 and 6. Number 1,2, and 3 is an out-right loss. For both instances the opponent does not have to roll the dices.

Another yummy lunch was from a hawker selling yakfun or a BBQ pork rice. It was one of my favourite especially the smell of the fragrant rice. There were other food items too and they seldom stopped at my place due to poor patronage. 

I do not remember any hawker selling food for dinner. But there was no lack of food and drink hawkers at supper time. I remembered very clearly the ‘tick tock’ mee (wantan/koloh mee). The hawker would station at one part of Joo Chiat Road. After serving his customers in the area, he moved on along the road. His assistant would move before him to take orders. He announced his trade by knocking  two pieces of bamboo together, one on each hand. The two bamboo pieces created a ‘tick tock’ sound. At night it was very quiet and  tick! tock! tick! tock! sounded like musical rhymes.  It could be heard for quite a distance. It got louder as he approached my house. He would look up at the upper floor windows for customers while I looked down anxiously for him to take my orders. 

I  shouted my  orders to him. He noted and walked back to the hawker to get the orders done. When the food arrived, I lowered a basket tied with a piece of string with money for payment. The price of one bowl of noodle was fixed. In return he placed the bowl of noodle together with spoon and chop sticks inside the basket. Empty bowl with spoon and chopsticks were returned in the same basket  and lowered  down. The hawker assistant would come back later to collect them. Besides the noodle hawker, there were  others including a hawker selling bird nest drink.

How cool!  Eating hawkers’ food  without having to leave your house!

National Anthems

I was born in 1935 during the reign of King George V of Great Britain. Singapore then was a British colony and every morning at the school assembly students sang the National Anthem ‘God Save The King’. When King George VI ascended the British throne the same National Anthem continued until the British lost Singapore to the Japanese Imperial Army. 

By then I attended a Japanese school at Koon Seng Road and sang Japanese National Anthem “Kimigayo” every school morning for about three years. The British returned to Singapore after the war and we went back to ‘God Save The King’. I remembered at  the cinema halls, God Save The King was played before the show started. Everybody stood at attention but few sang  the anthem. I can still sing both the British as well as the Japanese National Anthems fairly well. During an interview for a television documentary, I was asked to sing God Save The King and I did it. In June 1953, Queen Elizabeth II was crown Queen of Great Britain. The British National Anthem changed from God Save The King to God Save The Queen. 

In 1963 Singapore merged with Malaysia and ‘Negara Ku’ became our National Anthem. It was only for a short period before Singapore left Malaysia. 

On 9 August 1965 Singapore  became an independent state and a Republic. We have our own national anthem 'Majulah Singapura'. I understand the lyrics in Bahasa and feel very proud singing our national anthem.

Looking back, I sang the national anthem of Great Britain through the reign of three British monarchs – King George V, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, Japanese national anthem ‘Kimigayo’ during the Japanese occupation, and Singapore’s very own national anthem ‘Majulah Singapura’, except ‘Negara Ku’ of Malaysia.

Back to our national anthem Majulah  Singapura, how many Singaporeans really know the meaning of our national anthem  in Bahasa. Majority especially those born after Singapore’s independence sang the national anthem without knowing its meaning. Can’t blame them for they do not learn Bahasa in schools. Therefore, it is high time that our national anthem be translated into English or a new national anthem in English be written so that Singaporeans can understand its meaning and be proud of it. 

Dawson & Alexandra Tour

The Dawson & Alexandra Heritage Trial

I was invited to the Media Preview of  Dawson & Alexandra Heritage Trial on Saturday 4^th March 2015 We met at Queenstown MRT Station at 8.30 am. Mr Kwek Li Yong Chairman of Queenstown Heritage and  Mr Jasper Tan were there. About 50 people participated. We were divided into 2 groups which were led by 2 volunteers, Mr Choo Lip Sin and Huang Eu Chai.

The bloggers

                                         At meeting point Queenstown MRT Station

Mr Choo Lip Sin led us passed the old Car Testing Centre building and stopped at Dundee Road for a briefing. At Strathmore Avenue I was overwhelmed by the tall buildings. When I was working at Princess House Annex building in the early 1970 there were many low rise buildings. The tallest building then was Farfar House, a 14 storey building was known as  “çhap si lau” by the Hokien speaking Chinese. Entrance to Forfar house was by Ballater Close and fronting the building was Forfar Square. It has been replaced by a much taller building called Forfar Height. There we interviewed  3 residents who have been living in the area for many years. They were Susan, Rosi and Fernandez.  Each gave an account  of the changes in the area.

                                Paul Fernandez (sitted on the left) sharing his memory.
                                I am sitting on the right

Meanwhile, I was looking for Princess House which was not visible from the ground. When Lip Sin said our next point was Princess House I got very excited. My office was in the Annex building.  Fond memories filled my mind. I saw Princess House. It had a new coat of paint  and unoccupied. I could not find the Annex building. It had been demolished and is now a vacant land. During its heyday there were long queues of hawkers applying  for hawker  licenses on the upper floor. The ground floor was a collection centre for hawker licences and paying of licence fee. The maps below shows two different periods of the same place.

                                         

                                          Forfar House and Dawson area in the 1970s

                                            Today's  map showing the same area

I remember the Consumer Co-operative Club. It was a small single storey building located between Princess House Annex and Forfar Square. It opened for business in the afternoon for the residents in Queenstown. As there was no security check, outsiders took advantage  to buy consumer goods at a lower  price compared to shops. Office workers in Princess House and the Annex building were also there after office hours. 

Our next point of visit was  Dawson Road. The tour guide told us that soon after the war there was a Japanese prisoner of war (POW) holding area  known as Buller camp. In fact, there was a road thereat named Buller Terrace. One end was from Strathmore Avenue and the end was at Dawson Road opposite the present Dawson Place.  My memories flashed back again to the 1970s where there was a market cum food centre at Buller Terrace. The market had hawker stalls selling fresh fish, meat, vegetables, and live poultry among others. The chicken  was  put in cages. They were slaughtered and defeathered on site when a purchase was made by a housewife. The process was very unsightly. The hawker slit the throat of the bird and let it bled to death on the floor before defeathering.  It was done manually. Later a machine was invented to remove the feathers from the bird. Outside the market were many illegal hawkers stalls by the roadside as well as at the market concourse. Their stalls were removed when the Ministry of the Environment decided to clear all hawkers  from the roadside. 

Next we were taken to 2 war bunkers nearby the former Hua Yu Secondary School. Going to the sites were quite adventurous.  We had to negotiate our way to a higher terrain with thick foliage. It  reminded me of my scouting days when I went hiking through the jungle in Changi. At the first bunker only the façade of the building was left. At the second bunker, the building with four wall was still  intact but the place was empty. We were told there was a third bunker. 

                                    The way to the bunkers were through the thick foliage

                                                                       Bunker 1

                                                                          Bunker 2

Many were interested to know about Boh Beh Kang. Two elderly men were waiting for us at Stirling Road Tiong Ghee temple to be interviewed. According to them Boh Beh Kang was a swamp with farms, plantations, burial grounds and dotted with villages. According to them Boh Beh Kang (no tail river) came about because the villagers there were unable to determine  the source of the river. In the early 1950 the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) wanted to build a settlite estate called Queenstown thereat and the villagers were affected by resettlement scheme. In late 1960 Queenstown estate extended to the present Mei Ling Street area Tiong Ghee temple at the site was affected. The villagers asked the HDB to resite the temple to Stirling Road but was turned down a few times.When the then Prime Minister the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew visited the place, they approached him for help. Within a week the request to resite the Tiong Ghee temple to Stirling Road was approved. The villagers were very grateful to our former PM Lee Kuan Yew. Tiong Ghee temple now stands proudly on a higher ground overlooking Stirling Road.

Our final destination was the Alexandra Hospital. I remember it was originally a British Military Hospital at Alexandra Road. According to our tour guide Lip Sin, 250 people in the hospital including patients were massacred during the Japanese invasion of Singapore. I found a plaque in the hospital compound that confirmed the Japanese massacre.

It was a long walk from 8.30 am to nearly 12 noon although part of the journey was by mini buses. I was surprised that at my age of 80 years old  I was still able to walk that distance. Perhaps walking in memory lane had urged me on without realising the distance and time covered. Thanks to Li Yong, Jasper, Lip Sin and Eu Chai for the opportunity to go back in time. 

The War Years

When the first Japanese bomb dropped in Singapore my grandpa evacuated all his families to his rubber estate at Chai Chee, Changi. The rubber estate had a factory processing liquid rubber (latex) into rubber sheets for export. During the war the rubber factory stopped functioning. The two storey rubber smoke house was converted into dwelling for my grandpa’s first two families and my aunts’ family. Nearby on the lower ground was a row of labourers’ quarters. Some of them had moved out and my grandpa’s third family lived there.

The first thing grandpa did was getting the adult members of the family to dig an air raid shelter outside the smoke house. It was rectangular in shape about 6 feet deep with steps going down the air raid shelter. The top of the shelter was camouflage  with coconut leaves. Entrance to the shelter also served as an exit. The shelter could accommodate only 10 persons. When the air raid siren was sounded, women and children ran quickly to the shelter. The men hide under the trees or bushes. As a young boy I was very excited each time the siren was sounded. Lights were off and it was total darkness and silence everywhere. Nobody was allowed to talked in the shelter as if the enemy was around us. We went back to the house when a second siren sounded. The air raid shelter had no drainage system and was flooded when there was rain. The men had to drain away the muddy water before we were able to use it again.

At the rubber estate we heard all sorts of news about the Japanese invasion and their atrocities. The people was very frightened. Then one day we saw Japanese soldiers roaming the rubber estates. We had news  that Japanese soldiers raped young girls at night. I had a few teenager female cousins. At night when there were Japanese soldiers nearby they hid under a pile of coconut husks. When the Japanese government was established in Singapore, grandpa moved all his three families back to Joo Chiat. Built up area was then considered safer than living in the rubber estate where there was no rule of law by the Japanese soldiers.

Joo Chiat after the war was so different from before the war. There was so much changes. Hawker stalls were everywhere along the roadsides, lanes and vacant lands, especially at busy road junctions. In the early stage of Japanese occupation many people were jobless especially the lower income group. Hawking was the easiest occupation and cigarette stalls with little capital proliferated at market place, five foot ways, street corners etc. The lane close to my home became a gambling place like a casino. There were games of dice (si go luck), fan tan (the game started with dealer placing a cup over a pile of seeds.The players had to guess the winning numbers from 1 to 4. Betting stop when the dealer started counting for winning numbers.  Each time 4 seeds were removed and  the last group say only 3 seeds, then number 3 was  declared the winning number) and also çhap ji ki or 12 Chinese characters representing numbers from 1 to 12. The payout was 10 times for betting the winning number. Then there was card games and Chinese domino or Pai Kow. The ‘casino’ operated only at night but it did not last long probably it was illegal.

Hawkers were quick to take over the sidelane and turned it into  a wet market selling from fresh fish, meat, vegetables to food for breakfast. Unlike the cigarette stalls which operated the whole day, the wet market finished at midday and the side lane was back to normal.

I attended the Choon Guan English School at Koon Seng Road which taught Japanese language. Every morning we sang the Japanese National Anthem ‘Kimigayo’. The school then dispersed to their classes. Then class by class marched to the basketball court for exercises. I remember walking round the court perimeter singing Japanese song ‘aruke’ (walking) followed by free hand exercises like stretching and bending your body. The Japanese school ceased functioning when Singapore was liberated.