Tuesday Freebie Challenge 15 May and Thursday Challenge 17 May
By cantabile21
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Real life has a way of taking over, and since i was unable to make any progress on the Tuesday freebie challenge through the week, i chose to combine the Tuesday and Thursday challenges. The event being documented is the historical handover of the Tanjung Pagar Railway Station, details of which are 'briefly' described below. =P
Tanjung Pagar Railway Station opened in 1932, while Singapore and Malaysia were still under British administration as a colony. The railway spans vertically across Peninsular Malaysia all the way down and across the bridge to the island of Singapore, and until recently, the southern terminus was this Tanjung Pagar Railway Station, deep in the southern half of Singapore. When Singapore was made independent in 1965, for some complicated reason the station and railway tracks remained in Malaysian hands. While the rest of Singapore (too) rapidly modernised over the decades, the Malaysian authorities pretty much left the station as it was, and it soon became a precious snapshot of history in a super-modern city state. In 2010, the two neighbouring countries finally came to an agreement to return these territories to Singapore, the details of which i shall not bore you with. =)
In the dying weeks before the official handover on 1 July 2011, hoards of people descended on the station with cameras of every sort, hoping to capture a precious piece of history before the station went the way of the rest of corporate Singapore - modern, squeaky clean and soulless. i have since learnt that the Singapore authorities have agreed to preserve the facade of the station and turn it into railway museum cum event space, but my journalling attempts to capture the fear and feelings of the Singapore population, who were sure that the $$$-faced people on top would turn it into another profit-generating shopping mall.
Note: 'teh tarik' means 'pulled tea', and is sweet frothy milk tea that has been poured back and forth between
two metal cups through the air. It's quite interesting to watch them prepare it, and i'm pretty sure it's
unique to this part of the world!
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