My Thoughts

My group went on our Heritage Trail on a random Saturday morning on the last day of January as most of us are free that day and we did not want to push it any further because CNY is coming. We met at 11am at Newton MRT station where Amantha fetched us in her little family car.

Off we went to the places that we have planned beforehand. As we had meticulously planned the route way before that day, it was a much less difficult journey for us. However, the main roads along Bukit Timah areas are mostly one way. And when you miss a certain place, you will have to find a U-turning area to turn. It had proven a rather grueling trip for us. It was really not an easy drive around that area especially when we missed the place and have to U-turn to find the roads again. The turns were horrible as all of us felt like we were “flying”. I found this quite interesting as it’s not really wise to have such roads when the traffic there is always very heavy as the places leads to town (Dunearn Road) and Jurong area (Upper Bukit Timah Road). 

We combed the entire trail within 5 hours. One of the places that I was looking forward to before our trail was that of the Former Bukit Timah Fire Station. This place enumerates a very fascinating aura to me because it was being rebuilt into an Artsy place for people who are into Arts. Companies/agencies like the “Ministry of Faceabook” and “Ministry of Literature” could be found there.

When we arrived at that place, I was still amazed at how the “red-colour inspired” design of the fire station was still there. However, the area has been commercialized into a small little Arts hub for people who are interested in the Arts. It was mainly taken over by this company called “Spectra”. There were no exhibits of even the slightest equipment and memoirs of a fire station except the letter box, the significant doors and the ladder.

I felt that the conservation of this former fire station could have been better. Maybe they could build some exhibits that resembles that of a fire station, for eg fire engines, hose etc, instead of completely removing what makes it the place it was before thus commercializing it for the sole purpose of profits. I found this point pretty sad because this place also used to be a battle ground site during the World War Two. There should be much more efforts in making this place more memorable for the Singaporeans of tomorrow, instead of just merely getting rid of everything that makes the place what it used to be. This to me is a Heritage.

A heritage’s antiquity could be derived from the stuff that used to denote the place, people and culture. For the case of this fire station, it was more of preserving the materials of the place but commercializing this land, in order to generate profits.

This is mostly true in the case of Singapore, where most heritage places were being rebuilt into some money-making places for the purpose of attracting tourists, where the ultimate motive is to earn profits from such visits. Henceforth, the essence/ true flavour of these heritage are usually gone but has been rebuilt into something which some of us might consider more artificial. Even if this place may not bring along with it some cultural values of our multi-racial society, it still brought with it some history for us to appreciate. Moreover, as we all have already known, Bukit Timah was one of the main site for the Battle of Singapore during WWII. Thus in my opinion, it is considered a "lost" heritage. (a lost heritage means almost losing our roots.) 


Speaking of which, where do our (Singaporean) roots actually come from? What do you think? And why?

A group picture at the aforementioned place.