Whampoa Part 2-HDB Shophouses

Continuing from my post about Whampoa Estate, here are shophouses that been here for a long time, at least more than 20 years.

These shophouses are known as HDB Shophouses located in the heartland of Singapore where majority of Singaporeans lived. Most of the times you can bargain for your products for about 10 to 20% discount unless they are fixed price. Sometimes, you can find things you cannot find in big shopping malls. You have to return to visit my post on the market place in next few posts.

Most of the shopowners lived above their shops and these shophouses are not cheap, some are sold for about a million dollars and the owner would then rent out or use for their own. My sister had one shophouse just like the one on the right. She stay above her shop.

Please return for more interesting post on whampoa estate.

Community Club

This area used to be a sleepy small village with many attap houses. Attap houses are houses with attap leaves as their roof and the name attap is named after the tree.


I remember seeing cows and goats in here when I was a very young child. Now flats are spotted here. I used to stay around this area but shifted out when my brother bought a flat and my other sisters and myself got married and got our own home too. This area is very old at least more than 30 to 40 years old. The flat that I used to stay are all demolished, I will talk about it at later post. I will post a photo of my old home in later post.

This area is known as Whampoa named after a well known Chinese named Hoo Ah Kay, Whampoa (1816-1880). You can view his history from here.

This is Whampoa Community Club where residents can come here to meet up or join any activities that the CC organises. Noticed the name of the CC are in four different languages, Malay, Chinese Tamil and English. We are a multi racial country and the CC is for all races.



Some of the activities organised by the CC.

Please visit "That's my World" for other parts of the world.

Singa the Courtesy Lion

This is our courtesy mascot, Singa the Courtesy Lion. Why Singa? Singa means Lion in Malay, we are called Lion City or Singapura.

The National Courtesy Campaign was a campaign launched in June 1979 by Singapore's Ministry of Culture as a means of encouraging Singaporeans to be more kind and considerate to each other, so as to create a pleasant social environment. You can read more about the campaign in here.

The campaign is very successful, now we are so used to queuing for our food, taxi, paying bills, banking, etc. Yet we do have inconsiderate and rude people too even though the campaign is successful.

But recently with the H1N1 affecting so many people and our lives, Singa has to remind people to wear the mask if they are unwell and also to see a doctor.

I find him so cute.

Ikea

What I did on a lazy Saturday Afternoon?

I went to Ikea to look at some home furnishings. Oh yes, I spotted a desk and cabinet for my son. So I took the measurements just to make sure it fitted the corner of son's room.

I might return another day to purchase them unless I found a better and cheaper desk at another place...lol.

Skywatch Friday

Time passes fast. It is Friday again. I seems to have luck seeing nice images in the sky. Last week, sky looked so heavenly and today, the image looked like an angel holding a book and singing. Looked like there's a halo above his head.

Not sure you can see what I see. Now what would I see next week. :)



For other sky watchers, please hop over to Skywatch blog.