Does this sound like a luxury private residential property? Certainly yes! It belonged to my grandparents.
It was a huge piece of land, easily the size of 10 football fields. There were 2 living rooms, 3 kitchens with spacious dinning areas, 8 bedrooms, 2 tiolets and a bathroom that was located more than 100m away. My grandparents owned more than 30 rambutan trees, 20+ durian trees, 10+ "ba-long-long" trees, a few lime & guava trees, hundreds of papaya trees, many pineapples & bananas, a handful of pomelos, soursop, mangos, jackfruits, starfruits, and a plantation of sweet potatos, tapiocas, various vegetables, etc. There was also a big playround in front of our house.
Behind the house was a quarry, we called it "swayteng" where we used to go there to fly kites. Next to the bathroom was a fish pond which belonged to our neighbour. We treated it as a swiming pool where my neightbours, cousins and I picked up some basic swimming skills there.
It was truely a wonderful place to live in and I am glad that I had spent 17 years of my childhood days there. It was unfortunate that my grandparents had to sell this piece of land to the government for redevelopment purposes, sometime in 1983. It was sold at a small amount of less than $50,000!
Wow! 10 football fields! Where is it?
ReplyDeleteLet say one football field can build 3 blocks of HDB. That space can build 30 blocks of HDB flats!
The gahmen only compensated $50,000?
It is somewhere between Mandai & Bukit Panjang areas. Yes, the compensation was less than $50k to be shared among 15 people (my grandparents, my father, 5 uncles, 7 aunties). My father, 4th uncle & 5th uncle got a bigger share of about $10k each because they stayed there with my grandparents. A normal 4-room flat costs $49k at that time.
ReplyDeletehi anthony, just to say a big thank you on yr wonderful video, which i circulated to my Changi 10 miles fb gang & whatsapp to those non-fb village people.
ReplyDeletei contribute actively, whenever i can to revived that "village spirit" that brought us here.
sadly, our children will never know those "foundation years" we had, that brings out that survival intincts & dna, moving forward.
btw, if you are in East coast park area, on weekends 4-7 pm,
i am the owner of Castle Beach, a social entreprise that promotes family outdoor activities, by building sandcastles.
www.castlescanfly.com
my purpose was captured in yr great video.
cheers!!!!
I stay at 91A lorong Mutu,we left tis place because gov aquried e land before during our time e quarry there will blast e granite twice a day ,11am n 4pm ,our zine house got a lot of holes after years of blasting, so we were force to left tis village
ReplyDelete