♥Rediscovering Singapore (Friday, March 06, 2009 / 6:38 pm)
The last time I stepped into the National Museum of Singapore when I was still schooling at Mayflower and I went there as part of the Heritage tour program.
If it wasn't for my response paper due next Friday, I guess I wouldn't have the chance or even think of visiting this museum again. Now, it is a newly revamped museum with historical displays that are now categorized properly into strong themes.
(a sidenote: I need to thank my dear mei mei for accompanying me to the museum today!!! )
Particularly, I visited the living gallery at level 2. There are 4 living galleries; Food, Photography, Fashion and Film and Wayang.
I headed to the food gallery first as I had somehow decided to focus my paper on that theme.
The food gallery displays many kinds of street food from 1950s-1970s. The historical displays are very enticing, complemented with scents of food, ingredients, visual appeal of the old utensils used for eating, cooking, videos of how the food is cooked and also the sounds you could hear if you are standing in a food street.
Besides taking down the information needed and photographs of some of the displays to aid my memory when getting down to write the paper, my sister and I did not forget to cam-whore. lol
this was where they sold tutu kueh in the old times. rather significant for me as I'm at tutu kueh lover!!!! when I was young, my aunt will always buy the fragrant green tutu kueh for me at her flat void deck. nowadays, it's so hard to find green ones anymore, now pasar malam only has the white floured ones.
selling satays...
the baskets for eggs and plates, I guess...
glass bottles for cold drinks with radio in the background.
mei mei with the ice kacang/ice ball machine. mummy was excited when she saw this picture. she recognised immediately and she told us that she used to buy ice balls after school and the vendors were all using this kind of machine.
me with the grinders for making the spices.
the fake tutu kueh looks more like agar agar...
for chay kway teow....
the fragrances and spices used...
One discovery I made, the coffee shops in the olden days tended to be operated by the Hainanese! And these were the cups that were used in the coffee shops. Companies in the old days advertise through the cups in coffeeshops especially milk and tea. Many of them were printed with companies' logo, products or services, some even with the contact number of the companies.
And I spotted the moulds that were used to make peng kueh and ang ku kueh!!!!
Me outside the fashion gallery. This is where you should visit if you are keen to know the evolution of clothes Singapore women wore, the advent of Western culture in clothes and women's changing status in the society reflected by the clothes they wore. This is one of the most interesting galleries. But I din take many photographs because the lights in there were super dim, probably to preserve those precious cheongsam, a-go-go clothes etc.
Interesting discovery, women in the 1940s were actually paying attention to keeping slim!!!!! here's an article I found!!! (pic clickable)
Nevertheless the kind of cosmetics used!!!
In one of the information, wigs were popular with Indian women in those times but 1 wig would cost $15!!!! Definitely considered expensive for those days!!!
Found this in photography gallery, this scroll was the Chinese marriage certificate.
Moving on to the Film and Wayang gallery.
Here's mei mei reminding us that the rules we must observe when in the gallery. Taking phots without flash in those dim lights were pretty disappointing for me! It's almost mission impossible!!!
We love gramophones!!!! Can't take enough pictures with them.
the child labour contract for wayang performance or backstage crew...
the handcuff they used in wayang performance to catch the bad people.
celebrity endorsement. tt's Lin Dai on the left (wonder if anyone knows her, belongs to my dad's generation...lol)
the black and white films...
mei mei with the film posters...
after a few hours of visiting, we were cam-whoring with the European architecture design like tourists...
tt's mei mei across the museum...
took 200 over photos by the end of the day, unbelievable but the number included all the tags, displays I needed for the response paper. anyway, while we were taking the photos, the museum curators were observing us with puzzled looks. I guess they must be wondering why we were having so much fun posing there. lol
Spent a total of 3.5 hrs there and we were starving when we headed to plaza singapura. Ate Yoshinoya, shopped a bit but felt super exhausted so we went home...
An enjoyable day trip with my sister!!!
(more photos to be uploaded in facebook!)
