Caribbean BBQ

Our friends, Steven and Zi, had a house-warming BBQ at their condo called Caribbean by the Bay last Sunday. We'd actually been there a couple of times before but the BBQ was new. Zi had also passed her Board of Architects examinations recently, which means she's a Qualified Person now, able to submit plans to building authorities in her own capacity. As usual, I walked around taking photos of the place while the girlfriends chatted. They won't know it, but I have a lot of memories of the place. You see, this was the site of my Final Year Thesis project back in 1990. At the time, this was still a derelict dock. There was a pump house next to King's Dock, and the slipway where the BBQ pavilions cantilevers over today was formerly known as "Dock No.2".

In 2002, I had a chance to give a talk in Gdansk, Poland. The topic I spoke on was waterfront sites in Singapore and one of these was this Keppel Harbour area. Carribean was under construction then, and I had to infer what it will be like from the sales brochure. In any case, this was what I said about the place in the symposium:

"Singapore’s history is relatively short, having been founded in 1819, almost insignificant when compared to Gdansk’s 1,000 year history. This port at Keppel was Singapore’s oldest. (Slide -) In the case of Keppel, there was only one owner (PSA) instead of the multiple owners as in the case of Tanjung Rhu. When its port operations were relocated, the land was sold for residential developement. It is currently being built as The Caribbean, a 969-unit residential development spread over 22 blocks that range from 4-storeys to 10-storeys in height.

The entire site is dug to cater for basement carpark, so that the ground level can be put to better use, and the views from ground up are not marred by massive multi-storey carparking structures that are then linked back to each individual residential block. This is also a question of class; multi-storey carparks are often associated by the market with the cheaper public housing estates, and more sophisticated homes have private lift lobbies that bring them directly up from their carpark spaces to their front doors. In fact this is a trait common to all 3 developments surveyed here; their parking garages are all below ground level, even as this means expensive waterproofing construction against the high water table level of a coastal site. Furthermore, the roof deck of these basement carparks are then constructed as elaborate landscaped gardens with water features and recreational facilities like BBQ pits and tennis courts so that the view from the apartments above will appear natural and scenic.

Again, all trace of memories and history of the place has been erased. (Slide of old boilers) Only the outlines of the piers, a carcass of the old docks are retained. But at least the coast line is kept accessible to the public, no doubt through legislature, but the condominiums maintain a level of exclusivity with gated property lines."

OK not very exciting prose, I'll admit, but it was supposed to be academic, you see. I guess I'm in the mourning-over-lost-places mood. The Caribbean is very photogenic today. But it's safe to bet that none of the residents know anything about its significant history, or about the hordes of Southern Chinese coolies the boats at Dock No.2 unloaded onto the shore of Singapore. At least, I bet Zi and Steven doesn't know.

Chup