There was always music in our Bedok kampong house - not surprising as our late father worked at Radio Malaya since 1953 (retiring 32 years later). In December 1962 he bought this Schaub Lorenz transistor radio for the family and listening to music on the radio was a daily thing. Some of our best memories of the kampong house was due to the music that was playing at that time, cementing those moments in time for us. Remembering so clearly that first day of January 1970 and listening to this radio at the corner of the house veranda with our cousin, the Archies' Sugar Sugar went to #1 in the local Singapore charts. Later in 1971, one night Rainy Days and Mondays (by the Carpenters) was playing on this radio which was just on a tabletop just inside the bedroom window you see in the photo. I was thinking at that time (just 10 years of age), what is to stop anyone from climbing into our house here and robbing us then?
Photo taken from the original manual (still kept to this day)
Original receipt, warranty card and operating instructions (still around now) but the radio itself is gone
The Schaub Lorenz Weekend TE 203 - Photos credit from Radio.museum.org
This corner of the veranda where the cousins were listening to this song on the first evening of January 1970
The house had no fencing so anyone could just climb in - if they did it would have been a 'rainy day and monday' indeed
Kampong folk sometimes mistook them for Arabs, but the residents of Rumah Bombay - as the house at 4E Bedok Road (formerly 614) was affectionately known - actually hailed from Gujarat in India. (Yes, Gujarat was part of North Bombay before 1 May 1960.) They were one large extended family, led by their patriarch, the late Haji Kassim bin Adam, who ran a thriving dates business at 29 Arab Street under the company named “Kassim bin Adam Pte Ltd”. They lived just next door to us, separated only by a simple fence. Abu Bakar, Haji Kassim’s grandson, still remembers vividly the day they moved in - January 1957 - and how the family transformed the former hostel/boarding house into a home spacious enough for the families of Haji Kassim’s seven children, their children, and grandchildren. The house eventually held nine bedrooms. At its peak, more than forty family members lived together under that magnificent two storey roof fenced with beautiful, yellow-flowered Australia Gold Vine creepers...
He used to walk about 2km to school every day — Bedok Boys — from his home at Padang Terbakar (later renamed Siak Kuan Road in the 1970s). His house was the second one next to the old Sungei Bedok bridge, (855M Padang Terbakar, later 222 Siak Kuan Road) looking out toward the British pillboxes guarding the river mouth. And of course, another 2km home again after school. On those daily walks, he would have passed right by our Bedok kampong house at Kampong Laut, making his way out toward Bedok Corner before turning right. We were just babies and toddlers then, but how lovely that all these years later, we’ve connected with this neighbour from across the sungei — Daniel. Daniel shared with us this precious family photo taken around 1960, with him at the extreme right. Behind them, you can see the Bedok beach where the river met the sea, and at the right corner, the familiar silhouette of the pillboxes. He also remembers a huge, rarely-seen butter fruit tree in his compound — bearing ...
Each Thursday evening around 6pm, our grandmother would have someone from the household burn some kemenyan incense on a holder and carry this burner to every room and corner in our Bedok kampong house. We knew this was a spiritual practice but just recently informed by our mother that this act appeases the spirit owners of the house.... can still recall the distinct smell and incense smoke as this post is written.... 1955 photo of our Bedok kampong house with our grandmother (58 years old here) posing.. Kemenyan incense burner/holder (photo not ours)
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