FOYers Gathering on 31 Oct 2008

31 Oct 2008 happened to be Halloween but Halloween has no significance for me. I do not celebrate it anyway. Yet, 31 Oct 2008 was a meaningful day because that evening, Friends of Yesterday.sg met at 8Q sam.

I was looking at the archives of Yesterday.sg and found that the earliest post in the archives date back as early as 3 Aug 2005. It was Love Me Love Me Not at the Singapore History Museum posted by Shaun Wong. It's rather commendable that Yesterday.sg has come so far.

Compared to the Singapore Art Museum building along Bras Basah Road, 8Q sam is a comparatively unfamiliar place to me. I've only managed to find out that the four-storey building that 8Q sam occupies was formerly the primary wing of the Catholic High School.

I took the first photo found on this post (see above) at least an hour before the gathering started. If I am not wrong, the white building in the foreground was formerly the secondary wing of the Catholic High School? Look further into the background, and you would see a building in shades of orange and red. That's the 8Q sam building.

To be very honest, I have no particular memory of the 8Q sam building. Even though I used to frequent the Bras Basah and Waterloo Street area very often, the building had only struck me as an unfamiliar building. After it was recently converted to Singapore Art Museum's new wing for contemporary art did I realised that it was formerly the primary wing of the Catholic High School. As such, I shall point readers to a few online articles which may help you better appreciate the building's past:

- 8Q sam - formerly Catholic High Primary School by ordinary guy
- Queen Street, By Thulaja, Naidu Ratnala written on 2003-03-29, National Library Board Singapore.




Back to the gathering, it was held from 7.30 p.m. at Octo Room of the 8Q sam building. As I usually have dinner much earlier in the evening, by the time I was at the gathering, I was already full from a light dinner. No matter how appetizing the food was, I have only room to sample some of the food. The food was good. Anyway, I simply have to have my dinner early else I fear I may get gastric problems eventually.

Sweet tiramisu. Photo credit: acroamatic

Pizza. Photo credit: acroamatic

I have the pleasure to meet a few of the Friends of Yesterday.sg for the very first time. Budak seemed to be fairly interested in contemporary arts, and he was recommending that I could check out Donna Ong's The Caretaker. While striking a conversation with Budak, I realised that I had caught a glimpse of The Caretaker a few weeks ago. While it may seemed rather eerie at first, I had found myself gradually intrigued by its use of dim lighting and its subtle hint of a sinister mood.

There was quite some time to catch up with various Friends of Yesterday.sg. Admittedly, I was pretty excited about sharing concepts of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) with Ivan. It often excites me when I get to talk about topics that interest me, and MBTI is one of it. I spoke briefly with Preetam about Ang Mo Kio. I also had a chance to coax Modcentric and Homesafe to consider checking out the Singapore Biennale exhibition site at City Hall. I attempted to do so by sharing about my recent visit to City Hall. I hope that would get them excited to visit City Hall before it undergoes major conversion into the National Art Gallery.




The most formal part of the event was probably the presentation by Walter which he and his team had put together. There were quite a lot of interesting and constructive discussions going on.



And eventually, all good things will come to a closure, at least temporary. Nevertheless, it had been a fruitful gathering afterall.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8Q_SAM
http://www.singart.com/8qsam/about.html

**
Related posts by other Friends of Yesterday.sg:
SAM 8Q: Latest NHB museum on the block by Ivan.
Friends of Yesterday.sg by otterman.