There’s some worry in The Marbella that the Sungei Ulu Pandan Woodlands between us and Dover MRT are targeted to be cut down and make place for more housing development. So I went and did some research.

There’s a section near Buona Vista MRT and Ghim Moh that has already been allocated for “redevelopment”. You can see this from Commonwealth Ave and the MRT line. This section is part of the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme (or SERS), which means they demolish HDB flats somewhere else and than rebuild them in an other spot. Unfortunately, many trees have been cut and 5 HDB flats will be build here between now and 2011, one of which will have 40 stories. The developer has promised to keep a strip of 30 trees around the development and therefore you cannot really see it from The Marbella. But what’s 30 trees going to help the wildlife there? At some point of time the 40 story flat will be visible from The Marbella.

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Last week, the final details of the Singapore F1 Circuit were approved and confirmed by the FIA. I think there’s one corner changed from a 3 way chicane to 2, but apart from that, it;s pretty much as planned. When I visited the Singapore Flyer the other week, we saw how the paddock was almost finished, the lights on the track were complete and last preparations on the newly build sections of the circuit were almost done.

The question is really, when will the close if the city for traffic to fix the roads that are currently still being used by normal traffic? I remember from Melbourne, that this could take weeks, over there the driving range would be closed for weeks because it was located within the circuit boundaries.

Anyway, for those interested, here’s the map of the circuit!

When my mum and I visited Chinatown last weekend, I asked her to take a picture of a building we saw across the street. When I was going through these pictures, I recognised the building again and thought I’d look it up on the internet.

The building in question is The Majestic. The Majestic Theater is a historic Cantonese opera house which used to be called Tien Yien Moh Toi Theatre. It’s not quite the romantic story of the Taj Mahal, but in a smaller way still a very sweet story, how a rich business man build the opera house for his wife and even bought the street the theater was built on to name it after himself (not her).

Ever since, the theater has been converted to a cinema that showed Chinese “blockbusters” and during the WWII occupation Japanese movies. After the WWII it was rented by The Majestic Film Company, which gave the building it’s current name. At the moment it houses a shopping mall.

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I have decided to keep a photo-diary of the renovation or demolishing of the building across the street from The Marbella.

These are 2 HDB flats that have been empty ever since we moved in, but we only noticed that since they started demolishing the next door building and putting up the scaffold. It’s part of the scheme where HDB flats make room for expensive condominiums.

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Today’s taxi-driver explained how the condominium on the corner end of our street was the oldest in Singapore. Obviously intrigued by this story, I looked it up on the internet. I found the Pandan Valley Condominium website and their homepage has some very interesting stories. Apparently there’s a gambling den, joggers killed, bad TV reception, too many GSM base stations and no covered walk to the nearest bus station. Some of these complaint span back to when the complex was build 27 years ago.

This information is not very positive and I would not expect this on the homepage of this website. Especially, because it’s a piece of Singapore’s history and attracts people and visitors like me. If you look at the about section, you could imagine this was a top place to live 27 years ago, with for that time all facilities in prime condition. I think nothing much happened after that and the place is slowly deteriorating.