” Authorities are investigating the death of an acrobat, who fell while performing with her husband during a live flying-trapeze performance in Suzhou, China, last Saturday.
Videos of the graphic incident posted on social media showed that the couple was pulled high into the air from the ground by what appears to be a crane.
In the videos, the woman was later seen falling from reportedly more than 9m high, after her husband failed to catch her with his legs during the performance.”
This incident brought back childhood memories of a circus coming to Holland Village in Singapore. I was probably around 7 or 8 years old. We were living in a farm. I remember my lorry-driver father telling us that there was a tent circus coming. We obviously wanted to go but had no money to buy tickets for our big family of ten children.
Later, I remember my father coming home one night with the news that a girl acrobat had fallen to her death from a trapeze.
That news had a powerful imprint on me.
I can’t explain why I was so unequivocal about it. But I decided right there and then that it was not right for people with money to put others in dangerous situations just to entertain themselves.
I was visiting Singapore for about a month. My father’s grave was being reinterred from the Choa Chu Kang Cemetery that was supposedly for the expansion of the Tengah Airbase.
I had left Singapore in 1975 and felt like I needed to show support to my family who had always taken care of family affairs.
During the entire month that I was in Singapore, I travelled all over the island. We travelled on roads, highways, alley ways, and side streets.
There was not a single pothole encountered during my stay in Singapore.
We finally landed home in Oahu. As the airplane was taxi-ing to the terminal at the Honolulu International airport, the announcement came from the pilot came on:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize. There will be a 2-minute delay as there is a pot-hole in front of us. The plane is being towed to the terminal.”
My husband and I looked at each other and laughed upon hearing that announcement.
Welcome back to Hawaii!
Land of the potholes, even on the airport grounds.
I’ve been helping with residential real estate in Hawaii for 30 years. People continue to say that the real estate market will bottom out. I have not seen it happened and I don’t think it will. It not like we can split the stocks into half. But I have seen highs and lows in a cyclical fashion. It has not “bottom-out” in my experience but bounced back.
During the Great Depression, many bought real estate knowing that the market would rebound.
Here’s an example of real estate values in my country of birth. We are familiar with these roads and locations. As secondary school students, we were always admiring the big homes. Lee Kuan Yew‘s home is also in this area. Here is a new listing in Singapore. It’s asking for S$300 million.
” SINGAPORE – A sprawling mansion at 5 Oxley Rise, where Jewish businessman Manasseh Meyer and real estate tycoon Cheong Eak Chong once resided, has been put up for sale.
The hilltop two-storey bungalow, which sits on a 151,205 sq ft freehold site in prime District 9, is expected to attract offers in excess of $300 million, marketing agent CBRE said on Monday (April 18).
The property is owned by seven members of the same family, all sons of the late Mr Cheong, founder of listed developer Hong Fok Corporation and Tian Teck group, according to The Business Times.”
Here is another angle to this property and the people who used to live in it. It’s so fantastic that there are so many people who are willing to share their interests and knowledge in history.
“Sir Manasseh Meyer, a Baghdadi Jew who was said to have “owned three-quarters of Singapore” as well as being the “richest Jew in the Far East” being richer than the Sassoons (who were described as the “Rothschilds of the East”).
The opium trade, enriched many in the Baghdadi Jewish community including the Sassoons. Like the Sassoons, who operated in Shanghai and Hong Kong, those in the community who found themselves in Singapore, came through Bombay (Mumbai).
Many saw the trade, as community historian Eze Nathan would describe it “The History of Jews in Singapore, 1830-1945”, as a “legitimate short cut to wealth” and the members of the community in Singapore, such as Meyer, made a fortune from it.Having acquired wealth initially from the trade, Meyer branched out into other businesses and into property. He would come to live in Belle Vue, which was originally built by Thomas Oxley as Killiney House and among the properties associated with Meyer were the Adelphi Hotel, Sea View Hotel, Meyer Mansions, Meyer Chambers and the Crescent Flats.
Belle Vue was demolished in the 1980s to make way for a condo development of the same name. A reminder of Meyer’s estate off Oxley Rise does however exist in the form of the Chesed-El synagogue, one of two synagogues in Singapore that Meyer erected. “
