From a wedding dinner atop OUE Tower, to a man's treat of a ride for him and his mother on the Singapore Flyer, paid for with his first pay cheque, people shared what various iconic structures here meant to them during a recent contest by The Straits Times.
As part of the fortnight-long #GuesswithST contest that ended last week, Straits Times photographers took pictures of iconic landmarks, such as Marina Bay Sands (MBS), the Singapore Flyer, Merlion Park, Suntec City and OUE Tower, from obscure angles.
The public had to correctly guess the location of one of the photos and submit a short write-up describing the significance the place had to Singapore or to them personally, and upload their entries on Instagram or Facebook.
Twenty-eight winners were handpicked from over 3,000 submissions, with each winning a pair of tickets to a National Day Parade preview show.
Retired clerk Betty Ho, 57, held her wedding dinner in 1985 at an eatery called the Red Lantern Revolving Restaurant at the top of OUE Tower. "The restaurant was circular. It was a novelty and everyone was excited to be up there," she said.
The restaurant there is now Tong Le Private Dining.
Civil servant Chua Shuhui, 29, said Suntec City was special to her because it was where she went on her first date with her then boyfriend, now husband, in 2006, and also where he surprised her with a bouquet of 99 red roses when he proposed eight years later.
There were other occasions in between for the junior college sweethearts. "Suntec City was one of the places we would go for orientation mass dances," she said.
Data analyst Goh Zhen Yi, 24, who spent a year learning sign language at Nanyang Technological University, said she had long been fascinated by MBS' unique architecture, and learnt how to represent it using sign language.
Another data analyst, Mr Mohamed Ali Rauff, 27, said the Singapore Flyer was special to him because he took his mother on a ride after he received his first pay cheque as an intern. "She was able to get an overview of the whole of Singapore. She was so grateful and it was very memorable for us."
