Holland Village MRT windmill, Singapore, shows us the way, so does Sherlock in Baker Street, London

Down on the platform you can see this mural showing a Dutch style windmill. The windmill ties in with the name Holland Village.

That's what the art work on every station should show, a reminder of the name. I would have preferred a repeating pattern of windmills or other local landmarks or historic photos. 

To my mind, every station should have a colour scheme, with accents in a warm colour. Here you have pale blue with occasional touches of red or pink or yellow.

Other stations also feature the local area.

My favourites in London, England

Baker Street.

Sherlock Holmes.

Victoria Station.

My least favourites In Singapore

Cashew

Little India - a lot of brown and grey an monotone. Outside in Little India the ladies are wearing colourful sarees. The Little India station should by a riot of colour, like the Diwali patterns used to decorate the trains..

Cashew Road and Cashew Trees and Nuts

In case you are wondering, as I was, what a Cashew tree looks like and whether it would be fun to grow one, here's a picture from Wikipedia by L Shyamal. Singapore has Orchard Road in the middle, and mango trees on the main Upper East Coast road. But according to one of the websites about the history of Singapore place names, often roads in an area were on a theme such as fruits, or nut trees, not relating to the local vegetation. 

Going uphill from Cashew station on Upper Bukit Timah Road, along Cashew Road you will also find Chestnut Drive, Almond Street, Hazel Park, and Walnut.

The cashew nut grows under the edible cashew apple, but the nut is encased in a dangerously acidic liquid. So I was not surprised they don't risk growing little cashew nut trees in Cashew Road outside the schools.

Photo of cashew apple and nut: from Wikipedia by Abhishek Jacob.

Then I spoke to Mr Lau who is writing a book for his own satisfaction on the trees on the Cashew Heights estate. He assured me that Cashew Heights had and still has cashew nut trees, although the estate's symbol is a Raintree.

http://remembersingapore.org/2011/04/04/old-names-of-places/

http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-cashews.html

Cashew Station artwork shows clean Singapore; what about cashew trees?

If you try the new Downtown line in Singapore which opened after Xmas in late December 2015 ready for the new year, you will have the chance to see some new artwork.

Cashew station at first disappointed me because I was hoping for something bigger and more colourful. But when I had time to stop and read the caption and look closely I appreciated that it was not an old style 2D painting but a rather original artwork, more like a collage of found objects.

I would be tempted to call it multi-media, but my son insists that multi-media would be at least two different types of media, such as sound and light. So a collage of feathers and buttons is still a collage. In this artwork we have a collage of everyday cleaning materials such as toilet brushes used to convey the theme of clean, green Singapore, the vision of Singapore as a Garden City.

I would have liked more greenery. But you can see that elsewhere. The Botanic Gardens station has a tree (see later post).

For news about cashew nut trees in the area, see later post.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.