Thursday 20 November 2014

Meet you at the "calculator building"

Still a very outstanding building. 
My trusted Sharp calculator (given  to me by a former colleague).
No need battery -- works using solar energy. Hi-tech, eh?
 IT is an impressive landmark by any name. The OCBC building at Chulia Street was nicknamed "calculator building" when it was the highest building during the era (the 52-storey skyscraper was completed in 1976).

The nickname is certainly apt. It is indeed shaped (with buttons to boot) like one of those calculators which were so handy in those days -- when handphones were not around (and even when they came into the scene, the early day handphones, though the size of an elephant tusk, did not have such features).

And OCBC being a bank, there must have been a lot of calculating going on. So my friends and I agreed wholeheartedly that the nickname suits the building to a T. I haven't gone into the building too many times though -- only once when I met a friend there who was working as a public relations officer at the bank..

Taken from North Bridge Road. 

View from a backlane off North Bridge Road. 




Former OCBC Bank at South Bridge Road.

2 comments:

streetsing said...

Love the logo of the Chinese sailing boat. I took a few photos of it too. I remembered the former Chung Kiaw bank along North Bridge road guarded by a Sikh guard with an impressive double barrel gun way back in the sixties :)

Lo Tien Yin said...

Yes, nice quaint logo. So colourful as well :) I don't remember the Sikh guard though at Chung Kiaw bank. But I think I remember one at Chartered Bank.