text: An exhibition on the neighbourhood tells the history of the area from the mid-1800s to the 1960s and features more than 130 artefacts and documents
  From 1920 to 1970, the old bungalow at 540 Balestier Road belonging to the Aljunieds, who were the first Arabs to settle here, was a regular haunt for Chinese, Indian and Eurasian women.
  They went there to learn about midwifery and traditional Malay herbal medicine from Sharifah Alawiya Abu Bakar Aljunied, the household's matriarch.
  Her great-granddaughter, psychologist Mariam Aljunied, 48, remembers visiting the house as a child. She recalls: "The house was always very busy, with lots of people coming and going. As part of our tradition, we would offer the sirei (betel leaf) to whoever came."
  Vital to these social gatherings are an ancient betel chewing set and a spittoon - family heirlooms that Dr Aljunied has loaned to an exhibition on the Balestier neighbourhood, which runs till April 24 next year at the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall.
  Organised by the memorial hall, Balestier: A Hundred Years exhibition tells the history of the area from the mid-1800s to the 1960s, concentrating on local colour and personal stories.
  This picture shows the Aljunieds, who descended from the first Arabs to arrive in Singapore from Yemen. For generations, the family lived in a bungalow in Balestier, including household matriarch Sharifah Alawiya Abu Bakar Aljunied (seated on left). She was the wife of Syed Abdul Rahman Aljunied, the grandson of Syed Sharif Omar Ali Aljunied, a spice and cotton trader. The exhibition showcases their lives in Balestier through a series of photos.
  This rattan woven tote bag with a floral design is from the collection of the National Museum of Singapore. During the 1950s, several rattan factories could be found to the north of Balestier Road.
  This pounder, which was used in the past for traditional Chinese medicine, is on display in a section on healthcare in Balestier. The area was also home to theTan Tock Seng Hospital,named after the Chinese philanthropist who donated money to build it.When Tan Tock Seng Hospital moved to Novena,Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital moved into its old premises.
  The exhibition includes an interactive display of the roads in the Balestier area, from the main Balestier Roadthoroughfare to the roads branching off it, such asAhHoodRoad, Tai Gin Road andWhampoaDrive. Each sign has a sliding panel that reveals fun facts.
  Visitors can find out about the origins of the neighbourhood's name - the American consul Joseph Balestier lived here in colonial times - and the industries which sprung up there, such as sugar plantations, rattan factories and film studios, among others.
  For the show, the organisers borrowed more than 130 artefacts and documents from community contributors and conducted interviews with these people.
  This was to "give an idea of the lives of people and what it was like working in Balestier in the past," says the exhibition's assistant curator, Ms Goh Yu Mei, who works at the memorial hall.
  Such stories may not be known to Singaporeans today, who think of Balestier as a home to budget hotels, home and decor shops as well as a string of hipster cafes which have emerged in the area.
  Ms Goh adds: "The exhibition portrays Balestier's development as a multi-cultural suburban area. We hope visitors get to understand how unique this area is and learn about its history."
  An interesting exhibit is a medicinal herb pounder contributed by the Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital, established as a hospital in Balestier in 1910. It is set to undergo a $96-million transformation to become an integrated healthcare hub for the elderly and the community.
  The hospital's board member Wan Shung Ming said that the hospital selected items that were donated or given by the public: "We have a lot of gifts that have been used for a long time. We have been here for 105 years and everyone in Balestier, not just the Chinese, know and trust us."
  Other exhibits include old photographs of places such as the Singapore Indian Association's clubhouse and the Shaw Brothers' Malay Film Productions studio, located at Jalan Ampas off Balestier Road.
  The memorial hall is also holding a series of activities to tie in with the exhibition, such as a two-hour guided Balestier heritage and food trail, which runs once every month from now till next April. It is fully booked.
  Those interested in Balestier's heritage can attend talks next year by Dr Aljunied on her family, as well as the Urban Redevelopment Authority on its conservation efforts in the area.
  Here is the line-up of activities related to the Balestier: A Hundred Years exhibition and the Wan Qing CultureFest, an annual arts and cultural event organised by the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall.
  What: Alex Ortega, who moderates the photography website Clubsnap, talks about food photography on social media and gives tips on how to capture and present food well. Part of Wan Qing CultureFest.
  What: The festival's closing cere- mony will have a variety show showcasing clothing from the past 50 years, as well as a mini pasar malam with games and snacks.
  What: Conducted by Mr Kelvin Ang, director of conservation management at the Urban Redevelopment Authority, this talk will shed light on the authority and its partners' conservation efforts, such as a decision to gazette more than 160 buildings for conservation in 2003.
  What: Dr Mariam Aljunied, a descendant of Syed Sharif Omar Ali Aljunied, the first Arab to land in Singapore in 1819, will share her family history and heritage, as well as the time they spent living in Balestier.
  All activities are free and held at the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall. For more information, go to www.sysnmh.org.sg/en
  A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 05, 2015, with the headline 'How Balestier got its name'. Print Edition | Subscribe
  I'm not creative. Neither are most of my colleagues. The Financial Times employs clever people who know how to spot stories, write them elegantly and give readers the right mix of familiarity and surprise. Experience, knowledge, practice, judgment, skill and intelligence play a part. So does an ability to write. And think. Creativity barely comes into it. This is not to insult the FT. It is to compliment it.
  For two decades, business people have talked rot about what it is to be creative. More creativity is taken to be better than less - there can be no such thing as too much. On LinkedIn there are nearly two million people with "creative" or "creativity" in their job title. On Indeed, the job search website, there are 32,000 openings specifying creativity in London alone, against only 2,700 requesting politeness, and barely 300 cooperativeness. This is baffling when you consider that being polite and cooperative are vital traits for every job I've heard of, whereas most companies have no use for real creativity at all.
  The creativity plague has spread so far it has even reached the part in which it used to be taboo - the accounts department. AstraZeneca, which is looking for someone to plan its cash flow, boasts in the advertisement about an atmosphere in which people are "rewarded for their ideas and creativity".
  Management experts are fanning the fire by sillier and sillier research. The daftest was written up in the Harvard Business Review recommending companies give their staff ludicrous titles like "imagineers" to make them more creative. Most worryingly, it singled out for approving mention the "sandwich artists" who stuff turkey and processed cheese into bread at Subway. Not only is it patronising to expect these luckless workers to be cheered up by such a moronic name, creativity is surely not what the company is after in the first place. When you are a global machine that produces 4,800 Subway sandwiches a minute, creativity on the production line is not recommended.
  Those capable of genuine new ideas are few and far between. I only know two: one a poet and the other an inventor. Both do things entirely their own way. Neither have made much money; neither would last five minutes in a corporate job - they would hate it, and it would hate them.
  I recently came across the first sign that creativity worship may have peaked. Fast Company published an article entitled "How to be less creative at work, and why you sometimes should". It argued that too much creativity can make you a nuisance to your boss, and that often, the smart thing for a business is to forget new ideas and go on doing what it is doing.
  There are two extraordinary things about this. For a start, it is right. Secondly, it was published by an organisation that more than any other has hyped this brainless trend. Fast Company's dubious mission: to inspire "a new breed of innovative and creative thought leaders who are actively inventing the future of business".
  It is possible that ordinary workers are starting to chafe after two decades of compulsory creativity. This month, Kantar Media, owned by WPP, invited all its employees to gather in rooms on different continents and play with Lego to construct their own versions of an "extraordinary world". Did they find pretending to be kids with colourful bricks unleashed a gale of creativity? Not all of them. One member of staff e-mailed me to tell me about the dismal day, writing in the subject line: "The most nonsensical thing that ever happened in my workplace."
  The Merriam-Webster dictionary says creativity is "the ability to make new things or think of new ideas". There are hardly any new ideas left, and most are either very bad, or so new that ordinary people can't recognise them as good. Van Gogh, after all, sold only one painting in his whole life.
  To survive, companies need to change from time to time. They need to do things slightly differently from how they were done before - but for that, they don't need creativity. They need people with intelligence and judgment to work out the right variations on existing ideas. More than that, they need people with the determination to test those ideas, tweak accordingly and turn them into sales.
  A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 13, 2016, with the headline 'Plague of compulsory creativity may be dying out'. Print Edition | Subscribe