So… how did Ang Mo Kio get its name? I have covered the colourful history in my cache by the “Ang Mo’s Bridge”, where we looked at some of the theories – ranging from Thomson’s Bridge to a haunting by a lady of Windsor Park. There were also a couple of other theories I briefly mentioned, and one of them was quite… fruity.
So, according to the vegetable… err… fruit(?) story, Ang Mo Kio gets its name from the Hokkien word for “Tomato”, since “Kio” is a “brinjal or eggplant” and “Ang” means “red”. Proponents of these etymology say that it stems from Ang Mo Kio’s past as a plantation, where rubber and other vegetables were planted in a valley near the Kallang River… but detractors say that there was no record of tomatoes being planted in the area, so… go figures.
My recent research also uncovered yet another theory for the origin of the name, and this one is too funny to not share. In this version, the “Ang Mo” is, once again, the “Ang Moh” (Caucasian man), while the “Kio” is said to be a corruption of “Kia”, which means “scared” in Hokkien (as in “Kia-su” or “Kia-si”, which are “scared to lose” and “scared to die”, respectively). So, the story goes that our illustrious John Turnbull Thomson (who, you’ll recall, was the “Ang Mo” after which the bridge got its name in our very first theory) was surveying the region in the early 19th century, when a tiger attacked his party and gave him a nasty fright. The rest, I suppose, is history, though I imagine that he wouldn’t be too pleased with his tigrine tryst becoming the origin of the placename.
The most interesting thing about this particular anecdote is that there actually is a painting of the alleged incident with our main man Thomson in it. The painting is by a German artist, Heinrich Leutemann, is titled Unterbrochene Strassenmessung auf Singapore which translates to Road Surveying Interrupted in Singapore. I prefer to call it “The Tiger and the Theodolite”, as this article does. The painting shows Thomson (the only “Ang Mo” in the picture, obviously) recoiling in fright as a tiger emerges from the woods and topples the theodolite (a device used for measuring angles in land surveys). Now, whether this incident really happened and if this was really how Ang Mo Kio got its name may never be definitively proven, but I hope it’s another interesting piece of local trivia and heritage that you might not have known about.
Whichever theory you think is most plausible, that’s for you to mull over as you look for this cache.
The Cache
At the published coordinates, you will find a sculpture that is donated by a company associated with a red fruit. To find the final cache, you will need to solve the following simple maths problem based on the plaque describing the sculpture.
Consider the quadratic equation:
\(ax^2+bx+c=0\)
where a = the total number of words on the plaque, b = the number of times the word "red" appears in the text, and c = the number of times the word "tomato" appears in the text.
Solve for x, and let the two solutions to the equation be α and β where α ≥ β
The cache is located a distance of α metres from the published coordinates, at a bearing of β degrees.
Head over to your projected final coordinates, and you'll find the final cache there. Good luck and happy hunting!