Jacob Ballas Children's Garden

We have driven passed this place several times and never really found the chance to visit it, until today. After lunch at Relish, Mummy and Daddy brought me to the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden which is part of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It was at the garden that we found out more about this person.

Jacob Ballas was a pillar of the Jewish community in Singapore, a successful stockbroker and well-known philanthropist. The only child of a poor orthodox Baghdadi family in Amara, Iraq, Jacob was moved from Iraq to Labuan and finally to Singapore in the late 1920s. He later attended school at St Andrew's School and even became the President of the St Andrew's Old Boys Association from 1957 to 1961.

Jacob's career started as a car salesman and later as an insurance agent with Sun Life Insurance. He made his money when he was introduced to stock broking and his company merged with Hong Kong-based Citicorp Vickers to become Vickers Ballas in the early 1990s and it went public in 1993.

We spent about 2 hours in the garden which has a playground and even a water play area. Mummy and Daddy decided we will skip the water play area today and come back another time for it. I had fun at the playground and impressed Mummy and Daddy when I came down the high and long slide, without any hesitation. We ended the visit with ice cream at the Kids Cafe which has pretty good chocolate ice cream. We will certainly be back soon.