According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, some 884 million people—one in eight of the world’s population—lack access to safe drinking water. At the same time, water use has increased by more than twice the rate of the world’s population growth in the last 100 years. While most countries treat their natural resources like a tai tai treats her handbags, Singapore is getting its house in order. I’m not even Singaporean but my pride swelled as I followed the guide around the visitor centre as she explained the cleaning processes. By the time I reached the exit, I struggled to stop myself entertaining the MBA students with a quick burst of “Majulah Singapura”.
Feeling euphoric, I nipped across town to Bedok Reservoir Park. I fancied kayaking in a dusky setting and possibly a zip through the aerial course at Forest Adventure, which opened in 2007. With its trapezes, bridges, ladders and enormous zip lines, the offerings at Forest Adventure reminded me of a childhood TV programme called The Krypton Factor, which has left me disturbingly obsessed with flying foxes and zip lines ever since (contestants always finished their assault course with one). Both kayaking on and zipping over the reservoir is all part of new Singapore’s quest for residents to take public ownership of their water supply. I visited on a Monday. Both were closed on Monday. Do not go on a Monday.
As I wandered around the scenic reservoir, I noticed the deep water warning signs and thought about death. Seven people have been found dead in the reservoir since mid-2011. The reservoir is particularly deep, with a maximum depth of more than 18 metres, and I was struck by how accessible, serene and picturesque the body of water was, giving the area an unfortunate romanticism. There have been understandable calls for fences. But fences alter only the venue, not the state of mind. Economic and educational pressures are inescapable in new Singapore. Students work too hard. Their parents work too hard. With few carrots dangled, the constant stick of cheaper foreign labour looms overhead. Almost everyone I know in Singapore, without exception, works too hard, counterproductively so at times. Still, on a brighter note, the government was quick to allay public concerns in November 2011 that the safety of drinking water had not been compromised after the tragic deaths at the reservoir. We must never lose sight of our priorities.
Like the dusky weather, Bedok Reservoir was leaving me rather gloomy which was hardly the fault of the beautiful, family-friendly park. Thankfully, the Berlin Wall cheered me up. I have been treated to some surprising discoveries in new Singapore but being confronted by the Berlin Wall beside Bedok Reservoir took my breath away. I had not expected to come across a part of the Berlin Wall in one of Singapore’s older housing estates. Why would I? But there it was in all its glory. I spotted a smallish black sculpture and read the inscription that explained about the donation in 2010. In my idiotic ignorance, I initially thought that the sculpture was the Berlin Wall and anal administrators had carved it into a daft post-modern shape and spray-painted it black. My poison pen was poised, ready to castigate bureaucratic buffoonery once more when I spotted a sizeable grey block covered with graffiti and encased in a glass exhibit. That was the Berlin Wall.
I peered up at the four blocks of concrete, joined together by an artwork called Kings of Freedom. It was painted by German graffiti artist Dennis Kaun and depicted two kings, one with his eyes open to change, the other blindfolded to the wishes of his people. The four blocks once formed part of 45,000 separate blocks joined together between 1975 and 1980. The slabs were 3.6 metres tall, 1.2 metres wide and the artwork terrific. I just stared. I had never seen a piece of the Berlin Wall before. I lived in Europe until I was 21—well, England, but it was almost the same thing—and I needed to come to Bedok to see a piece of the Berlin Wall.
The glass case was a sensible move. Like those heroic German “wall peckers” of 1989, I might have returned later with a penknife. Coming face to face with the Berlin Wall was just like coming foot to turf with the Wembley Stadium pitch when I was 11. On a school trip, we were given a tour of the football venue and we deliberately scuffed our shoes along the touchline, desperate for as much mud to stick to our soles as possible. My piece of Wembley turf stayed with me for about a month until I trod in dog’s crap playing football with Duke, our pet Dobermann, in the back garden. The shoes had to be cleaned. I didn’t talk to Duke for weeks.
Twenty-three
A PRODUCER for Channel NewsAsia called. She was making a documentary about post-general election Singapore. In a nutshell, they were looking for a new Singapore, or a “new normal” Singapore to borrow the nauseating buzzwords of the day. They sought my views on the general mood towards foreigners and planned to film me at my workplace going about my duties.
“So how do you spend your working day?” the producer asked.
“Most of the time at home banging away on a laptop,” I replied, as the producer pictured a pervert.
“And when you’re not at the laptop?” she enquired.
“I’m usually out on the road, notepad in hand,” I said, far too proudly.
“I see. Is there nothing else that you do?”
The dramatic silence was punctured by a thousand kiasu voices in my head, all screaming, “You’re a writer, ah? But what do you really do?”
I now add that I’m also a part-time property agent. This seems to make them feel better.
But as luck would have it, I had just left the Berlin Wall and was ready to cross the divide. I was off to a political hotbed where residents had made international headlines. For the first time, they had elected an opposition party in a group representation constituency (GRC). New Singapore would not just be casinos and theme parks, the political landscape had also changed.
I was headed for Aljunied.
The documentary crew directed me towards a bench in Hougang Central in front of the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council. On a wall behind, the sign and logo of the town council glowed above my head like a halo. The cameraman noticed an unsightly dustbin propped against the wall over my shoulder. His framing suggested that the dustbin was coming out of my ear so he pushed it out of shot.
“Action!” he called.
“Wait,” a voice cried.
A cleaner appeared from nowhere and started sweeping furiously, removing litter that had accumulated behind the dustbin.
“Cannot have that on camera,” the cleaner said.
Intrigued, I wandered over to the Chinese uncle and asked why he needed to tidy up.
“Must clean, lah,” he said. “Cannot make this place look bad, right?”
My cynicism turned me into Jason Bourne.
“Who sent you?” I asked.
“Wha’?” he replied, confused.
“Who sent you?” I repeated, peeking up at the town council windows.
“No one, lah,” he insisted.
I was not satisfied. In Singapore, someone is always sent from somewhere. It’s the old queen gag. Why does Queen Elizabeth II think the world smells of fresh paint? Because some lackey is always going crazy with a brush and a tin of whitewash just in front of her. The same applies to Singaporean ministers. If you fancy a unique trip to a hawker centre toilet when each cubicle does not look like the previous occupant emptied his bowels blindfolded, go during a community event involving a ministerial guest. The transformation is bewildering. Urinals gleam, basins sparkle and the only oblong-like objects left behind in the cubicles are additional loo rolls. At all other times, of course, bribing or maiming is required to procure three sheets of toilet paper.
So I was convinced that the Workers’ Party (WP), the opposition now in control of the town council, had sent down the cleaner. The new guys had inherited the old guys’ penchant for carefully controlled events topped off with a superficial sheen.
Or what my mother has always called “top show”.
“Quick, tidy up the place,” she’d shout down the phone at my young self. “We’ve got family coming around tonight.”
“OK, mum,” I’d reply, ever the filial son. “But is it a proper tidy-up or a top
show tidy-up?”
“Nah, it’s all right. It’s only the cousins. Top show will do. Just do the usual. Throw all the disposable razors under the bathroom sink and no more craps until after they’ve gone.”
After the Channel NewsAsia crew left, I was still curious. I had to know whether the cleaner was part of a proper tidy-up or a cynical top show tidy-up. I took the stairs to the second floor. The walls had been recently painted. Aha. The town council reception had also been renovated, with new worktops, partitions and that bright fluorescent lighting popular at dentists. The receptionist smiled.
“Hi, this will sound strange, but did you send a cleaner downstairs just now?” I asked.
“I’m sorry?”
Her face answered on her behalf. She was not in on my conspiracy theory.
“I just did this TV interview and a guy cleaned up around us. I wondered if the town council sent him down.”
“No, I didn’t know you were filming downstairs.”
The press relations officer had no idea either. Pride rather than a paymaster had compelled the cleaner to spruce up the home of Singapore’s major political opposition. He was proud. Many residents in Aljunied are. They have put their HDB upgrading where their money is. History is theirs, but only for now. It can soon become an historical footnote, an asterisk at the end of a page. Making history of any kind is not without risk. There are always drawbacks.
I stood before one of the drawbacks. It was an empty field beside Hougang Central. At face value, the boggy lawn said nothing. Under the surface, the roots of new Singapore are more fragile. In June 2011, this particular site, along with 25 others used mostly for community activities, was excluded from the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council. The HDB, the landowner, had leased the sites to the People’s Association (PA). Before the general election, these sites had been managed by Aljunied Town Council when the town council was controlled by the PAP. Many of the sites are prime locations for grassroots events. In August 2011, the PA told Aljunied-Hougang Town Council Chairman Sylvia Lim that bookings by the Workers’ Party, which now controls the town constituency remember, would not be allowed. A gloomy picture had been painted soon after the heady days of change. The news was unfortunate for the residents of Aljunied. Most of all, it was highly ironic.
By any yardstick, a key issue in new Singapore is inclusiveness. Some Singaporeans feel neglected in their own country, overlooked by their own political representatives, brushed aside in the race to bring in more foreign workers and remain economically competitive. These are valid concerns. They are some of the reasons why Aljunied became the first GRC to slip from the government’s grasp since the GRC scheme was introduced in 1988. Singaporeans, all Singaporeans, merely asked to be involved again. If Aljunied MPs cannot hold grassroots events for their own residents in their own constituency, how will the locals feel included?
The perceived pettiness was undignified, and perhaps even unnecessary. Apart from the no-longer-open spaces, little else had really changed in Hougang and why should it? VCD shops still promoted three for ten special offers, with those alarming low budget karaoke videos showing singers crooning in front of waterfalls. Lift lobbies displayed the usual warning posters about not feeding birds or cats. There was even a wonderfully terrifying poster for killer litter. In red bold letters, the poster read: DEATH FROM ABOVE, HIGHRISE LITTER CAN KILL. The words were accompanied by a smiling resident dropping a plant pot, a broom, a hammer, a mop and bucket, a sheet and a coat hanger onto an unsuspecting victim below. Litter killers do nothing by half in Aljunied.
I needed to go higher. Hougang Avenue 4 divides the government and the opposition, with the WP’s GRC of Aljunied on one side and the PAP’s Ang Mo Kio GRC on the other. Depending on one’s point of view, each side represents either old or new Singapore. The symbolism was too surreal to miss. I took a side turning beside the Hougang Swimming Complex and stumbled upon an illicit gambling den. Half a dozen aunties sat around a stone table at the void deck playing mahjong. A bubbly uncle patrolled behind them carrying a fistful of dollars. They spoke quickly in dialect, presumably Teochew, but I had no real clue.
“Er, hello, knee how,” I stammered.
No one was interested in the tall white guy standing beside their table. They were playing mahjong.
“Yah,” said Clint Eastwood with his fistful of dollars.
“Is this estate, er, PAP or is it Workers’ Party?” I asked, to confused silence. “Is this Lee Hsien Loong or Low Thia Khiang?”
More silence. I took a stab at Mandarin. It might have been less painful had I stabbed myself.
“Er, wo yao Low Thia Khiang,” I said.
Clint Eastwood smirked. The aunties were horrified. They had misunderstood my intentions. I pointed to the floor and then gestured towards the HDB block above me.
“No, no, no. Er, this Lee Hsien Loong HDB. Wo yao Low Thia Khiang HDB.”
Losing patience, Clint’s hand gestures and smattering of Singlish suggested that he was explaining to me that neither Lee Hsien Loong nor Low Thia Khiang lived in an HDB block here.
I bid them a fond farewell. They didn’t care. I loved them for it.
In the end, a laundrette came to my rescue. I crossed Hougang Avenue 4 and enquired about the respective constituencies. The auntie generously gave me her time, directing me to the street and pointing at the junction’s traffic lights.
“That one over there PAP, Lee Hsien Loong,” she said, pointing towards Clint Eastwood’s HDB block.
I hope the prime minister is aware that the auntie mafia is managing an illegal gambling den in his constituency.
“But we are Workers’ Party. We are the opposition,” she continued.
“Have things changed?” I enquired.
“Change how? Please lah, nothing change,” she laughed. “It’s no different.”
I took a lift to the 10th floor of Block 501 in Hougang Avenue 4 and surveyed the political divide. Of course the woman was right. Discernible differences were negligible. This was not Potong Pasir, a single member constituency that had once been an opposition stronghold for many years and where I once lived. The checklist that came with voting for the opposition—a lack of upgrading, lifts that did not take aunties to every floor and so forth—was easy to tick off in the late 1990s.
There was only one subtle difference between the two constituencies in Hougang. On the government side of the road, I spotted residents heading into the Hougang Sports and Recreation Centre. Next door was the Hougang Swimming Complex and beside that was Hougang Stadium. That was all on the government side. On the opposition side of the road, there was a grass field.
I sincerely hope elected members get to use that one at least.
In the evening, I loitered around the void deck of Block 173 in Bedok Reservoir Road looking for Low Thia Khiang. I was stalking the guy. The Workers’ Party MP, vice-chairman of Aljunied-Hougang Town Council, Teochew titan and long-time symbolic figure for the political opposition was holding a meet-the-people session. Well, he would have been if I had observed the dates properly. He conducted sessions on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month. I had picked the wrong Wednesday. I stopped some teenagers sitting at the void deck playing with their phones.
“Hey, do you know if Low Thia Khiang is holding his meet-the-people session here?” I enquired.
“Don’t know,” said a teenager, continuing to play Angry Birds.
“Still, it must be cool to live here in Singapore’s first ever opposition GRC, right?” I probed, desperate to glean something other than tips on how to catapult a squawking chicken into a load of crates.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Does it feel any different since the election here?” I tried again, obviously overplaying my hand.
Suspicious, the teenager peered over his phone. He saw the notepad in my pocket.
“Same, same,” he replied quickly. “It’s all the same, nothing different, nothing different.”
I checked over both
shoulders to make sure no one from the PAP was taking photographs with a long lens. It might be a new day in Aljunied, but it still feels a lot like old Singapore on the ground.
Unperturbed, I wasn’t leaving Aljunied GRC without witnessing a little grassroots action. I cut through Bedok Town Park and spotted a hand-painted dustbin in the darkness. Crude but colourful, the normally dull green plastic had been covered with Singapore’s cheesiest landmarks, including the cable car and Merlion. It was street art Singaporean style: neat, nationalistic and controlled. But it was an improvement.
A young Malay couple, holding hands, crossed the footbridge over the PIE and headed my way. They would know.
“Excuse me, this will be a strange question,” I began, “but are all the dustbins in the park painted like this one?”
“Yah,” said the teenage girl, her toothpaste smile beaming back at me.
“Really? I think it’s terrific. Is it an opposition thing? You know, a town council thing, because I’ve not seen it anywhere else in Singapore?”
“Yah,” she repeated, strangely unmoved by my patter about painted dustbins.
“Are all the dustbins in Bedok Park painted like this one?”
“Yah.”
“Are you just saying ‘yah’ to everything I say?”
“Yah.”
The couple giggled and went on their way, keen to lose the world’s most boring man. I followed the path for a while and the next couple of bins were decorated with hand-painted Merlions, but I stopped when I realised I was staring at dustbins in the dark and scaring joggers. (I later found some painted dustbins in government constituencies, too. The initiative deserves to go national.)
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