You live in the Heartlands now

I've moved into Singaporean government housing, which is very different to our Western convention of government housing - which is always for low income earners and crime-ridden. I'm sure I'd be safe in saying that the vast majority of Singaporeans live in this kind of housing. Needless to say, it's hot here, so people keep their windows open. As you walk past you can smell the food cooking and hear the tv blaring. Miniature gardens adorn the walkways out the front of apartments and the forecourts out the front are a breeding ground for strays of every kind. I love cats so this really isn't a big deal for me.

I'm living in an estate, where there are many many residential buildings. The estates here are unique in that the first floors are generally taken up by shops and restaurants. It's truly amazing because these shops are generally cheaper than a supermarket or anywhere else for that matter. It may only be a matter of 50 cents for the average item but I can see that for people with families this would really add up over the course of a month. I spent $1.90 on dinner this evening. I'm sure this will all become very humdrum after a couple of months of living here, but as a total outsider this has severe novelty value for me.

It's also very strange for me as someone who grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne. Living in a big house and only vaguely knowing the neighbours and a handful of people in my street (usually because they had children of a similar age), the idea of living in this kind of estate is positively mind-blowing. I'm sure most Singaporeans would laugh at this notion, but to me I walk through the estate and I see a community. I see people sitting outside on public seating chatting to one another, there's the lady who goes around the estate filling up cups of water for the strays and then there's the hawker centre in the middle of the estate upon which people converge to eat, talk and drink some Tiger. I'm very sure that these estates have their issues, their racial disharmony and their petty arguments between neighbours, but ultimately I walk through this place and get a sense of community. Which is something I think is rapidly being extinguished in Western countries in favour or privacy and security (of which I'm also in favour hehe).