Just a few months later, it was decided that Buangkok Station should be opened after all. At the residents’ party to mark the occasion in January 2006, some students sold “Save the white elephant” T-shirts to raise money for charity, which was marvellous. But at the risk of bursting Buangkok’s radical bubble, the fact that only nine other people alighted with me at the station may suggest that the station was not ready to be opened. When I exited the station, I was met with a sweeping view of nothing. There was an open field on one side and a half-finished housing estate on the other. It did not look promising.
I had decided to go to Buangkok to sample the Singapore I was leaving behind. If the kampong in Lorong Buangkok represents the country’s past, then the new towns of Sengkang, Punggol and Buangkok in the northeast are stepping stones to the future. All three offer modern, luxurious HDB blocks that can easily be passed off as condominiums and the estates have been touted as a 21st-century township. But a house alone is not a home. When residents began moving into Sengkang in the late 1990s, there was a flood of complaints. Aside from the initial teething problems of any housing estate, such as dimly lit lift lobbies, concealed block numbers and leaking roofs, there were more pressing concerns that astounded me. Inadequate public transportation and a lack of linking roads were so serious that the debate reached Parliament. Residents understandably rushed to move into their ultra-modern apartments only to find a lack of community centres, coffee shops, schools, medical facilities and banks. At one point, around 1,000 households moved into their new Sengkang blocks every month in a township that covers over 1,055 hectares. That is almost twice the size of Ang Mo Kio. Eager homeowners were moving in faster than the amenities were being built.
The perceived incompetence was extraordinary. How could the HDB get it so right with Toa Payoh in the 1970s and yet seemingly get it so wrong with the new estates around Sengkang? It intrigued me because my English hometown of Dagenham had suffered the same problems. When the London County Council built the estate in the 1920s to rescue working-class Londoners from the East End’s slums, it was lambasted for providing nothing more than red bricks and cement. At the very heart of the so-called British Empire was the world’s biggest housing estate, but it failed to provide decent shops, schools and medical facilities for its tenants. There were not even any pubs! How on earth can you transport an entire community of Cockneys and dump them in the Essex marshes without giving them a few pubs? Dagenham still suffers from the after-effects of the town planners’ short-sightedness. When town councils break up extended families in their pursuit of urban redevelopment, there must be a trade-off. The public facilities and amenities of the new town should, at the very least, be the equal of the community that has been left behind. Otherwise, what is the point of uprooting a family?
I sauntered down Sengkang Central to see if the town had righted its wrongs and found myself in a huge housing estate off Compassvale Drive. Now the first thing you notice about Sengkang is its sea-shanty, seafaring, “ahoy there, shipmates” architecture. As it was once the town of the seafarer and a port, Sengkang’s planners incorporated its past into their designs, hence street names like Compassvale and Rivervale. The marine theme can be seen everywhere, from the metallic sails that hang off most of the blocks at Compassvale to the lighthouses and timber ship that feature inside Compass Point Shopping Mall. It certainly was not subtle but it was quirky, with the highlight being the shark’s fin. Have you seen it? There may be several poking out around the estate, but I only found the one and it was freakish. I walked past a badminton court and there it was; a life-sized silver shark’s fin sticking out of the grass.
“Hey lads, what the hell is that?” I asked the two teenagers playing on the court. “It looks like a shark’s fin.”
“It is a shark’s fin,” one of them replied. “It’s part of the fish theme here. Stupid, right?”
Well, I do not know about stupid, but it was certainly bizarre. If a drunk stumbled across it at night, he might think he was drowning. Every time I looked at it, I could hear the primeval sound of John Williams’ cello. To me, the architectural feature said “Jaws”. To many older Chinese, it must say “wedding dinner”.
The badminton court was occupied and there were other teenagers waiting to play. I also noticed matches in full swing at the basketball court and the street soccer pitch. In fact, all of the public courts and playgrounds were filled with youngsters. I realised that the designers had pulled off a masterstroke here, not by emulating the superficial features of a condo complex, such as fancy lift lobbies and marble floors, but by fostering a sense of community. The enclosed nature of the estate provided security. Building the blocks around the recreational facilities gave the estate a focal point, in this case the various sports courts, to enable younger residents to come together and play. Because the apartments themselves bordered the facilities, they provided an element of safety, a literal physical barrier from the outside world. I was very impressed. Children cannot play like this in a sprawling estate like Toa Payoh. Aside from the lack of green spaces and sports courts, they would invariably need to cross streets, void decks and roads to find an appropriate venue. Toa Payoh’s centrality makes it an ideal location for working parents, but I now wondered what the old town actually offered their children. Compassvale, on the other hand, was a great place for sporty, energetic children to grow up safely. The swanky estate had a real self-contained, communal feel about the place. I will not get carried away and say that the kampong spirit had returned to Sengkang—the days of borrowing a cup of sugar and dashing through muddy streams to catch fish are long gone. But the town’s heart is in the right place.
As time was getting on, I found a willing tour guide to show me around the townships of Sengkang and Punggol—the LRT. For those of you who share my utter contempt for all short forms, abbreviations and acronyms, the LRT stands for Light Rapid Transit (LRT), a mini-transportation network set up to serve the far-flung estates of Sengkang and Punggol. The Sengkang LRT, a $302-million driverless system, opened in 2003. It followed the much maligned Bukit Panjang LRT, which opened in 1999 and has since spent much of the time breaking down. Now I like the LRT. It is cute and convenient. But it is not a train. I mean, it is a train in the technical sense, but it is not really a train. The LRT reminds me of little dogs like Chihuahuas, Shih Tzus or, my personal favourite, Cockapoos (a cross between a Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle). They are dogs in the literal mammal classification sense but, let’s face it, they have got far more in common with other four-legged animals. Like hamsters. You will never read the headline “Man mauled by Chihuahua”. Or see armed police officers send for the Shih Tzus before a drug bust. They call themselves dogs but, really, they look more like cats with big ears and hormonal issues. Well, the LRT is the public transportation equivalent of a Chihuahua. Those driverless contraptions masquerade as a sleek, steel train but, if the operators painted a face on the front windows, the cuddly carriages could hang out with Thomas, Percy and the Fat Controller. As the automated, single carriage chugged along the track, I kept hearing the dulcet tones of Ringo Starr telling the mischievous Thomas to come back and pick up his driver.
Not that the LRT was not a comfortable ride. On the contrary, the carriage was spotless, as you would expect here, and television screens played movie trailers to while away the time. It just felt like I was being transported from Terminal One to Terminal Two. Furthermore, the skytrain at Changi Airport could stake a valid claim that it provides a more scenic ride than the Sengkang LRT. By the time I had reached Bakau LRT Station, it was difficult to distinguish one side of the track from the other. The blocks on the left were beige with an orange window sill and the blocks on the right beige with a blue window sill. That was the extent of the variation in design. When the sprawling estate in Dagenham opened in the 1920s, there were reports of new tenants going shopping and not being able to locate their home when they returned. How does that not happen here? I would not be surprised if Sengkang resemb
led the Village of the Damned on a full moon, with dozens of lost residents staggering aimlessly around the streets shouting, “Where the fuck’s my apartment?”
Toa Payoh, like the neighbouring older towns of Ang Mo Kio and Serangoon, has its faults, but uniformity is not one of them. Tall, short, fat and thin—apartment blocks of all shapes and sizes are welcomed in the Big Swamp. From my window in Lorong 2 Toa Payoh, I could count six blocks that were different in shape and colour and all within walking distance. The view from a window in Rivervale must resemble Huxley’s Brave New World. I switched over to the Punggol LRT and alighted at Riviera LRT Station because it sounded French and exotic and, according to my street directory, it overlooked the Sungei Serangoon River. I need not have bothered. The amenities at Riviera consisted of an HDB block, a car park and a bus stop. It must be like the Rio de Janeiro Carnival here at weekends.
I took a bus to the jetty at the end of Punggol Road, which once offered seafood restaurants by the sea. Pig farms also dominated the vicinity back then, so heaven knows what the area must have smelt like. Now there was a jetty for fishermen and a small plaque to remember the 300 to 400 Chinese civilians who were executed here on 28 February 1942 by the Japanese military police. They had not done anything of course. The executions were part of the nationwide Sook Ching operation to purge the country of suspected anti-Japanese civilians. The plaque was installed in 1995 by the National Heritage Board, which has redoubled its efforts in recent years to commemorate key incidents in Singapore’s short history but rarely gets the credit it deserves.
Apart from some parents making sandcastles with their children, the seafront was deserted. Few people visit Punggol Beach now. It is a shame because the beach was surprisingly clean and the sunset was breathtaking. There were a few kissing couples waiting to get it on after dark, but I barely noticed them. With weary resignation, I accepted the fact that I am destined to stumble upon every shagging couple in Singapore.
I finished the day inside the lift of Block 187 in Punggol Central. I cannot explain it really. I caught a brief glimpse of the HDB apartment block and wandered over. With its underground car park, palm trees, marble floors and cream-coloured apartments with wide, blue-tinted windows, the block easily fitted the dream of a 21st-century township. I had never seen a more attractive HDB apartment block. But best of all, Block 187 had a sexy lift voice. I travelled up to the top floor accompanied by a seductive, arousing female voice. I pressed the top-floor button and she groaned, “Going up”. The woman’s pouty voice was straight out of a pornographic movie. I had a quick peek around the top floor but there was not an unblocked view of Punggol. Besides, I was eager to get back to the female orgasm. She did not disappoint. In fact, she even lifted a line direct from a porno movie. “Going down,” whispered the woman, clearly quivering with lust. At that moment, an unforgettable scene from the movie Fatal Attraction, involving a lift and Glenn Close, suddenly popped into my head. I was not displeased; I had been thinking about Punggol’s old pig farms.
CHAPTER 23
It was not always easy growing up in England. My parents divorced when I was in kindergarten, my mother worked long hours and my younger sister had to eat my sausages and mash. Those burnt bangers just floated in the potato purée and it is no coincidence that she is now a vegetarian. But at the end of every school year, we packed our bags and headed off for our annual caravan holiday in Clacton on the Essex coast. Before outrageous property prices in Britain forced people to take out a second mortgage to buy a doll’s house, caravans were the destination of choice for most working-class families. Cheap, homely and easy to maintain, caravans afforded us a little castle by the seaside. We would stay for the entire six weeks of the summer holiday and live on a shoestring. The journeys were always special. As we drove out of Dagenham, my sister and I would tuck into the chocolate goodies provided for the two-hour journey. Twenty minutes later, my sister would reproduce the chocolate goodies all over my A-Team T-shirt. My mother would tell her off and my sister would cry and blame me for complaining when I clearly should have sat in silence for the remainder of the trip covered in vomit. Meanwhile, I would sulk all the way to Clacton because I had to bare my bony, milky-white chest to giggling lorry drivers.
Nevertheless, those caravan holidays were glorious. At our caravan park, there was a swimming pool, a video arcade, a clubhouse and a playground, all ideal locations to target pretty girls. But as my mother gave me a wonky haircut and a red turtleneck to go with my perpetually runny nose, I looked like a heroin addict going cold turkey. So I spent most of my days on the swings listening to the Rocky IV soundtrack on my portable tape recorder, which, I seem to recall, was the size of my HDB apartment. We divided our time between the pool, the park and the beach. Evenings were always spent at the cosy clubhouse with the other caravanners, all of whom came together to watch me take part in the annual fancy dress contest. Each year, my giggling mother covered me in green food dye and threw me onto the stage as “the world’s skinniest Incredible Hulk”. Oh, how we all laughed.
Without a doubt, those caravan holidays were easily the highlight of my childhood, as they have been for countless working-class children growing up in Britain. Singaporean children really do not know what they are missing. I have always believed that the biggest drawback of growing up in a small country is that there are very few places for a child to escape to. There is no space for a caravan park here and even if there was, I suspect it would lose out to a more lucrative shopping centre, condo complex or integrated resort.
Of all the coastal towns in Singapore, only one comes close to simulating the communal, caravan culture of my British childhood: Pasir Ris. I love everything about Pasir Ris and it is easily my favourite town in Singapore. The fact that few tourists or expats visit the place is nothing short of criminal. Once the home of poultry farmers and fishermen, the northeastern coastal town has long been considered an idyllic destination for day trippers and picnicking families.
A holiday town, Pasir Ris is one of the country’s newer HDB estates with younger, more active residents favouring a healthier, outdoor lifestyle by the sea. At one time, Pasir Ris MRT Station had more bicycle stands than any other station in Singapore, and the town boasts one of the most scenic cycling trails in the country. They are certainly not couch potatoes in Pasir Ris.
I asked a member of staff at Pasir Ris MRT Station how long it would take to walk to NTUC Lifestyle World-Downtown East.
He looked utterly horrified. “You sure you want to walk?” he asked. “There’s a feeder bus, you know. No need to walk.”
“It’s okay, I want to walk. I know it’s not that far.”
“It’s very far. At least a 15-minute walk.”
It took five minutes. That is another drawback that comes with living in such a small country. Distance is relative. On several occasions during my trip around the country, I was advised to take public transportation only to discover that my destination was no more than a couple of streets away or on the other side of a shady park. By and large, Singaporeans do not walk anywhere unless it is on an air-conditioned treadmill. And while we are on the subject, the next time a teenager steps into your HDB lift and casually presses the button to the second floor, pick the lazy bastard up by the scruff of the neck and throw him back out into the lobby. Can’t healthy youngsters walk up a couple of flights of stairs anymore? The social and economic ramifications for the country are terrifying. Seriously.
Downtown East is the main reason why most people visit Pasir Ris today. Built by the National Trades Union Congress, the entertainment complex was little more than a couple of public swimming pools beside some holiday chalets when I first arrived. Now the entire facility has been transformed beyond recognition; the swimming pools gave way to the marvellous Wild Wild Wet water theme park, with the usual tunnel slides and wave pools. I have been a couple of times at the weekend and the park is never less than packed. The Escape Theme Park is a poor man’s Disneyland, but the few decent rides
are reflected in the reasonable admission fee.
Still, there is a certain mocking cynicism when it comes to Downtown East. Like Sentosa, the resort draws unfavourable comparisons to the magical kingdoms of Florida, the Gold Coast and now Hong Kong. It is an unfortunate symptom of the “whacking” culture that permeates society here. As there is very little to complain about in the economic and political arenas, there is a tendency to “just whack” trivial stuff such as minor bus fare increases, taxi drivers and Downtown East. Town planners are damned if they do and damned if they do not. Addressing the age-old gripe that there is nothing to do on this tiny island, NTUC spent $30 million to redevelop Downtown East and then endured further complaints from those unfairly comparing apples with oranges. If those gambling behemoths pencilled in for Marina Bay and Sentosa fail to live up to international standards of an integrated resort, then public criticism will be more than justified. But Downtown East more than adequately meets the needs of its community, NTUC members and the accidental tourist.
I went into Downtown East through the back entrance via Aranda Country Club and encountered a world that bore close similarity to my caravan holidays. There were teenagers shooting and killing things in the video arcades, market stalls that sold sweets, crisps and the usual tat only sold at seaside resorts, a kiddies’ play centre and ball pool, a theatre for movies, concerts and the odd circus and the usual fast food outlets. Every time I have visited Downtown East, changes have been implemented and they are always for the better. On this occasion, a stretch of shops leading to the chalets had been upgraded and now sold magazines, hawker food and, rather strangely, VCDs.
Final Notes From a Great Island Page 19
