A walk through my neighborhood....

As I walk out of my home out to the balcony, I pass by my neighbours homes but those old neighbours are gone. Their homes sold to foreigners who come to Singapore as PRs or rented to foreigners. The familiar sounds and surrounding I grew up in fading away to give way to foreign tongues, foreign accents and the smell of foreign foods.

As I make my way to the void deck, I see a large group of Filipinos and Indians gathered there.....oh where have all my Malay neighbours gone? They used to go down with their guitars to sing a tune or two. They used to play soccer with me at the open field - oh how I miss those days I played soccer on that field with my Malay, Indian and Eurasian friends. Now it is a picnic ground for Bangladeshi workers. Not that I have anything against them but how things have changed ...really wonder where all the Singaporean children have gone, nobody seems to play soccer anymore there.

Dropping by at the coffeeshop, where I have been going to since I was 3 years old. The old man selling mee pok is still there so is the aunty selling pork porridge. But the rest of the stalls are now run by people from China. I can still manage with the heavy accented Chinese but really wonder where all of the old Singaporean and Malaysians coffeeshop aunties = where have they gone? Occasionally, I see my friend Ah Teck coming round to sell tissue paper - he has been jobless for a long time because he has little qualifications and some problem with his leg. The world seems to have left people like him behind.

The coffee shop is an interesting place. A mini-institution in the neighborhood. Where old men past their prime gather to drink beer to revive their egos....I have a theory they do so because their old body and minds are fading away, the alcohol makes them feel liberated and these old men start talking about their old glory days or scold the PAP govt.....alcohol, the antidote for repressed political sentiment.

Not too far from the coffeeshop is my secondary school. You know there are 10 bands for secondary schools and there are schools so lowly ranked they are unbanded. Yes, this is one of the schools for "the others" where you are more likely to end up in a gang than go to university. Putting weak students in an bad environment that make them weaker academically is our govt's idea of inclusiveness. Yeah, when all the ministers sit a table, they will talk about which batch of RI, ACS or  RGS they come from. We wedge our society apart - the best gets the best, the worse gets the worse...producing humans of extremely separate polarity. Make the strong stronger, make the weak weaker.

The school is not our ticket out of poverty....but the Singapore Pools outlet near by you see the long queues on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. The masses buy their pieces of hope and show some optimism. Just get those 4 digits right and fortune comes your way. For the poor, it sounds like a viable plan at least there is hope....you can never build a fortune on a slave salary of $1000 ...at least the Singapore Pools outlet gives you some hope.

As I walk around my neighborhood, I always have to remember to look up once in a while in case there are people who want to end their misery prematurely - you don't want them to take you along with them when they fall on you. See those police tents popping up more and more often around my  area.

 

This is my neighbourhood. This is my home. This is the real Singapore. This is where my heart is and where I build my hope for the future.