Urban Trash

Singapore is having another cleanliness drive, particularly litter in the HDB estates and the Government has formed a workgroup to look into dirty habits in the heartland. In reality, it's a simple issue with well understood themes:

Dense HDB living with small individual and large public space reduces personal responsibility. People who in past times would have swept their yard daily now just leave the corridor to be jet-washed by the council.

Littering is perceived as victimless and unpunishable. People who throw tissues and Q-tips out of bathroom windows are never going to be caught. It's the same spots on the void deck apron and under some kitchen windows that are littered; it's patently a minority at fault.

Same with smokers who as a global group seem to be unconcerned that cigarette butts are not biodegradable and, yes, I can see them in the bushes, drains, grass, etc. There's a chap opposite me who smokes at the window (so as not to befoul the flat); he'll stand there, smoking and spitting then flick the butt down onto the void deck apron. Since he stands in exactly the same spot each time, the ledge below his window has a large grey stain from the flicked ash. No one stops him.

The communal letterboxes at the void deck are strewn with junk mail leaflets; I don't blame residents, it's hard to pull out the contents without scattering these 2 x 3" scraps and few bother to stoop down to pick up junk mail. The authorities could stop this in an instant by banning private marketing flyers just as private condos do.

Setting fires for spiritual purposes is passively condoned by the authorities. The daily piles of ash, burnt walls, blobs of wax, burnt joss sticks and smoke continue despite the supplied braziers mere yards away.

Dog walkers? I don't think I've ever seen one with a poop bag. People just know not to walk on grass verges.

The ST article also mentions foreign workers which is low blow; numerically it's a local problem and the lack of enforcement against local recidivists makes this sound astonishingly patronising:

"They do not know that this is an offence here. Therefore, the town council staff and grassroots members have to give them advice. We need some time to educate them."

Apparently our local council is making an extra effort and just today we received a flyer from the local MP in this very topic:

"CLEANLINESS IN HOUSING ESTATES

1. If we look around our estates in mid-morning, by and large, they are very clean. But this doesn't remain for long and by the afternoon littering creeps in. Bits and pieces of paper are strewn from the HDB void decks to the parks and streets in private estates. By night fall it gets worse. Littering has become a persistent problem. Not only is it unsightly, it encourages breeding of pests like mosquitoes, which transmit diseases like malaria and dengue.

2. The National Environment Agency will extend litter enforcement from HDB town centres to the housing estates such as lift lobbies, void decks and letter box areas from April 2008. The first phase will involve a select group of constituencies. Further phrases will be introduced pending a review by NEA after the first three months of operation.

3. Keeping our estates clean is a shared responsibility. It rests with YOU and US. We are ultimately the ones who either make our estates clean or we destroy this beauty with litter everywhere. Between the two, I think your choice is obvious. You want to keep the surrounding areas clean. So let's make a committed collective effort and STOP littering and throwing unwanted receptacles around our estates.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Er LEE BEE WAH
MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC"

Note that the focus is on public health (discarded plastic bags & drink cups may collect water & breed mozzies), not civic pride or aesthetics.

Nothing will change because the daily clean up by the council is an environmental deus ex machina. No matter what mess is created, the faithful council cleaners will be out before 6am restoring order; people do not need to take any personal responsibility. The article confirms this with evidence from the Cleanest Estate awards:

"Yuhua Village Market and Food Centre at Jurong East Street 24 - one of the winning food centres - had relied heavily on stallholder and town council help to keep its premises spotless"

I wouldn't say Singapore is especially blighted by littering; Hong Kong & Malaysia are worse. But Singapore invests heavily in cleaning up and it would enhance a sense of natural justice if some of the above niggles were taken seriously instead of workgroups and photo-ops of MPs jet washing pavements.

Universe: One Year Older

Phew! what a Christmas / New Year / Chinese New year / Vacation combo. I managed to get through without major casualties but for local Singaporeans, it's the obligations around CNY that will have dominated. CNY is a time of renewal, so the shops do a roaring trade in bras and knickers as, in theory, you should change out your wardrobe. It's also a time to throw out old furniture and household goods so the local council organise "big rubbish collections" to avoid the inevitable discarded sofas in the void deck. You still get discarded sofas in the void deck, right in front of the lifts where people normally leave stuff. Civil servants must despair at the lack of public cooperation in their well-crafted schemes.

Salesmen run around for weeks with cars full of diaries as gifts to their customers, no matter that the client will likely receive one from their own company and then many more from vendors. It's an obligation.

Much fish salad will have been consumed at 8-course Lo Hei lunches, with the wise eaters just snacking their way through to avoid bloat while the restaurants charge S$100 (£35) a head. Their year starts with a nice bonus.

As for the pause in postings, I'm conflicted because I'd like to believe you've missed the usually steady flow of posts but perhaps I'm hoping you haven't noticed the long gap. Status update: I'm back, the universe is one year older and nothing big has changed. Stay tuned for more small stuff.

Birdmen of Singapore

Bird fancying. What's that all about then? It's hugely popular here and within an HDB area, there will be a place with bird cage racks on the ceiling of the void deck, labelled with the type of bird to be appreciated there. My local one is for the Merbah Jambul.

Sunday mornings is the main event with, say 20 - 50 men, and it's always men, sitting looking at a ceiling full of hanging bird cages, smoking and chatting. The bird cages are all of an exactly uniform design and size for a particular bird species so it's a pretty sight and they are song birds, so there's some twittering audible over the traffic noise.

At other times, you see the cages hanging on the window bars of the flats. Animals are not allowed on trains or buses so moving them around means car, pickup truck, walk or cycle. For multiple cages, they use a carry stick to hang them off and the cages have neatly sewn cloth covers for transportation. This hobby has equipment.

My take is that it's Singaporean fishing; an ostensibly acceptable activity which men use to get out of the flat and away from the family for a while.

God's Birthday

Not the God, but a God. The local temple held their (apparently annual) God's birthday party last night in a huge marquee on the field. The scale is impressive - a metal frame about 80m long and 30m wide plus 3 side tents for the catering, all floored with boards and fitted with lights, ceiling fans, portable toilets, a generator, stage, red carpet down the middle and TV projection screens for the video feed. Round tables, each with 10 chairs arranged in rows A - W, about 250 tables in all.

As I understand it, it's a fundraiser for the temple, so you buy table and then get to bid on auctioned items such as small table altars for $1000. I think they were a bit late getting ready as they worked until 5am Saturday on the tent, but they'll tear it down in 2 days.

This year's event seemed a little lower key that last year which featured a proper Lion Dance, complete with papier mache head, 20m body and man holding a pearl on a stick. This year, it was 10 guys in yellow and orange polyester jump suits with balloons and tinsel.

The surreal touch was provided by a funeral wake being held in the void deck just opposite the marquee entrance. A Christian affair for a Madam Woo, is observing 2 nights of services (Sun, Mon) followed by a service and funeral on Tues. Stood between the 2 events, I experienced the dragon dancers playing a big drum with 2 cymbals on asynchronous accompaniment, the compere shouting Hokkien into the PA about the next auction and the mourners giving a decent rendition of What a Friend we have in Jesus. You can't make this stuff up.

Tip of the Day

What you need to appreciate is that Singapore has official and unofficial recycling systems. The official one is as one would expect of a socially responsible administration. There are re-cycling points with bins for paper, glass and plastic, but I've only seen them in tourist spots like Orchard Road and a couple of MRT stations. There's stuff in them so it works to some extent at least but I get a whiff of propaganda over substance given the vast majority of rubbish is thrown anonymously down HDB chutes with no recycling applied.

Singapore is average when it comes to wasteful packaging. Extra wrappings would add cost but there is still a huge, unending mass of plastic bags, Styrofoam and bamboo chopsticks used by shops and stalls. Everything gets a cheap plastic bag, often of a dull red (possibly recycled) plastic that is such a characteristic sight it's iconic.

Supermarket shopping is a mixed bag, as it were. Some people use little trolleys like my grandmother used, but then just use it to carry their plastic bags. Because most people will be walking home, bags need to last a 10-15min walk so anything heavy is doubled-bagged. Anything cold/frozen must be separated, so another bag. Newspaper? - another bag. Smelly fish? - another bag.

NTUC have bag-less Wednesdays, which means unprepared people like me have to put 5cents into the charity jar. Given I use the shopping bags as garbage bags at home (you need lots of small, daily bags as you can't keep waste food overnight (ants) and the chute opening is small), the scheme develops an equilibrium.

The council now has re-cycling dumpsters at some of the void decks. It is supposed to be for cardboard, paper, plastic, glass, clothes, toys, books, and so on. What actually happens is people leave all sorts of junk in and around the dumpster, and the old ladies who earn some pennies sorting trash go through it hoiking out the cardboard and aluminium cans (30p for ~65 cans), plus anything else valuable. The trouble is they are pretty focused, and if there is a cardboard box full of junk, they'll just tip out the contents to get the box.

Some re-cycling is done direct from your door. During the day, guys go around every floor buying stacks of old newspapers (60p for a 1m high pile) and collecting old electric items to be stripped for copper and other metals.

The best sort of re-cycling is reuse, and here the ad hoc system works well. Just leave anything you don't want (old sofa, bed, furniture, toys, books) at the void deck, usually on a Sunday, and it's finders-keepers.

Judging by effectiveness, the half-hearted official programme compares unfavourably versus the scavenging locals who do a better job of re-using, sorting and recovering materials at lower financial and energy cost although I acknowledge that without the Indian cleaning guys to tidy up every day, the place would look like the municipal tip.

Void Deck Critters

If Singapore is a concrete jungle, then the HDB void decks are the leaf litter, containing a myriad of non-human life.

Cockroaches and mosquitoes are the main insect pests which are kept in check by regular insecticidal fogging, focusing on the garbage chutes and drains respectively. I'm no 'roach expert but here they seem torpid and slow moving. Even a lively one is easy to catch and squish. Tomorrow is fogging day and I'm supposed to tape up around the garbage chute to stop the 'roaches from escaping the insecticide. I've never bothered or have forgotten up till now and the worst that seems to happen is to find a dead/dying 'roach on the kitchen floor. There was one that managed to crawl as far as the living room before succumbing. Tough bugger.

There are lots of owned and stray cats, mostly with partially docked tails (not sure why). They are conspicuously un-neutered and a merry courting dance is a daily affair. I don't know that anyone is doing anything about this but we are far from over-run. It's fun to see them walking along in the drain gullies with just a pair of ears visible. Most are wary of humans but will readily approach a friendly call, and continue on their daily search for food when they ascertain you are offering none. Some idiot dog owners let their dogs chase cats but it's mostly harmless and cats can duck down into the surface drains and either wait or pop up yards away out of another drain.

Cats with permanent hosts may never leave their flats or its immediate environs. My near neighbour's cat stays within 10yds of the front door, hiding behind plant pots to avoid kids and bikes on the landing. The poor animal is tortured because it lives next to the lifts so when he hears the doors open, he doesn't know whether the incomer is friend or foe. Lonely, neurotic and armed with claws. A potent combination.

I See Dead People

This blog is about Singapore life, so let's talk about death. First off, there's a lot of it about. I can't remember the last time I saw a funeral procession in England. We don't like death; we are embarrassed, unsure how to empathise with the family and wish it would quietly go away.

Here, there are different rituals depending upon culture (ok, race), religion and family wishes but it ends up in a melange of traditions. The one downstairs at the moment is for a Chinese lady (there's a big black & white photograph), so everything's in white including the coffin, white curtains forming a room and white plastic tables & chairs for mourners. But she must be Christian, as there's a big cross at the foot of the coffin, although no other symbols.

A work colleague's father passed away and I went along to pay respects at the funeral parlour; actually an anonymous, austere, mostly windowless 4-storey warehouse. It's a busy place as viewings only last a day and the turnover of clients, relatives, friends, flowers and cards requires close management. He apparently didn't have any particular spiritual wish so the family chose a neutral ceremony followed by cremation. These situations can be awkward but I must confess to being at a short-term loss for words when asked if I wanted to see the body (the coffin had a glass insert at the head end).

Buddhist send offs can be quite fancy especially if they were paid up Soka members. They get a full event at a void deck all in white with priests, music, speeches and ceremonies.

If there's a hearse and procession, then a Chinese would have family dressed in white shirts following the hearse, often with their hands on the back as if pushing it, followed by relatives and friends, then a Chinese band (opera style with drums and cymbals) and possibly a Dragon troupe as well. Indians have their own hearses painted bright and gay (no chance of moonlighting as a limo) and their own procession.

All of life's acts are played out in the dense public confines of the HDB flats and it's doubled or tripled the number of dead people I've seen in only a few months. This is good as I'm more relaxed about the whole thing.

Life in the Void

HDB flats have a consistent design that includes an empty ground floor creating a Void Deck; just pillars, lifts and mail boxes. There are no flats at ground level (which would be unfavourable considering security and disturbance).

This design has extreme utility. The sheltered but open space is used for events (weddings, marriage receptions, funerals, ballots), community facilities (clubs, restaurants, aviaries, pre-schools) and supports a rich and diverse life.

Most have concrete tables, sometimes marked out with a checker board (10 x 10) for games. The chairs are just concrete 'mushrooms' or perhaps a semi-circular bench. Sure they are uncomfortable with no backs but are actually a lovely cool spot for homework, reading the paper or just getting out of the flat. Plus, the whole lot can be regularly jet-washed with the rest of the void deck.

Chinese culture has a rich vein of ancestor worship, most commonly expressed with family altars in living rooms and the burning of papers, hell money, josh sticks, etc on the concrete margins of the void decks. There are BBQ-like braziers for this purpose but are rarely used. Most people have a favourite spot for their daily bonfire which create stained patches that even jet-washing fail to shift. Candles burn down to blobs of hard-to-remove wax. When it rains the fires move a few feet to the shelter of the void deck. I (once) tried putting one of these out and just ended up with dirty shoes. Stupid me.

The communal array of mail boxes is there, surrounded by the litter of junk mail. Even with great care, it's hard to pull the mail out without scattering the little slips like confetti, and who bothers to stoop down to pick up junk mail?

The neat council notice boards with announcements and Dos & Don'ts such as littering, bad parking, danger of falling items and dengue fever management. Chinese go for shock value rather than gentle persuasion so pictures of piles of rubbish and bicycles stored outside 10th-storey windows (roped to the concrete sun shields on each floor) are preferred over a simple list of guidelines like don't kill people with falling items.

Bikes and motorbikes are not allowed parked on the deck but are tolerated. The young guys with nice bikes (or just lots of stickers) do ritual, group cleaning on Sunday morning using the service tap for water (again not allowed but the "key" is not hard to get).

It's sort of the system here: dump whatever you don't want on the void deck. It gets picked over by residents (who take anything useful), then scavengers (for cardboard boxes, cans and other re-cyclable materials), then cats have a look for anything edible, then the whole lot gets cleaned up by the ever-reliable, Indian contract cleaning staff in the morning.

There is now a re-cycling wheelie bin on the void deck. Not all void decks, just a selection but it's a start. I can't figure out how one bin can take cardboard, paper, cans, glass & plastic, but I guess the low labour costs of separation makes it viable.

And that's just the human life on the deck. I'll leave cats, dogs and cockroaches to another time.