Singapore seems to love the construction sector.Look at your average HDB estate. Some part of it is perpetually in a state of construction, whether it is lift upgrading for the 4th time in 5 years, or building a new senior citizen's corner that is really used by teenage couples to make out, or building a new footpath, or a shelter for that footpath, or a new shelter replacing a shelter that was built just last year, or the landscaping of a park that no one really notices.
However, one ironic situation surfaces in almost every estate I've been to. Money is spent to build super nice footpaths, only to have people cut across the grass and create new paths because the footpaths simply take the longer way to get to a place. And then you know what? They build a shelter over that footpath.
I'm really fed up of all that construction. I don't see the need for it, and today when I was walking to my grandparents' place I had to walk on the road because a perfectly nice footpath that was just repaved a year ago had been torn up again to build an overhead shelter. Mind you, the shelter was really unnecessary because another shelter was already built, just that it was at the other side of the estate, about five blocks away. If this goes on, soon the footpaths will all become sheltered travellators, and we will have manicured lawns full of carpet grass and fountains bursting with Newater.
And, what's with all these estates being called "Tampines Green", or "East View Garden", or some other form of address that nobody uses or remembers? I live in East View Garden. Letters are routinely addressed to me with that tagged on, only that apart from it being in the east, I don't see a view and there definitely isn't a garden or I'd know about it. The nearest thing I have to a garden, a large open field just next to my house, just got torn up to build a new HDB estate, so I can have 1,000 new neighbours looking down upon my house. Yay.
If I were to tell the average taxi driver to take me to "Tampines Green", I bet you he won't know where the hell it is, because nobody uses those oblique references. In Singapore, it doesn't matter how you demarcate estates, because once the elections come round, the same part of Tampines that was in Bedok will become part of Pasir Ris. Just get the damn road name right.
It sometimes makes me feel like someone up there is playing SimCity. The only problem is, when stuff is actually built, it creates a lot of inconvenience for real people, not computer sprites who don't ever say anything even if you destroy their whole city by pulling out the plug on your computer.
My wish for Christmas this year is simple. I want a garden with a view that faces east. If that's not possible, please stop playing that "Train is coming" shit at MRT stations. It's driving me nuts.