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PARTING SHOT
316
May15
Here’s your
c h a n c e
t o g e t
published
– a n d
make some
money at the
same time. We’re
looking for 500-word written
contributions on any funny,
poignant, practical or even
controversial topic that touches
on expat life in Singapore.
Simply email your stories in a
Word document to contribute@
expatliving.sgand we’ll consider
them for inclusion in an
upcoming issue.
S
omeone once told me that
Singapore would be lovely
when it was finished. In the
seven years we have lived here,
the landscape has changed beyond
recognition; Marina Bay, Orchard Road,
Sentosa, the colossal D’Leedon condo
– the list goes on and on. It is often said
that a skyline littered with tower cranes
is a sure sign of a healthy economy.
Well, Singapore must be taking its
multivitamins. I can see seven from our
bathroom window without even, ahem,
craning my neck.
We even had one next door for a while.
On discovering that our neighbours were
about to raze their perfectly decent house
to the ground (the houses here are only
40 years old), my more optimistic friends
tried to convince me it would be “on-site
entertainment” for my small boys. While
the odd unloading digger generates
five minutes’ distraction, an enormous
hydraulic crane reaching for the heavens
sends my two-year-old running.
So how bad is it, living next to a
construction site? As a SAHM (I really
hate that acronym but what alternatives
are there? “Housewife” seems archaic
and “homemaker” sounds as though I
should be donning a 1950s pinny) with
a new baby and two other little people
at home, I have been witness to a lot of
the process. From the smashing of roof
tiles to jackhammering out a basement
and swimming pool – Singapore boasts
a lot of rock – to the girders, scaffolding
By Olivia Syrett
and welding; deliveries at dawn and
dusk, the workmen moving from their
makeshift home into the skeletal house,
the gunshot-loud riveting of the roof tiles,
cement mixing, rendering.
As I write this they are, I think, drilling
holes through the concrete walls for all
the wiring. There must be a lot of wiring.
It is marginally less teeth-loosening
than the jackhammer, so perhaps it is
progress. I hope.
What else is involved? Well, having
a large number of men living in close
confines produces a lot of waste, in
every sense (there are two sites opposite,
and another planned above us; we’re
quite the building hub). The waste gets
suctioned out in a pungent green haze
every week. I try to imagine I am actually
in the English countryside and it ismerely
“good country smells”, but it doesn’t
quite work. The food leftovers attract
other unwanted visitors too, though my
husband is less irritated by being chief
rat dispatcher than by the pillaging of
the greenmangoes from the tree outside
our gate.
What about the upsides? Well,
surprisingly there are a few. I have never
had to worry about snakes, of course.
However much noise we make, day or
night, I will never have a neighbour calling
the police. When I played the damsel in
distress – our large umbrella got picked
up in the storm and dumped in a heap
of broken metal – the (Thai) foreman
willingly came with a couple of guys and
fixed it for me. I bought three trees from
the north of the island and after three
“cannot lahs” from professional movers,
I tentatively asked my neighbours for
help. Their number-one driver scoped
out the job, put boarding down so as not
to damage the grass and wouldn’t take a
cent for payment.
Perhaps most importantly, they teach
my sons that all-too-often absent quality:
manners. Smile, be gracious and say
good morning. As my father would say,
“The mark of a gentleman is being able
to speak on equal terms with a duke
and a dustman” – or, in this case, a
construction worker.