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Sustainable life in Singapore, and the world we live in

Oh what a wonderful country! The 'clean' and 'tidy' facade of the city, the heavily advertised 'high standard of living', and its 'uniquely' advance lifestyle! Oh what a wonderful world! No wonder everyone wants to come to Singapore.

Le Chateau is the low rise apartment I am residing in since last September, a 'higher end' private apartment and what the Singaporeans sometimes refer to as a 'mansion' style development. I pay extremely high rental due to the 'golden location' nearing Orchard, for just a room! Monthly cleaning was promised to tenants but you never see the dust disappears. I am sure the apartment once had its glorious time, but it is not maintained properly and everything is on its way out.

I believe this is one of those many properties in Singapore: luxuriously built, but high maintenance. The owner or ex-owner has either migrated to somewhere better, or simply gave up maintaining it, and sold it off or let an agent take care of it. And that would be someone like my agent! You will never get anything done around here, be it leakage in the toilet, a leaky aircon, a broken washing machine, lights that do not work, etc. The agent's programmed reaction towards any of these faulty facilities is: "Is it serious?", as if, it should be ignored if it is deemed not serious! And they have the nerve to tell us that it is the tenants' responsibilities to maintain these appliances, and not theirs! Well, that is only possible, if we were given the appliances in their good conditions! I don't think I know how to maintain an already leaking toilet, do you?

Well, as if that is not enough, we got the news that this development has been 'enbloc-ed' and would be vacated at the latest in August. It is no rumour, as I have seen notices on the walls, and tenants in other units moving out yesterday.

Enbloc is one of Singapore's most popular fevers amongst their many economy-boosting methodologies. If a developer has his eye on a certain valuable land, and he managed to get a certain percentage of the tenants to have a group sale of their units, then they can take over the development, tear it down, and guess what: build another shopping mall, or another luxurious condominium that can be sold at much higher price! Yay!

I suppose, maintaining an existing development in Singaporeans' money perception, is a waste of MONEY, and tearing it down and buidling new ones on the other hand, makes lots more. So what is that new campaign I heard of in Singapore again? Getting Singapore green and sustainable? Huh! In Singapore, nothing can beat $$$$$! Not ethics, not humanity.

And how ethical are these agents? They didn't even bother telling us that the buidling could be torn down in a couple of months' time, hoping that they can collect as much money from us before we realised anything! Imagine waking up one morning and seeing a bulldozer swinging its claw at your window... nice.

The next time someone tells me how great Singapore is, I will give him/her a big tight slap.
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Anonymous said…
First, the gov themselves promote monopoly and collusion themselves in the form of GLC and spin-off, secondly they promoted money to gain higher ground and moral authority, and third, the gov promote greed because it make Singapore look good and attractive.

But one thing is for sure, the gov reap the greatest benefit from all these action.

But then we ask ourselves => Where is our money ? Gov's reply=> You have to be independent of Gov and not let gov take care of you.

If gov doesn't want to take care of you and yet could come out policy that affect your life, then isn't the gov doing it all for themselves ?

It take a long time for me to figure out this. And just as Dick Lee has regreted inventing the crappest song for PAP => We have a vision for tomorrow. We must believe. We must believe in PM LEE.
1 July 2007 at 22:43
Anonymous said…
We almost ended up in the same situation. We were choosing between two condos earlier this year, one of which was Gilstead View. Imagine my surprise when I read about the en bloc sale of Gilstead View barely a month after we viewed units there.

Good thing we chose the other condo, hope this one doesn't go en bloc!
31 July 2007 at 23:21
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