Going with the wind

Saturday June 27, 2009
Going with the wind
Insight Down South by SEAH CHIANG NEE

IN JUST a few days, a bit of my own personal world will come to an end, a small coffeeshop where I have tucked in countless happy meals for 24 years.

This neighbourhood place will close at the end of June to make way for a modern mini mart, and with it a little of my own past.

I will miss it when it’s gone because it has become a small part of my life, more than one-third of it.

It is not just because of the S$2.50 (RM6) coffee, toast-and-egg breakfast that I like or even its delicious prawn noodles, chicken rice and other food that befit a working man’s appetite and pocket.

Much more than that!

Like 2,000 others in the city, the coffeeshop is also a traditional Singapore institution for social bonding of residents, especially retirees, to meet and chat without costing an arm and a leg.

I don’t think it will ever become extinct, but what will disappear will be the simple creature that offers cheap food for Singaporeans with a modest income.

Its passing will probably mean little to the rest of Singapore; after all, these things happen all the time.

For me, however, it personifies today’s transient society, where everything is changing and changing, like a journey that never ends.

“I think Singapore is going through puberty,” someone joked amidst preparations to mark its 50th year of statehood.

But it is not too young for numerous small shops which have helped keep costs down from being ousted by bigger, stronger competitors that are not too shy about raising prices.

It’s the same way that mom-and-pop shops began to disappear in America at the beginning of the last century. “The end of an American era,” critics complained.

I think it merely transformed it, but it partly helped to create a lavish lifestyle that led to the current financial woes.

Yesterday, as I sat down for my last nostalgic meal there, I couldn’t help but wonder how many small coffeeshops will leave us once the recession ends and rents rise again.

Actually, many already have. During the last 25 years, I have seen them going under the hammer of increasing rents and changing buyer tastes.

Everything in Singapore seems to be temporary. One day it’s new and exciting, and the next it gets bulldozed into the dustbin of history.

A run-down provision shop that was operated by an old couple probably since the launch of colour TV, has changed, as if by magic, into a posh establishment that pampers to pets of the wealthy.

And where I once paid half a dollar to watch rerun films is now an up-market restaurant for beer-loving football fans and Yuppie couples.

More nearby changes are ahead!

An entire building has been flattened to Ground Zero that will soon sprout forth, yes, another multi-storey shopping mall that will probably charge much higher rents.

Not only is my friendly coffeeshop transient. I think it aptly describes much of the rest of society, too.

Everything in Singapore seems to be only temporary, here today, gone tomorrow, and the only permanent feature is change. And change in business terms, as we all know, means higher costs.

Consider the following:

Schools are places where children normally find lifelong friends, but under Singapore’s streaming system and highly demanding parents, classmates frequently change.

Students may find themselves transferred from one class or one school to another depending on their performance.

Not many get to stay together from Primary One to Pre-University, like many of us did during British rule.

“Lasting school friendship is taking a knock,” said a teacher.

“Hardly does a pupil get to know someone, when he is streamed elsewhere,” she said.

Neighbours, too, change regularly as Singaporeans have a seemingly unending habit of upgrading, downgrading or merely buying and selling their residences for speculation.

Few people live in the same neighbourhood long enough to establish friendship – unlike in larger societies.

And if we take temporariness to a national level, the population is largely transient in nature.

With an open door policy to meet economic demand, the government has allowed more than a million foreigners into this already over-crowded island.

Today one in three people are aliens, the majority of whom will leave one day.

Socio-political blogger Ng E-Jay forecast that at the current migrating rates, half of Singapore’s population could consist of foreigners in 11 years’ time.

“The number of foreigners is increasing at a much faster rate than that of citizens and PRs,” he said.

The timing may not be right, but the trend is unmistakable – given Singaporeans’ low birth-rate and a rising exodus rate abroad.

More worrying is that as much as half the youths today have expressed a desire to leave for greener pastures abroad given the chance.

The Singaporean appears to be a declining breed. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has conceded that continuity for Singapore is a big worry.

It led Lee to wonder aloud whether one day “we are going to be the last of the Mohicans; whether we are going to disappear.”

Hemmed in by all these transient factors, politics itself will be bound also to shed its present, follow-the-leader self.

The political future will likely be moulded by global developments, particularly in the economic field and the attitudes of tomorrow’s citizens – locals and naturalised foreigners alike.

Parts of yesterday’s Singapore will probably be retained for a longer period – but given enough time, these, too, will disappear.

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