Friday, November 05, 2004
Random Grouses (taste nice fried)
Okay re-minisce is going to touch on several touchy topics tonight since he's a touchy feely sorta guy. (preferably touchy feely nice girlie. just kidding.)
Re-minisce's grouses for the week
1) HDB flats. I'm probably going to put a lot of people's backs up, and it doesn't help that I don't live in one. But, I hasten to add that this doesn't reflect poorly on the residents in any way, and it's not their fault at all that they live in them.
HDB flats are, quite frankly, eyesores. I cannot imagine what went through the minds of the architects when they designed 'em.
Okay, so they did the job for the PAP - cheap and cheerful (and identical) housing for everyone in a hurry. But sometimes, walking amidst the garguntuan monstrosities that clutter our skyline, I just wish they could have hired someone with an eye for the teeniest bit of aesthetics. Granted most Singaporeans can't see what I'm seeing, because they've lived in them most of their lives. Their pigeon coops is home to 'em. But honestly, outside of the "city" area of our little city, the rest of the island is a bit of a letdown.
Cue "upgrading". (ba da bum) That magic term the boys in white always use as political leverage tocoerce encourage the public to vote for them. (no vote PAP? slower upgrading - if at all, ever.)
Upgrading takes drabness in completely the other direction. From robot architects the boys in white have moved on to insane dali-wannabe artists. Suddenly all the HDB flats have come alive with colour! Colour-schemes like orange and green; Orange and purple; Green and purple abound and offend the sensibilities of anyone with an ounce of colour co-ordination in their souls.
So what if they boys in white appointed a frenchman to do the job? He must have been drunk at the time, or else he was clearly colour-blind.
And those added "facades" they've superglued onto the fronts of the blocks, if anything, make it all look worse. Now, instead of being surrounded by cities of grey (or beige, come to think of it) obelisks, we're living in legoland.
2) Void decks
Howbout these? Included as a feature to encourage residents to bond communally, these void decks are more often than not... empty. (except for the occasional kitty-cat) Strangely apt, somehow.
3) Queenstown
I remember visiting Queenstown fairly often with my mum when I was little. I found it fairly pleasant, and the colour schemes there at least were fairly palateable (my favourite colour is blue, see.)
Visiting it yesterday I couldn't help but notice that it's beginning to look post apocalyptic. Paint's flaking off the walls, and that which remains has become sunbleached in spots, and grimy in others. Vendor shops remain closed and unoccupied. Even the roadside telephone switchbox thingummies are starting to bleed streaks of rust down their flanks. The place definitely looks as if it's seen better days. If I didn't know any better I might be tempted to conclude that we're still ploughing through the depths of an economic crisis...
*****
Now I have to ask, after all that ranting that none of you becomes defensive, and that you somehow try to remain objective. Don't indulge, tempting as it may be, in a bout of self-centred defensiveness, or a pre-emptive attack (eg calling re-minisce a snob). I have no inclinations towards class-discrimination, and many of my friends and colleagues live in HDB flats. I'm currently looking to rent one nearer to the hospital as well, to escape the clutches of the evil parents. Personally, I don't believe in the whole concept of clas-stratification s in a society that essentially exists of varying degrees of "middle-class"ness. We haven't any gentry or nobility to speak of, and, ostensibly, there are no "poor" people in Singaland (just low-income groups)
This isn't an attack on any of you in any way, and to feel somehow threatened or upset by it would be a waste of effort and emotion on your parts, since the writer isn't feeling particularly snobby or self-righteous as he puts these thoughts to e-media.
I'm just calling it as I see it - the HDB flats and estates that have grown around us as we have grown up, to the "outside" eye (ie one that has been away, and back -- probably more so to those born and bred overseas) aren't exactly aesthetically pleasing. They've clearly been built to be functional and pratical, those eternal buzzwords that dominate our engineering-orientated society. And the upgrading works that were conducted by and large served to convert drab pigeon coops into haphazardly coloured architectural monstrosities (much akin to the new RGS and the new RI...)
What puzzles me is - couldn't it have been done another way? Perhaps repaint all the blocks in relatively sane, muted colours, and install reflective grills along the public corridors to give the blocks more.. "blockiness" - so that they look a little more like buildings rather than pigeon coops? And surely some of that money used in pinning large and bizarre frontages to the blocks could have been more wisely spent replacing - rivets - which reflected the initial less-than-masterful workmanship that went into the construction of these purpose-built people-pens?
I dunno, I'm certainly not an administrator; I'm just a pair of eyes connected to a mouth (or, in this case, a pair of hands). I'm calling a spade a spade - the blocks are hardly aesthetically pleasing. Should any of you become angry with me, consider that what you probably want in demanding a retraction from me is for me to lie, or to learn to see what my heart does not feel - that these blocks are actually pretty and pleasant; that someday when the land is chocablock with hdbblocks it'll make a pretty postcard, taken from the waterfront, to tout to the world. The other alternative is to try to empathise with the writer, and look at the land again with newly-opened eyes. Perhaps there is a better way to dress-up and upgrade our HDB blocks, and transform them from the skeletons of civilisation that they are, into something more than superficial.
Re-minisce's grouses for the week
1) HDB flats. I'm probably going to put a lot of people's backs up, and it doesn't help that I don't live in one. But, I hasten to add that this doesn't reflect poorly on the residents in any way, and it's not their fault at all that they live in them.
HDB flats are, quite frankly, eyesores. I cannot imagine what went through the minds of the architects when they designed 'em.
Okay, so they did the job for the PAP - cheap and cheerful (and identical) housing for everyone in a hurry. But sometimes, walking amidst the garguntuan monstrosities that clutter our skyline, I just wish they could have hired someone with an eye for the teeniest bit of aesthetics. Granted most Singaporeans can't see what I'm seeing, because they've lived in them most of their lives. Their pigeon coops is home to 'em. But honestly, outside of the "city" area of our little city, the rest of the island is a bit of a letdown.
Cue "upgrading". (ba da bum) That magic term the boys in white always use as political leverage to
Upgrading takes drabness in completely the other direction. From robot architects the boys in white have moved on to insane dali-wannabe artists. Suddenly all the HDB flats have come alive with colour! Colour-schemes like orange and green; Orange and purple; Green and purple abound and offend the sensibilities of anyone with an ounce of colour co-ordination in their souls.
So what if they boys in white appointed a frenchman to do the job? He must have been drunk at the time, or else he was clearly colour-blind.
And those added "facades" they've superglued onto the fronts of the blocks, if anything, make it all look worse. Now, instead of being surrounded by cities of grey (or beige, come to think of it) obelisks, we're living in legoland.
2) Void decks
Howbout these? Included as a feature to encourage residents to bond communally, these void decks are more often than not... empty. (except for the occasional kitty-cat) Strangely apt, somehow.
3) Queenstown
I remember visiting Queenstown fairly often with my mum when I was little. I found it fairly pleasant, and the colour schemes there at least were fairly palateable (my favourite colour is blue, see.)
Visiting it yesterday I couldn't help but notice that it's beginning to look post apocalyptic. Paint's flaking off the walls, and that which remains has become sunbleached in spots, and grimy in others. Vendor shops remain closed and unoccupied. Even the roadside telephone switchbox thingummies are starting to bleed streaks of rust down their flanks. The place definitely looks as if it's seen better days. If I didn't know any better I might be tempted to conclude that we're still ploughing through the depths of an economic crisis...
*****
Now I have to ask, after all that ranting that none of you becomes defensive, and that you somehow try to remain objective. Don't indulge, tempting as it may be, in a bout of self-centred defensiveness, or a pre-emptive attack (eg calling re-minisce a snob). I have no inclinations towards class-discrimination, and many of my friends and colleagues live in HDB flats. I'm currently looking to rent one nearer to the hospital as well, to escape the clutches of the evil parents. Personally, I don't believe in the whole concept of clas-stratification s in a society that essentially exists of varying degrees of "middle-class"ness. We haven't any gentry or nobility to speak of, and, ostensibly, there are no "poor" people in Singaland (just low-income groups)
This isn't an attack on any of you in any way, and to feel somehow threatened or upset by it would be a waste of effort and emotion on your parts, since the writer isn't feeling particularly snobby or self-righteous as he puts these thoughts to e-media.
I'm just calling it as I see it - the HDB flats and estates that have grown around us as we have grown up, to the "outside" eye (ie one that has been away, and back -- probably more so to those born and bred overseas) aren't exactly aesthetically pleasing. They've clearly been built to be functional and pratical, those eternal buzzwords that dominate our engineering-orientated society. And the upgrading works that were conducted by and large served to convert drab pigeon coops into haphazardly coloured architectural monstrosities (much akin to the new RGS and the new RI...)
What puzzles me is - couldn't it have been done another way? Perhaps repaint all the blocks in relatively sane, muted colours, and install reflective grills along the public corridors to give the blocks more.. "blockiness" - so that they look a little more like buildings rather than pigeon coops? And surely some of that money used in pinning large and bizarre frontages to the blocks could have been more wisely spent replacing - rivets - which reflected the initial less-than-masterful workmanship that went into the construction of these purpose-built people-pens?
I dunno, I'm certainly not an administrator; I'm just a pair of eyes connected to a mouth (or, in this case, a pair of hands). I'm calling a spade a spade - the blocks are hardly aesthetically pleasing. Should any of you become angry with me, consider that what you probably want in demanding a retraction from me is for me to lie, or to learn to see what my heart does not feel - that these blocks are actually pretty and pleasant; that someday when the land is chocablock with hdbblocks it'll make a pretty postcard, taken from the waterfront, to tout to the world. The other alternative is to try to empathise with the writer, and look at the land again with newly-opened eyes. Perhaps there is a better way to dress-up and upgrade our HDB blocks, and transform them from the skeletons of civilisation that they are, into something more than superficial.
