A Few Seasons in Singapore
My last reflection was on my 30th birthday, and a lot has happened since then! I celebrated with my family and then boarded a very empty flight to Singapore, where I was locked in a hotel room for 2 weeks with Leaf. Soon, we moved into an apartment, and our new furniture and old cat joined us eventually. Our teaching jobs (Computer Science for me and English for Leaf, both high school) started in-person with safety precautions. I had no ramp-up time, because students wait for no one. On the first day of school, they expected calm, confident leadership even though I had just moved to this country, I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor at home, and I had never taught the course before. “Will our semester exam be a test or project?” a far-sighted student asked. I was tempted to reply that I didn’t know what we were doing tomorrow, let alone in December, but instead I said that I would discuss this with my colleague and get back to them. My colleague didn’t have a clue either (we’re both new), but at least this bought some time.
Outside of school, life in a new city and country started with a Big Bang. The new people in my new world formed my Singaporean protoplanetary disk. Who would coalesce and settle as my close friends and who would be more like a comet, coming around once every decade or more?
Singapore is the third city I’ve moved to in seven years, so I’ve learned a bit about how to lay new roots. Leaf and I accrued mileage on foot and by bike exploring nearby food and greenery. For some cultural education, we looked for touchstone shows and movies – the Friends and Mean Girls of Singapore. Our search led us to Phua Chu Kang, a slapstick Singaporean sitcom about a goofy contractor, and Jack Neo’s Ah Boys To Men, a parody of National Service (conscription), and I Not Stupid, a commentary on high-pressure elementary education that feels very similar to Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par.
Socially, we started meeting friends-of-friends to build a community outside our workplace. We didn’t have a ton of connections here, but the folks we’ve met have been great! At work, I tried to introduce myself face-to-face before I sent someone an email, which wasn’t always reciprocated, but I like it as a personal policy. Because I work in a big school (400+ teachers) and I have a lot of hobbies, I can roll with different groups. The soccer guys weren’t my type, so I made ultimate frisbee friends, and I’ve got a board game crew, too. So overall, one and a half years in, things are pretty solid on this front. We even adopted another cat (Sesame), so Shera has a new Singaporean friend, too!
Our two cats in Singapore: Shera (left) from Mussoorie and Sesame (right), a local
Getting to know a new city, country, and culture has been fun, and in the grand scheme of things, Singapore has more similarities than differences with most other developed cities in the world: a large population, high English proficiency, expensive rents, diverse immigrants, and business centers, to name a few. However, the more interesting story is in the differences, and that’s what I want to reflect on here.
I’ve always preferred being cold to being hot. As a runner, I love a crisp morning in the 50s (10+ Celsius) when I want to start with my gloves on, but I know that I’ll warm up after fifteen minutes. Wearing mittens and scarves and sweaters also makes me happy, because men’s fashion can sometimes leave me feeling like I was drawn by a child with a dilapidated 8-pack of colored pencils. But in Singapore, the weather looks like this almost every week of the year:
This forecast could be for any week of the year, but it’s 07-14 Jan, 2022
The island city-state is at 1.3521° N of the equator, and the sun pours its molten heat on the city for twelve hours in both July and December. If I’m going out between 10 am and 4 pm, even in January, I wear sunscreen. All of my colorful scarves and sweaters are stuffed in boxes and shoved into dark drawers and closets. I was worried that the weather would break me before I finished my first contract. But something changed after years of Boston winters when I wouldn’t see the sun most weekdays, when I spent half the year indoors in front of heaters, eating dinner in the dark. After that, two years in the Himalayan foothills with only a wood-burning stove and blankets for heat made me ready to be warm for a while.
The first months in Singapore were rough though – it took some time for my body and mind to get used to the new climate. But twelve hours of daylight every day and being able to play outdoor sports year-round have been amazing for my fitness and well-being. I’ve learned how to swim for exercise; I’ve played tennis, golf, soccer, and ultimate frisbee with friends. The part I didn’t expect though, is our energy usage. For a 3-bedroom apartment, we use about 200 kWh per month (up to about 280 when we’re at home all day), which includes air conditioning and appliances. That’s less than 1/5th the average household energy usage in the US. My international flights have a massive carbon footprint, and I want to minimize my impact in other areas of my life. By living somewhere where the air can dry our clothes and dishes and keep our days cool and nights warm, I can tread lightly on the Earth, as we used to say at Woodstock.
Writing this from an east-coast American winter, I feel dry and susceptible to papercuts. With the cold though come little delights: like a cat, I seek soft, sunny places, and unlike a cat, I look forward to my next hot shower. There is something intangibly nice about cupping a warm mug of tea like a little sun. I remember from living in Pittsburgh and Boston that the cold, dark winters covered my soul in an icy crust, and when the first sunny Spring day arrived, I was always so grateful for that herald of good times to come.
We all live in Porthos’ world (which has lots of blankets)
In Singapore, insulated mugs keep our iced drinks cool on most afternoons, but there are still a few places where I like my hot tea. One of my favorite routines happens on Sunday mornings about once a month. Around 8 am, Leaf and I bike on a paved path alongside a drainage canal to the Hillview MRT (subway) station where we wait a few minutes for a train. One stop southwards is the Beauty World station, where we alight and amble over to the Bukit Timah Food Centre and tap-in with our phones (double-vaccination required).
Sometimes, we start downstairs at the market picking up some produce like papaya, bok choy, tofu, and noodles, and then we head up to the food stalls. It’s early enough that there are still quite a few tables open, so we drop our helmets and bag on a table and split up. Leaf heads to the congee stall and orders a 六用鸡蛋 (a “number 6 with egg” – we’re learning!) and fruit juice. I go over to #02-185, He Zhong Carrot Cake and put in an order for “$3 carrot cake, less spicy, having here” and grab a buzzer. Yes, I’m okay waiting 20 minutes. That’s when I go over to Hainan Coffee (#02-163), a couple aisles over, and order a “Big, Hot, Teh C, Gao, Siew Dai, having here.” Sometimes I feel brave and try this with a bit more Mandarin.
I go back to our table, take my mask off, and enjoy the tea while waiting for Leaf and my buzzer. Aromas of fresh fruit and fish from downstairs tickle my nose, myna birds jostle for snacks and perches on the netting, and the tide of Singlish conversations ebbs and flows. When our dishes are ready, Leaf and I dig into our crunchy, delicious, masterfully prepared food with chopsticks and soup spoons and enjoy the moment.
Left: Carrot Cake Black — ‘carrot’ here is more like a radish, fried with eggs in a dark, sweet, soy sauce
Right: Rice congee with boiled peanuts, scallions, and yóutiáo (fried bread)
What I love about this routine is that it is so banal yet singular in its envelope of a Singaporean experience. From the beginning, we are able to bike to the metro station because of the combination of water conservation and public spaces for exercise. The canal collects nearby rainwater and funnels it up to a lake that serves as a small reservoir. Snaking around this canal collector is an easy 1-mile loop that Leaf and I walk, run, and bike on regularly. Our subway station is nearby, and we don’t need to time our route or hurry down the stairs because we almost never wait more than five minutes for a train to arrive.
An engineer at heart, I love seeing what it looks like for mechanical and civil engineering to be a cultural value. It’s vitally important in Singapore that infrastructure works for people. Leadership prioritizes maintenance and investment, updates technology before it breaks, and develops neighborhoods steadily and intentionally. Everything feels like it’s part of a plan, and though I’m sure it’s not perfect behind the scenes, things work, and transportation, food, and utilities are extremely reliable.
Speaking of food and cultural values, on these Sunday mornings, the Bukit Timah Food Center where we eat is one of over one hundred "hawker centers" on the island. In 2020, UNESCO recognized Hawker Culture as Intangible Cultural Heritage worth protecting, and after visiting 20 or so already, I agree that they are a treasure to be cherished. Each center is made up of dozens of stalls, and each stall specializes in one dish or family of dishes. For about 6 USD, we got two filling breakfasts cooked by masters of their craft, hot, sweet, milky black tea, and fresh juice. Delicious, healthy food is affordable and ubiquitous.
Eating is really the heartbeat of a day, and I think the places I’ve been in the Eastern hemisphere embrace this more than American culture does. We must eat to live, and thus we get the energy we need to face the obstacles and opportunities that unfold before us. Hawker centers are a healthy heart, and they are centrally located within dense, residential districts designed and built by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), the government agency responsible for Singapore’s public housing. About 80% of Singaporeans live in public housing which are generally comfortable, modern units, and owning an HDB flat is an attainable goal for most people. If you are interested in urban planning, there’s plenty more to learn about here, but for this reflection, it’s enough to say that I have been amazed by what a society looks like when providing good, inexpensive food and housing are foundational, organizing priorities.
Leaf and I wanted to live in a place with amenities like a pool and gym, and that goal was within our budget, so we ended up living in a condo instead of an HDB apartment. This means we’re a little farther away from these hubs and hearts of Singapore, so we often take a bus, bike, or train to where we’re going. The nearest MRT station is about a 15-minute walk away, and there’s a bus stop outside our condo that connects to our workplace in one direction and downtown in the other. When it’s not raining, we’ll walk or bike to the MRT, and the route goes mostly alongside the canal I mentioned. When it is raining, sometimes we don our flip-flops and umbrellas and visit just to watch the torrential water flow. There are small ponds and reservoirs across the island, footprints of a titanic elephant that padded across this jungle before heading north into Malaysia. Around each of these are meandering trails for dawn and dusk walkers to cross paths with the colugos, bats, monitor lizards, boars, monkeys, parrots, and other neighbors that share our home.
Chinese New Year decorations around Pang Sua Pond; HDBs visible in background
These paths and covered sidewalks (which are dual-purpose: they protect you from the harsh noon sun and unpredictable tropical downpours) are the extensive capillaries to the main arteries: the MRT (“em-ah-tee” to my ears). The entire subway system had an annual ridership of about 75% of NYCs in 2019 (with about 70% of the population of NYC), and it’s the longest fully automatic (driverless) system in the world. Most of the time, I’ll get on at Hillview to go to Beauty World for this hawker breakfast, Botanic Gardens for a walk or picnic with friends, or Bugis or Bayfront for dinner, a movie, or museums downtown. Between the canals, subway, and lush greenery, another Singaporean value emerges: maintenance.
About 5% of Singapore’s total population or 25% of its immigrant workforce are permitted for construction, marine, and chemical manufacturing jobs, though I mostly notice only the construction and landscaping sector. Across the island on any given day, there are thousands of people cleaning buildings, trimming hedges and trees, cutting overflowing greenery, repairing roads, and inspecting infrastructure. Most of the people I see working these jobs are South Asian, and this massive corps is largely responsible for preserving human-made structures through the wear of jungle growth and daily use by five-and-a-half million people.
Maintenance is often seen as unsexy at best and perhaps mind-numbingly boring at worst, but living in Singapore has made me wonder how much of my perception is just the American context I grew up with. In 2016, Freakonomics investigated this with an episode arguing that “our culture’s obsession with innovation and hype has led us to neglect maintenance and maintainers.” After seeing the value and rewards of maintenance first-hand – clean and comfortable environments, reliable modern technology, and long life-cycles of valuables – I’ve felt much better about incorporating maintenance into my own life.
I’m in my 30s now, and the neck and knee pains have started, so this year, I started thinking about my body differently. There are few things that last as long as the human body. No construction can repair itself, and only trees and a few creatures outlast us among complex, living organisms. I’m grateful for my time on this planet, and I want to make my healthy body last. For one, I’ve explored low-impact exercise in swimming and biking, and my range has reached about 25 laps and miles, respectively. When I arrived in Singapore, ‘swimming’ meant casting my arms about like an octopus roller coaster, seesawing to exhale and inhale in one clumsy maneuver. It took a lot of work to improve my form to something that I could sustain for more than 20 minutes. I also visited a Traditional Chinese Medicine physiotherapist after some chronic neck stiffness, and after acupuncture and cupping, she gave me a few exercises and stretches that I can do regularly to rebalance my musculoskeletal systems. Now, I feel no guilt about getting up in the middle of a long meeting or Zoom call to stretch or walk around. Maintaining my body is important, and others often join me or do what they feel comfortable with in their seats.
Leaf and I after biking downtown for sunrise
For my spirit, I also joined a meditation group with colleagues. For an hour a week after work, a handful of us met to talk about our days and follow our instructor (DK) in a long, guided meditation and reflection. With the class always either in my recent memory or near future, I’ve brought lessons and techniques into my daily life to manage internal or external stressors or just to maintain my mind regularly with meditation or mindful walking. DK shared that when he was at a monastery in France, some monks would be charged with roaming around ensuring that their peers were mindful and calm in all of their activities, from sweeping to chopping vegetables. My biggest learning from this group has been along these lines: I can do everything more mindfully than I have before.
Another dimension of maintaining my mind this year has been updating my creative computing skills. This summer, I took a course on Data Structures and Algorithms – it was about half review and half new. Computing has changed a lot since I learned programming for the first time 15 years ago. I know enough to teach my students well – they like the class, we get good results, I can answer most of their questions – but I just think it’s important for teachers to be active in our fields, especially at the high school level. This semester, I started using some time at school for little projects involving plant sensors and facial recognition! I’ve learned a lot so far and have a long way to go. This week, I’ll be starting a part-time MS in CS at Georgia Tech! I’m really excited to be a student again – I know a lot about how to learn, and I think the experience will be humbling and encouraging. Computers are really powerful, and I’m looking forward to learning more about how to harness that over the next few years.
All in all, living in Singapore has been great for me. I feel healthier than I’ve ever been, my work-life balance is getting better, I’m learning a lot every day, and I have a lot to look forward to. Two years ago, when we associated “Corona” with limes and not viruses, I didn’t know that accepting a job on an island with tight border controls and a strong commitment to public health would matter so much. In many ways, living in the bubble has been a blessing, but the hardest part has been the distance from my family and friends in the US. My niece was new on this planet when we moved to Singapore, and now I can run and play with her and she’s going to say her first full sentence any day now. A lot of life has happened in the last year and a half that I haven’t been around for, and I didn’t exactly sign up for the way that unfolded. Looking forward though, living outside the US is a heavier decision, and that definitely adjusts the equation when Leaf and I think about how long we’ll stay in Singapore and where we might move to next.
I ended my last reflection with this sentence: And, I hope that I continue to grow as a husband, son, brother, friend, and eventually, a father. On that note, there is one more thing I wanted to share: in a few months, Leaf and I will be welcoming another member of our family! Not a cat this time – a real, human person! Amid everything ahead, I have the most feelings about becoming a father. Prioritizing family will become a little more complex, and I don’t know how seismic a shift this will be in the landscape of my life. I say with humility that I feel as ready as I can be to be a parent, and I’m looking forward to raising a child with Leaf and doing our best with all the ups and downs :).
Thanks for reading,
~Dinesh
Paddleboarding in February with Photographer (and all-around good fellow) John Miller
