2024 Week 17: Makeover

WE PERMED OUR HAIR. I think Jon's new hair looks great. Mine not so much but never mind. I'm just happy I don't have to trim it for a while. Can't wait to see how it turns out as it grows.

Also went to Sephora and got makeovers for no good reason. Hahaha. Next up: facials in JB and then maybe piercings.

We've also successfully migrated our bunnies to the living room (where Eeyore used to free roam). E ran straight to his old hangouts and for half a day it looked like he was kinda territorial. But when we got home from swimming we found them sharing the space quite happily.

I found my holy grail yoga studio on ClassPass: Peculiar Yogi. It has (1) ashtanga classes and (2) studio cats!!! I am so sore from just the beginner's ashtanga session but I can't wait to heal and try the full 90-minute ashtanga led class.

Internship notes: Week 4

• MON: admin in the office, 5-8pm door knocking 
• TUE: 3-5pm Little Angels, 5-8pm door knocking
• WED: (day off)
• THU: 1pm meet Anne-Marie, admin, dinner, then 6-9pm door knocking
• FRI: 3-7pm food distribution

I'm sooooo tired from the week. It's already Sunday and I'm still super tired. As you can see, we had 3 late nights this week because it's the first week of our door-knocking to survey residents on how they feel about the upcoming relocation.

The door-knocking itself is actually fun. I was surprised by how willing the residents were to talk about how they felt, especially when their views are critical of HDB's decisions. 

It's probably because the team handpicked families with longstanding relationships with Beyond. So apart from having a rapport already, the residents know that Beyond sort of a safe space for honest opinions. I think if a government body approached them they would be worried about coming across as entitled or ungrateful (and maybe even get cut off from any assistance).

We spoke to a few families who were unperturbed by the move because they had already been planning to buy their own BTO flat. Cynical as I am about the Singaporean obsession with home ownership, I couldn't help feeling proud and happy for them. At least the subsidised rental housing scheme, plus all the financial assistance schemes going to these estates, does help some families save up enough to afford a downpayment.

What I found painful was looking at how hard some of the residents work just to scrape by. Many people we spoke to have little education (older people) or did not do well in school (young adults) so they have to work in manual jobs, under harsh conditions. 

Capabilities are grossly underutilised because of the rigidity of the job market. A fantastic home chef works as a cleaner because there aren't any culinary jobs that fit around her caregiving commitments. An experienced former driver becomes a pump attendant because he is illiterate and can't use the Grab app. There's a woman who sells flowers and cuts grass at the cemetery, which I'm pretty sure wasn't her calling in life.

I think I feel saddest when I see smart young men, full of wisecracks, expend their bodies delivering cargo for a living. I don't look down on manual labour at all (although it ought to pay better) but I feel like society as a whole suffers when bright young people aren't participating in the economy mentally. Despite the lack of paper qualifications they are a lot smarter than some brain-dead office workers I know. It's such a shame.

During the Friday grocery distribution, I was chatting with lady and she said that Beyond's giveaways are the best - she genuinely finds all the items useful. Actually the neighbourhood is well-served by charities, but not every giver works closely with the residents to decide what items to give. 

In Beyond's case, the resident volunteers decided on the grocery items and shortlisted recipient families based on highly informal community knowledge (e.g. let's give to this family because the father is injured and hasn't worked in weeks). There is no way to verify all the information driving these decisions. So it's largely a matter of trust. 

Now, the elephant in the room: race. I noticed that while the resident volunteers are mostly Malay, they reserved grocery packs for Chinese and Indian families they knew. While I was calling residents to come down to collect their packs, a volunteer scrolled through her phone book and pulled up a Chinese uncle's contact on her phone for me to call. Of course it is not a post-race utopia here. But from what I've seen, the neighbourly relationships and care networks cut across racial lines.

Pictures from one of the houses we visited - a shrine to all things Hello Kitty. <3