{"id":192,"date":"2007-12-20T20:39:44","date_gmt":"2007-12-21T02:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/?p=192"},"modified":"2007-12-20T20:39:44","modified_gmt":"2007-12-21T02:39:44","slug":"yishun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/?p=192","title":{"rendered":"Yishun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"yishun1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I spent a while this week thinking that I would change apartments on the 1st. \u00a0I\u2019ve pretty much given up on that idea — I seem to\u2019ve missed the narrow window for short-term rentals. \u00a0But, in the meantime, I\u2019ve been checking out various neighborhoods here, inspired by listings in the want-ads.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A very high percentage of the roommate ads I see are for places in \u2018Yishun\u2019 (I\u2019m not sure if that counts as a town or a neighborhood) so I rode the train out there. \u00a0It turns out to be where more-or-less everyone must live — giant public housing \u00a0buildings going on for many blocks in every direction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"yishun2.jpg\"<\/a>\"yishun3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Public Housing<\/a> is funny here. \u00a0It\u2019s almost all ownership-based (what we\u2019d call \u2018condos\u2019 at home) and seems to be entirely safe and well maintained. \u00a0Plenty of the buildings have retail, daycare, and schools on the first floor.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a typically proactive move, the government here seems to\u2019ve decided to provide decent housing to all of its citizens back in the 60\u2019s and them instantly done so. \u00a0(To someone raised during the Reagan years, this sounds like hubris. \u00a0But in Singapore it\u2019s just business-as-usual.) \u00a0So architecturally everything looks like the worst of the US ghetto towers, even down to the crack-epidemic-invoking names:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"yishun4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The buildings in Yishun were largely open on the first floor. \u00a0This is great for walkability — but as I strolled around, my American-city-trained instincts screamed that I should turn back, that I was walking straight into either a drug market or a mugger\u2019s ambush. \u00a0Of course, the fact that everything smelled strongly of baking bread helped to ease that a bit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"yishun5.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the landscaping. \u00a0All and all, it\u2019s pretty much like the first reel of the Wizard of Oz, except that instead of picking up a Kansas farmhouse the tornado has picked up Cedar Towers. \u00a0And instead of dropping them in Oz, it dropped them in the middle of the Waikiki Hilton Village.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"yishun6.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent a while this week thinking that I would change apartments on the 1st. \u00a0I\u2019ve pretty much given up on that idea — I seem to\u2019ve missed the narrow window for short-term rentals. \u00a0But, in the meantime, I\u2019ve been … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bogott.net\/unspecified\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}