I don’t live in a Slum

On the northern fringe of Singapore, overlooking the slate gray waters of the Johore Strait, the public-housing project where Anthony Fulwood lives (Bukit Panjang) is so far from the city’s affluent expatriate enclaves that cabdrivers are stunned when he announces his address. ” ‘For God’s sake, why do you live there?’ they regularly ask me,” says Fulwood. ” ‘You’re white!’ ” …

… Fulwood isn’t the only Western expatriate to take up residence in the cheaper peripheries of this Southeast Asian city. An English teacher and community volunteer whose duties include helping integrate Westerners into the Bukit Panjang neighborhood, the 30-year-old Englishman sees a small but steadily growing number of Americans, Australians and Europeans in the fluorescent-lit coffee shop where locals often gather after work around cold pitchers of beer. These foreigners are economic refugees of a sort.

– Extracted from “Laid Off in Singapore: Ex-Pats Have to Downsize” by Neel Chowdhury, TIME, March 15, 2009.

 

They made this part of the island, where I lived for more than half my life, sounds like a slum located at the border of Singapore (or was it Johore?).

Hello. It is still civilization here you know. Ok, even thought that’s not the point of this entire article, I just can’t help but rant about it. HEH.