Stating why Singapore is an unhappy nation is easy, it just takes a 2 day observation.
I am a Belgian, just arrived here last year, but after 1 day, I already wanted to go back home to Belgium, that is how bad ur country looks to foreigners.
Buuuuuut... It is so easy to criticize and not actually do something about it. The major problems can be turned over pretty easily:
The people here mostly are unhappy because they aren't doing anything about it to get happy.
The things I miss about Belgium can easily be placed into Singapore. For instance, you have sun here all the time, why not implement soalr panels to drastically reduce electricity bills?
I know one issue with solar panels is they only optimally function in temperatures of 25C, but that can be resolved if u place those solar panels under covers so they don't heat up past 25C. Use the solar panels that function under sunlight and don't need direct light. Give the opportunity to each HDB resident to own one panel on top of the roof of the HDB and that fixes the electricity bills big time already.
Secondly, kids and teenagers:
Except from hanging out at school / sporthall / home / mall, they got NOTHING. It's not like hanging around outdoors is a "fun" experience ...
So what to do ?
Create a new job opportunity, or should I say opportunitieeeessssss... simple! What do kids need and like to do?
They love music ... they need help with homework .... they need a place to chill out alone or with some friends .... they need to be able to have friends meetings away from parents ....
Give them that, create Youth Cafe's, youth pubs, just like a regular bar , without alcoholic drinks, with a chill out lounge and a 1 person chill out room and a conference room that is noise isolated. You can easily
use the void decks to do those things.
Then about the void decks... Don't u all think the void decks are totally depressing and ugly?
Do something about that too then, it would make a great opportunity to promote local talents and to be known as the country of the million paintings ....
Just organize a competition nation wide, and all the thousands of winners will be allowed to paint the walls and the pillars of the void decks making those void decks into open air museums and allowing talent to be discovered.
This would become a HUGE touristic attraction, creating more jobs then you propably can handle and allowing the hotel sector to bloom open, ensuring work for future generations and maybe making
Singapore the number one art-capital of the world.
One thing will be the hardest to teach Singapore tho, and that is the hygiene matter. I see people make such big hygiene mistakes daily, wich even caused me to have several salmonella infections over the
past year.
The hygiene with food is disastrious, it really has to get improved big time. Food should be covered and kept cool at all times and even for buffet style foods, hygiene and not allowing people to breath
over all the food should bs a basic, especially for food fares.
Open roofs over the hawker centers are propably the main reason sars had such a big impact in this country, birds should NEVER be able to come near the food or fly over something that makes food and has no
roof, all the dust and parasites the birds carry just fall into the food that way, its revolting.
And then the free time, that is a major problem in Singapore, people are literally trapped in the heat. In Belgium, if I have spare time, i'd easily go out for a walk, here taking a walk is equal to taking a sweat
bath...going to any place is equal to taking a sweat bath.
That is why people are unhappy, you clean urself up nicely, and as soon as you step out, its ruined.
The heat is such a big bummer on everything it can only depress u, even more then winter blues I might add.
So how to beat this thing?
Well maybe improve the HDB hallways for a start, so that when u come out of ur apparmtent u don't get baded in blastering heat.
Improve the pathways, not just covered but also ventilated (can easily be powered by solar panels). Make more underground passage ways instead of above ground.
So that's about it, I could continue on longer about food and so on, but this is already a lot to digest.
Willie Gnow
A Belgium FT in Singapore