Home on the Dot

Singapore is a country on the move. Those who can afford to do so are moving up the housing ladder, from public housing flat, to private condo, to landed property. Those who cannot afford to climb the housing ladder – specifically residents of subsidized rental flats – may also be on the move, but not by choice. In this episode of Home on the Dot, we explore the relocation of rental flat residents. We tour Dakota Crescent, an HDB estate recently demolished, and talk with volunteers who helped residents move. We talk about Singapore's largely invisible poor and their unique housing challenges, and we discuss how “befrienders” try to create a sense of community amid the changes that come with relocation.

When Covid lockdowns began around a year ago, some people joked that homebodies didn't even notice. While many young people bristled at being stuck at home, it was thought that homebodies were glad to no longer attend class in person or pretend to have fun at parties. In this episode of Home on the Dot, we discuss how Covid-19 has impacted young people, particularly the experience of being under lockdown in the constant presence of family. As we mark our first year anniversary of living with Covid-19, we hear from NUS Geographer Tracey Skelton, who discusses the disruptions Covid has brought to children and young people, for whom spending much of the past year stuck at home has meant a loss of independence and a feeling that their lives are on hold. We also hear from Zack, a Japanese Studies major and self-proclaimed homebody, for whom lockdown brought on an existential crisis, as home spaces that were previously comforting became weird with his family around 24/7. What do we lose when we are all forced to be homebodies?

Buying your first home can be a daunting experience. It requires a long-term commitment and a tolerance for risk, not to mention a willingness to compromise if you buy with a partner. Many young Singaporeans buy their first home through the Build-to-Order, or BTO, scheme. These are flats in towers that have not yet been built. Applicants must meet strict requirements and wait years between application and the handover of keys. This birth of a home requires planning and patience. Unfortunately, even the most organized couples may fail in their first or second attempt, thus delaying both a couple’s marriage and the moment they can step into their first home. In this episode of Home on the Dot, we hear from two young couples navigating the bureaucratic, social, and financial complexities of realizing the dream of their first home, and we learn how society’s expectations surrounding marriage and home ownership cause some young Singaporeans to feel left behind in the home game.

2020 brought more than Covid-19. It also brought more time in the kitchen. More people than ever were baking bread, cakes, and cookies to satisfy their cravings for both a wholesome hobby and some sweet homemade treats. This was true in Singapore, where a home baking boom led to shortages of key items like flour and yeast. Of course, not everyone picked up baking during the pandemic. Singapore has a long history of bakers running Home-Based Businesses (HBB) and selling pineapple tarts, almond cookies, and other goodies to their neighbors, relatives, and colleagues. In this episode we hear from three different home-based bakers. We hear about how these businesses run by women provide an outlet for their inspiration and bring in much-needed income. We hear how they have operated amid the pandemic, including how two of the owners actually took advantage of the early lockdown period in Singapore to test recipes and launch their companies. Indeed, Covid-19 has provided an opportunity for these home-based bakers to move from hobby to business.

2020 ended with some exciting news for Singapore: in mid-December UNESCO added Singapore’s hawker culture to its list of intangible cultural heritage. In honor of this unique designation, we return to one of the first episodes of Home on the Dot, which explored Singapore’s rich hawker center culture and shared the stories of young “hawkerpreneurs” bringing new life to what is often perceived as a dying art. We also get a hot take on the UNESCO designation from Dr. Hamzah Muzaini, an expert on heritage and remembrance, who shares his pride and excitement for hawker culture and reflects on his own daily hawker routine. Close out 2020 and ring in the new year with this celebration of Singapore’s open-air dining room: the hawker center.

Love knows no boundaries, but in 2020 some boundaries have become more impervious than ever. Covid-19 has hit couples in long-distance relationships hard. Long-distance love has always been difficult, but frequent international flights and relatively open global borders made it possible. The global pandemic has left many long-distance relationships in a holding pattern, unsure when they will physically hold each other again. In this episode of our special Covid-19 series, Samantha, a recent NUS graduate, shares her experience maintaining a long-distance relationship with her partner in Australia. She explains how they use technologies to share their lives and reveals her frustrations with their unknowable future.

Covid-19 has closed the door on house guests. When home is a shelter from the virus, we must limit visitors. This restriction becomes particularly painful during major holidays, when people normally open their homes to family and friends and use the home as a space of celebration. As we await a vaccine, holidays centered on the home must be abandoned or radically altered. In this episode of Home on the Dot, we learn how Covid-19 impacted Hari Raya Puasa, the ‘Day of Rejoicing’ at the end of Ramadan. This year the Muslim holiday fell on May 24th, during Singapore’s strictest period of lockdown--the Circuit Breaker--when home visits were not allowed. What was Hari Raya like without the spring cleaning, the open-air bazaars selling delicious holiday foods and fairy lights, the home visits, and the all-important tradition of asking forgiveness from one’s elders in person? Tune in to hear what was lost, and what was gained, in this holiday impacted by Covid-19.

The Covid-19 global pandemic forced young people on exchange around the world to abandon their plans and return home. Their language immersion, cultural exposure, and social outings with new friends came to a sudden halt. A small group, however, chose to remain abroad. Why did they stay, and what was it like to experience the pandemic outbreak in a foreign country? How has Covid-19 altered their studies, their social lives, and their explorations of the host country? In this episode of our Covid-19 mini-series, Ching May and Dana, NUS students who remained in Japan to complete their year-long study abroad programs, share how they decided to stay and how they have coped with the isolation of sheltering in place and learning online in another country. In this episode, we hear what happens when you stay.

With the new school year just around the corner, universities are struggling to open safely. In the third of our ongoing Covid-19 episodes, we hear from Jared, a Singaporean and rising Sophomore at Brown University. He shares his evacuation from the U.S. last March, his uncertainty regarding the upcoming semester, and his concerns over a recent announcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which threatened the education of international students like Jared. Jared also discusses “Healthy Brown,” the University’s flexible plan designed to protect students in this time of crisis, and he wonders how long he will need to stay home in response to rising coronavirus cases and lingering anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S.

What is the value of study abroad? It is a rare opportunity to live and learn overseas. In the life of a Singaporean student, it is a narrow window of ultimate freedom, when educational success can take a back seat to exploration: exploration of the culture, flavors, landscapes, and people of another country, as well as oneself. But first one has to leave home. In this episode of our Covid-19 mini-series, Chris talks with student-producer Shaun and his classmates Tiffany and Zack about their anticipation and preparation for exchange to Japan, which was abruptly canceled in March 2020. Beyond the lost study abroad experience, the students share their loss of an entire semester of their studies, and in some ways, their lives, as they have rotted at home.

This episode marks the beginning of a mini-series of episodes from Home on the Dot about Covid. In this episode, student producer Shriya Sharma shares about her exchange experience in France being cut short. What was supposed to be a five-month-long adventure ended in two months. Shriya describes what it was like hearing the news of her premature recall and making her way back home during a pandemic. She ruminates on her quarantine experience, locked in with her family, and appreciating the safety of home in the Covid present.

The COVID-19 virus has disrupted countless lives as it has become a global pandemic. Hundreds of millions of people in China, Italy, Spain, the Philippines, England, France, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere have been asked--or forced--to stay home in order to prevent the spread of the disease and “flatten the curve.” Never in the history of the world have so many people been at home at the same time. But not everyone can return home so easily, and perhaps not everyone should. For countless university students on exchange overseas, COVID-19 has disrupted their once-in-a-lifetime experience, forcing them to return home almost overnight. But what happens when home is potentially more dangerous than where you are? And how do you cope with the stress of traveling home at this risky moment? In this episode, two students from the United States share their struggles of the past week, as they received multiple messages from their Universities and had to decide whether to stay for the rest of the semester (and risk getting stuck in Singapore) or return to their families in California (and risk endangering themselves and their families). The stress is piling up, from buying hard-to-find plane tickets, worrying about credits and the switch to online courses, saying goodbye to friends, staying healthy while traveling, and not becoming a vector. These amazing young adults demonstrate incredible maturity in the face of unimaginable circumstances.

Can a kitchen appliance change your life? In this episode, student-producer Shriya explores the art of making chapatti, a flatbread that is a staple in households around the world. She discusses the laborious process of making chapatti by hand and shares the sounds of learning this art from her grandmother. Then she introduces the Rotimatic, an automatic chapatti maker designed to revolutionize this labor-intensive task and liberate women from the kitchen. What is gained and what is lost when a new appliance enters the home?

What is the flavor of home? What is the flavor of Singapore? There are plenty of national dishes, including chicken rice. But if there is a national breakfast, it’s eggs, toast, and coffee; three simple elements that constitute the flavor of home for many Singaporeans, wherever they are in the world. In this episode, student-producer Ruby introduces us to the simple breakfast served at kopitiam, or coffee shops, that brew a strong cup of coffee throughout Singapore, and she highlights one of the companies that has standardized this Singaporean breakfast and taken it overseas: Ya Kun Kaya Toast. She also speaks with cultural geographer Ong Chin Ee, who shares his thoughts on Singapore’s food culture, globalization, and the dangers of mummifying foodways.

Institutional homes are often stigmatised as dreary places for the poor, the elderly, and those abandoned by society. In this episode, student-producer Weiyun introduces us to a different kind of institutional home: a halfway house, where some of Singapore’s prisoners serve the last few months of their sentences. Weiyun and Chris tour one facility and learn its role in the broader framework of Singapore's prison system. Then we sit down for an intimate interview with a resident. He shares what it was like to serve time in prison and the newfound freedoms of the halfway house. After drowning in the ocean, he has finally reached the shore. He needs time and space to learn how to walk on land, as he gets a step closer to home. In this episode, we explore Singapore’s prison system and the struggle to get past halfway.

In land-scarce Singapore, the living compete with the dead for space. The result is both high-rise living and high-rise dying. In this episode, student-producer Jia Han examines the columbarium, Singapore’s high-rise solution for housing the cremated remains of its dead. He charts the origins of columbaria in Singapore and shares a visit to the columbarium with his family, emphasizing the role of the columbaria in revitalising family ties and reproducing family gatherings that previously took place at home. Finally, he sits down with Mr. Bernard Chen, a funeral director, to discuss death and negative perceptions towards it within Singapore. He encourages everyone to have an open, honest discussion about death, as this is the only way for both individuals and the nation to plan appropriately for it.

How does a foreign land become your homeland? This is the question migrants and host societies ask every day around the world. Singapore has long been a country of migrants. Ask any Singaporean and there is a good chance that they, their parents, or their grandparents came from elsewhere. Some of these migrants may have planned to return to their homeland one day, but with time this foreign land became home. In this episode, student-producer Ching May explores the challenge of settling into a new land by focusing on an institution that long helped Chinese migrants: the clan association, or huiguan. She visits one of Singapore’s 300 surviving huiguan to ask how it is adapting to the times and how home has changed in meaning for different generations of migrants. She also shares her personal journey as a migrant from Hong Kong who now considers Singapore home, without the help of a clan association. Finally, we hear from Prof Kenneth Dean, an expert on clan associations who leads a fascinating clan association research project, an online GIS-enabled portal called Map of Origins: https://libportal.nus.edu.sg/frontend/ms/sg-chinese-clans/about-sg-chinese-clans

Every Sunday, Singapore explodes with life as tens of thousands of foreign domestic workers escape their workplaces and head to the island's parks, churches, tourist attractions, and other public spaces. When you live and work six days a week in the home of your employer, how do you spend your day off? Where can you go to rest and recharge for the week ahead when your home is also your workplace? For many foreign domestic workers, the answer is a shopping mall, where you can meet friends, send money home, get a haircut, buy clothes, eat familiar foods, and more. The most visible and well-known such place is Lucky Plaza, a mall known as Singapore's Little Manila due to its concentration of shops catering to workers from the Philippines. In this episode, student-producer Celia explores the phenomenon of foreign domestic workers in Singapore and visits Lucky Plaza to hear why so many foreign domestic workers visit there on Sundays. She also reflects on growing up with foreign domestic workers in her own home and wonders what ‘home’ means to them.

Welcome back to Season 2 of Home on the Dot. In this episode, we return to the topic of public housing by introducing the uniquely Singaporean public space at the base of most HDB blocks: the void deck. Despite its name, there is nothing empty about the void deck. It is a vibrant space for play, socializing, and key life events like weddings and funerals. It is also an escape for people when they have no other place to go. Student producer Dana discusses the history of void decks and explains how home often spills out the front door and into the void. She also visits a void deck that serves a particularly unique purpose: as a bird arena. Here, bird lovers from all over the country gather with their cages, creating a community around their singing pets. On this National Day 2019, follow us into the void!

Young people from around Asia move away from home and family to pursue their education in Singapore. Some arrive as young as 10, moving into dorms or staying with families who are paid to care for them. In a world where educational success can open doors to social mobility and families make financial and personal sacrifices for their children’s education, Singapore has become a beacon of hope for these educational migrants. Who cares for them, and how have they adjusted to life in Singapore? Where is home to these young migrants, who live so far from their families and face so many personal and educational obstacles? And finally, where will home be when their educational journey is finally complete? In this episode, our final installation in Season 1, Samantha speaks with teen educational migrants who share their experiences and reflect on their fluid senses of home as they strive for educational success in Singapore.

Ghosts are everywhere in Singapore. From the Malay pontianak, a female figure that haunts men, to Chinese festivals that burn offerings for the dead, the supernatural and the occult are integral to everyday life and have long fascinated Singaporeans. But what happens when a ghost is in your home? In this episode, Aisyah investigates when home no longer provides comfort, but instead causes fear. She interviews Dr. Irving Johnson, Associate Professor in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at NUS, who thinks ghost stories offer a way to resist the discipline imposed by Singaporean institutions, such as schools, the military, and public housing. Aisyah also talks with her mother, a real estate agent whose job regularly places her in haunted houses. She shares the story of a Malay family who moved into a new home, only to find family of ghosts that refused to move out. In a country where housing blocks and highways are regularly built on former cemeteries, it's not unusual to need an exorcist now and then.

University offers many young people their first chance to live away from home. Staying on campus can be liberating, with the freedom to try new things and meet new people. It can also be overwhelming, with so many distractions competing with study time. How can universities make students feel at home on campus? And how can students manage the stress and excitement of university life without the emotional and physical comforts of home? In this episode Esther reflects on her experience living on the NUS campus, and she interviews friends who help her understand the efforts in design and social engineering made by the university to make residents feel at home. Finally, Ryan, Alex, and Bryan, residents of one of NUS' residential colleges, Tembusu, discuss the joys and difficulties of adjusting to campus life while balancing school work. They also introduce their attempts to help others adjust through their online magazine, TreeHouse.

A house can be protected by the very four walls that support it, and a padlock on the door. But how does one defend an entire nation? In this episode, we look at military service in Singapore, and the role it plays in defending home. In this episode, Abi reflects on her childhood fascination with the army, and how the concept of national service fortifies our relationship with home.

Do you love museums or hate them? Are they curio cabinets displaying old junk or treasure chests filled with carefully curated objects that transport you to another time and place? In this episode, Max walks us around the National Museum of Singapore. Along the way, he admits how distant he feels from the exhibits and tries to understand why. To do so he talks to NUS professor TC Chang, who speaks about Benedict Anderson’s idea of the imagined community and how this powerful notion plays out in museums and songs for National Day in Singapore.

The HomeWork Machine In this age of fast fashion, the whirring sound of a Singer may seem to belong to another era. Instead of the hum of domestic industriousness and thrift, it might be the sound of nostalgia. For my student Min, it sounds like home. In this episode I highlight a sewing machine that bound a family together for three generations, but today stands idle. We travel to hear the machine and its story, in order to understand one woman's commitment to her family and how this machine dissolved the barrier between home and work.

Why do the dead need homes? This episode highlights the Chinese tradition of burning paper houses at funerals and other annual ritual events. NUS professor Richard Lee, an expert on this custom, details the history behind the practice, which today involves burning decadent mansions with pools, manicured lawns, luxury cars, and servants, all made of paper. On this journey, many questions surface: - What kind of homes do the deceased want? - Where do you want to die? - And how does death complicate the comfort we typically associate with home? The relationship between death and home is a sobering but important topic.

Once upon a time, Singapore’s hawkers peddled their foods on the streets. But in the 1950s, the government began to shepherd them into hawker centres; congregations of food stalls where food hygiene, stall rental, and business could be better managed. Since then, the hawker centre has been a great success, churning out food so cheap and delicious that eating out is more common than home cooking for many Singaporeans. Many have fond memories of their favourite hawker food and families create nostalgic memories in the hawker centre. In this episode, Raudhah reflects on how food is connected to her notion of home and national identity, and explores the recent developments of hawker culture in Singapore.

About 80% of Singapore’s resident population lives in public housing, more commonly referred to as ‘HDBs’ (after the organisation-in-charge, the Housing Development Board). The quality and affordability of HDBs have been celebrated by many. However, public housing in Singapore is imbued with state assumptions about the notion of home. In this episode, producers Tang Hui Jun and Ryan Ang demonstrate how the state uses the provision of housing to institutionalise ideas of community, race, family structure, and above all: home.

Home. A common word with just one syllable. And yet a word teeming with subjectivity, so personal and abstract that it eludes universal definition. Chris McMorran, the narrator and editor of this project, is an American teaching Japanese Studies in Singapore. He speaks about his own attempts to understand his students’ lives in order to inform his teaching – beginning with what home means to them.