More on Driving and, well, other Stuff

This island is constantly under construction. And I mean constantly. As I put quill to electronic letter, it is minutes to midnight, pitch black – and yet the building workers completing site next door (another the massive skyscraper of condo’s) are still going strong. There are 9 similarly massive constructions visible from the apartment we’re temporarily stating at. When I was scouting for a dwelling, each day I would visit 5 or 6 potential places. 5 out of 6 were next to construction sites.

I think I’ve figured it out. Anything that is older than 1990 gets decked and rebuilt. Apparently the Government takes over the building, turfs out the tenants and sends off to some newer HDB (high density buildings) and then builds a new enormous high rise block of condos, or a park (which will be condos in 2 years).

The 1990 rule applies to anything: roads, water pipes, even churches (I have seen two temple like dwellings for an invisible friend of some local congregation with this sign out the front: Not for Sale). Given that I fit into the 1990 rule, I do not stand still for very long.

Now the labour used to build these state of the art monstrosities is from India, Indonesia and any other country starting with “Ind”. So as you are being chauffeured down the freeway in your air-conditioned taxi (roughly the temperature of the interior of a Westinghouse refrigerator), these construction site fellers wobble past, with about 7 or 8 of then sitting on the back tray of the truck. Which would be dangerous enough in itself. However, I think part of their brief is to hold on to the pipes, lengthy 2x4’s of wood, bags of concrete, and anything else that might fall off the truck (think Millennium Falcon).

So I’m fascinated at why these human ocky straps are allowed to travel this way in such a fine based, and regulated society. One cabby (who was speaking Cantonese) told me (and I was speaking an hearing West Virginian, so I may have interpreted it wrong) that the local law turns a blind eye if it is necessary to make progress. Most interesting.