Stress in the Sin City

It doesn't take long for a visitor to Singapore to observe that this city is not like any other city. And I don't mean the greenery or the food or the shopping and the apparently orderliness of the place.

Singapore is an unnecessarily stressful place.

Just take this morning when I dropped off my kids at the childcare centre on the way to work (my kids have been to childcare since they were 18 months old.. since my dad died, I do not have the luxury of having family childgivers taking care of my kids for me). The childcare place we use is in kind of a childcare hub where there are many companies running pre-schools. What we have done (along with hundreds of other parents) is typically to stop by the small stretch of road running alongside the schools and drop the kids off.

Now, this road is also shared by the Singapore Police Force who has a branch in the area. They have always "co-existed" peacefully with the schools and parents in the use of the road for the past 2-3 years, primarily because they have two entrances to their building. Recently though, one of their entrances was closed for renovations. As a result, the SPF has suddenly decided to take over the use of the road that we used to share. They have deployed numerous policemen to patrol this stretch of road preventing parents from stopping their cars to drop off their kids. This morning, they even called in the LTA or Land Transport Authority - kind of a pseudo road enforcer type organization - to fine and issue summons to cars that have stopped along this stretch of road even temporarily.

Politicians in Singapore have been vocal in the media recently about the low birth rate in the country and wonder why Singaporeans are not having more children. As a result of this low population replacement statistic, the government has been importing immigrants and workers at a record rate. Since 2002, the population has grown from 4.1 million people to about 5.2 million in 2012 and has made Singapore the most densely populated country in the world with about 7300 people for each square kilometer (as compared to a country like the UK where there are around 400 people for each square kilometer, even Tokyo and Hong Kong have only 6000 people per sq km). People are literally fighting for space here. Property prices are a world high. Even having lunch here is stressful as people fight for places to sit down to eat. The train network is packed to the point that it keeps breaking down.

For a small country of roughly 700 sq kilometers this is ludicrous.

This is the country I live in.