Colonialism, alive and well in Singapore

Our little island home in the sun doesn't get mentioned much in the NYT (and unless terrorist suspects escape with greater frequency, I doubt there'll be another mention soon). But tucked away in the Home and Lifestyle section, here's an article. I've put points of interest in red, and my brief rant follows the article.

In Singapore, a House Steeped in Tradition
By SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP
SINGAPORE

As they planned their family’s move to Singapore from Rowayton, Conn., Jill and Andrew Pickering imagined living in one of the island’s traditional colonial-era homes, with their distinctive black-and-white exteriors and sprawling gardens.

“It is really a quintessential Singapore experience to live in one of those grand old houses surrounded by nature,” Mrs. Pickering said. “You can live in a condominium anywhere, but these houses are really unique.”

Wanting to “get the lay of the land” in this city-state, which has a population of 4.5 million, the couple started out in a centrally located condominium. But after five years, they thought it was time to begin the search for their dream home.

They had been looking for five months when Mr. Pickering, a senior executive at an international shipping company, was biking in one of the historic areas and noticed that renovations had just started on what looked like a long-abandoned house. He immediately called for an appointment to view it, and the family moved in two years ago.

“The house had been empty for six years and the first time we saw it, it was like ‘Jumanji,’ ” Mrs. Pickering recalled, referring to the Robin Williams film about jungle creatures running riot. “There were bats everywhere, all sorts of overgrown lichen and monitor lizards. It was all jungle.”

Despite the rent of 17,000 Singapore dollars ($12,470) a month, recently increased to 22,000 dollars ($16,140), the Pickerings were taken by the size of the living space: 7,200 square feet spread over a two-story main house and a small cottage. The couple and their two girls, Olivia, 18, and Lucy 14, sleep in the house, while their 15-year-old son Harry uses the cottage, which originally served as staff quarters.

Ku Swee Young, a real estate agent with Savills, says rental prices for high-end properties in Singapore have been increasing by an average of 20 percent a year in the last couple of years. Depending on location, a three- to five-bedroom luxury condominium unit rents for 16,000 dollars to 30,000 dollars ($11,730 to $21,990) a month, while houses can range from 7,000 dollars ($5,130) a month, for a two-story terrace house, to 45,000 dollars ($33,000), for a bungalow on a large lot.

The family’s main house, which dates from the early 1910s and sits on top of a small hill, is reached by a long private driveway that ends under a porte-cochère. The house, which is only one room deep, was designed along a linear plan, with rooms opening into one another through tall, graceful archways.

“These houses were designed so that direct sunlight would not come into the house to heat it up,” Mrs. Pickering said. “But because it’s only one room deep with windows on both sides, they’re actually quite bright. They’re very nicely designed and are ideal for entertaining.”

After a small entrance hall, visitors step into a 13-by-25-foot reception room that then leads to the living room, dining room, breakfast room and kitchen. At the end of the house, two smaller rooms serve as a studio for Mrs. Pickering, who is a decorative artist, and a bedroom for their live-in housekeeper.

While the wood floors and high ceilings are typical features of black-and-white houses, the Pickerings’ home includes some unusual features, like exposed red brickwork on the house’s upper facade and tall arched windows on the ground floor that open onto a large terrace with a swimming pool.

Upstairs, a large landing area serves as a family room; each of the three large bedrooms has a balcony, walk-in closet and bathroom. “Black-and-white houses usually have huge bedrooms, but they don’t have many,” Mrs. Pickering said. “I’d love to rebuild this house in another country, because I love its proportions and how it flows. But I would definitely reconfigure the upstairs to have more rooms.”

Mold and bugs are probably the house’s two biggest problems; there is a need to be vigilant about termites and cleaning up after the geckos, she said. “There’s also always something breaking. Because the lightening protection is not sufficient for the number of direct hits we get, we’ve gone through two computers, a hard drive and two TVs.”

The Pickerings’ is one of 33 black-and-white houses around the Mount Pleasant area; there are similar pockets elsewhere in the city. The houses are magnets for expatriates but unloved by Singaporeans, for whom they have sinister associations. “Some of the more senior taxi drivers don’t like to come here at night,” Mrs. Pickering said. “These houses were taken over by the high command of the Japanese military during the Second World War, and some Singaporeans believe they’re haunted.”

Family members have not felt any ghostly presence, but they have had plenty of encounters with unusual creatures: fruit bats, hungry monkeys looking for food in the kitchen, cobras slithering around the garden and even the occasional meterlong monitor lizard.

“When we first moved in, the gardener killed a snake as it was in the process of eating another one; it was, ‘Geez, two in one go, great!’ ” Mrs. Pickering said with a laugh, adding that her neighbor recently found a 4.5-meter (15-foot) python in her garden that took five men to get rid of.

Not all of the garden creatures are threatening, though. The sprawling 130,000-square-foot area, which is full of mature Tembusu and Albasia trees protected by a local heritage designation, is host to some beautiful birds. “We get exquisite kingfisher birds of the most gorgeous turquoise blue that come sitting on the railing of the swimming pool every single day,” Mrs. Pickering said.

“Singaporeans usually don’t like this type of home. They don’t like the jungle, the dark and the bugs. But at some point, I believe they will realize having nature like this is the ultimate luxury in this world.” [End of Story]

Classic colonial discourse: natives / locals don't value what is 'theirs', or are too caught up in superstition and fear to explore the wonders of their own home (CF Passage to India). But the piece obscures the fact that 1. Singaporeans aren't "into" colonial houses because they're just too damn expensive (22 000 bucks!) for any Singaporean to even get near! With a median household income of less than 4000 bucks, and a huge income gap causing more than 90% of Singaporean households to be below the 'average' income (see this), surely the material fact of the matter shouldn't be mystified by exotic stories about low-wage earning taxi drivers being afraid of the ghosts of Japanese soldiers and the people they murdered ...

, and 2. that the Pickerings are merely replicating colonial structures of economic oppression -- I'm assuming that they're in Singapore being paid big bucks for a job ("senior executive at an international shipping company") that a Singaporean could do, and probably does, for much less ...

Still, for a chance to see the interior of a house you'll never otherwise see --
click here