This is the view from my window. In the year of 2011. Far ahead is the reservoir, and the country club. We love this view. We love our home. By year 2020, there will be a new highway – North-South Expressway – smacked right in front of our home. More than 800 square meters of our condo is going to be acquired by the government. Freehold or not, it doesn’t matter. We don’t own our land in perpetually. Screw this. I know which party not to vote in this coming election.
It is somewhat depressing, of course. For years, people living up north have put up with the highest cost of traveling. I have to drive through three ERP gantries (our version of manual-electronic toll system) to go to work in the city via CTE. And two ERP gantries to return home. Is CTE congested? To be totally objective, the rest of the highways during peak hours are just as congested. It is hard to imagine that in a small country like Singapore, we need so much space for cars. If our government is seriously thinking of building more roads to solve the traffic situation, I would propose building more cycling lanes. Perhaps covered cycling lanes. But wait. We do have a system in place to limit the number of cars on the road. What happens to that? Our government really needs to drop the mindset that building highways is a mean to make money. There are only that many cars we can accommodate in our city center, regardless of how many highways we have and how smooth they are. I am not sure if the government has thought about that.
It seems rather coincidental that on this somewhat depressing day, I am being assigned to help out a wealth management project. It is the content that strikes me. What is my dream? How do I envisage my home to be? What about my family? Looking at the content, I daydreamed at work. I think by 2020, I shall move out of my beloved home, away from that highway, which I have not signed up for. A home that I thought I would happily retire in. Once that thought of a new home got seeded into my head, the next question is: How do I get there?
All of a sudden, I feel as though I am back into the money making mode (a rather debt free life kind of soften you, I reckon). Maybe I do need to demand a promotion and a pay rise. Maybe I do need to hunt for a job or a role that has a better career progression path.
When I was young, my father in Hong Kong used to tell me that outside our home was the harbor, where he was used to fish. Along came the land reclamation and a highway built right next to our apartment. Then came the noise, and the pollution. I left Hong Kong because I prefer somewhere less crowded. Looks like I am back to square one.