If ever I would leave you - Part One

Remember the song, “If ever I would leave you?” Well, that’s how I feel about my home in the condo where I live.

My children learned to ride their bicycles here. My son has his fourth birthday party in the hilly park with the 100 ft high trees. On the hills, nestled between the blocks, many a memory of sitting and dreaming of life-to-be.

Home is where my condo is. Even if you paid me a billion times the price of what it is worth, I know I can never find anything similar. It is the uncanny sense of the familiar. The sense of home.

Some people say that you rest easier, breathe easier, in the place where you grew up. Having lived in my estate for more than 20 years, I think this doesn’t just apply to where you grew up, but also to where you have lived as an adult for many years. Many of my longtime neighbours share this unerring sense of “being”.

Singapore may not have seasons, but in the November and December months, the quality of the air in my estate is different from earlier months. The very air itself tells me it is time to put up the Christmas tree. To shop for presents. The breeze is balmy in a different way. OK, maybe I even talk to the trees.

In this day and age of the en bloc sale, where 80% of my neighbours can decide that I have to leave my home, I feel a sadness that sentiment, the entrenched security of home, flies in the face of the new, all-too-eager en bloc “millionaire”.

Three million, six million, nine million, can this replace the abode of my adulthood? 2500 sq ft of inner space with greenery and rolling hills, this can truly be replaced, with profit to spare? Bah, Humbug!

We have all heard of the en blocers sadly searching to replace their homes like for like, and hoping to have spare cash in their pockets too – and finding that downsizing is the reality of an enbloc. Yet the engine of progress whirs on.

See part two in the next section....