SINDHUPALCHOWK, Nepal: The Phulpingkot Secondary School lies deep in the heart of Nepal’s rural Sindhupalchowk district. It is a four-hour drive from Kathmandu, up and down bumpy roads and rough terrain, with stunning vistas of mountains and rivers.

Dotting the landscape and the various villages en route to the school are piles of debris from collapsed buildings. Many of those still standing have visible cracks. The damage took place more than two years ago in a devastating earthquake that shook the country, with the rebuilding process still far from complete.

Sindhupalchowk was one of the most severely hit districts, with about 98 per cent of houses damaged or destroyed. Phulpingkot, one of the rural areas in the district where the school is located, was hit even harder.

Singapore-based humanitarian NGO Mercy Relief estimates that about 99 per cent of houses there were completely demolished. Most of these, it said, were low-strength, made of masonry stone with mud mortar, and loosely fitted with traditional materials.  

And in this, the organisation saw a gap it hoped to fill: Going beyond helping communities to rebuild their homes and instead passing on the skills for constructing them to a higher, more robust standard. 

FEEDING MASONS FOR A LIFETIME

“If you think about the houses, schools and buildings that were destroyed, what is really in demand right now are skilled labourers and masons,” said Zhang Tingjun, Mercy Relief’s executive director. “Many different partners were putting in a lot of effort to build hardware like buildings, so we decided to focus on empowerment and building soft skills instead.”

This, she explained, was the underlying principle behind the mason training programme. Mercy Relief teamed up with an engineering school to teach masons how to construct earthquake-resilient building. The five-day training project initially started off with 35 masons, but has since expanded to 65. The original 35 have gone on to become officially registered with the local government for reconstruction projects.

Some of them have been deployed to work on Mercy Relief’s school building projects, and at the Phulpingkot Secondary School, construction of a new two-storey building is in full swing.

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

There was a loud clatter as a worker hauled a basketful of bricks up to the second level of the site. A cloud of dust formed as he dropped his load.

Dressed casually in a blue tee, shorts and a pair of slippers, Bharat Shrestha was laying bricks at the far end of the site. It was a busy day: just a stone’s throw away, the schoolchildren were making use of a temporary zinc shelter for lessons, and work had to go on if they are to have their new school.

Mr Shrestha is one of the masons who went through the training, and is also the subcontractor for the Phulpingkot School rebuilding project, which is supported by Mercy Relief. “We’ve improved our tie beams,” he said, referring to horizontal beams meant to connect multiple columns. “In the past, we used to have only one tie beam, but after the training, I learnt that there should be two tie beams, one connecting at the very bottom, and another at the plinth.”

Pillars too, have been strengthened, using iron bars to connect the pillars to a horizontal support in the wall.  

“We also used to make mix concrete based on our own judgement,” he added. “But now we’ve learnt to mix the proper ratios as per the instructions of the engineer.”

It turns out that with his newfound skills, Mr Shrestha is in high demand.

“There have been many requests made by people to construct similar types of earthquake-resilient homes,” he said. “The people have requested more compared to last year…more than 12 to 15 house constructions.”

NEXT STEPS

Travelling through the mountainous terrain of Nepal’s rural areas, it was clear that picking up the pieces from the quake is still a work in process. Scores of temporary shelters – constructed of zinc sheets and bamboo – showed clear signs of having been lived in. 

But earthquakes are not the only disasters that affect Nepal. Mercy Relief also hopes to reach out to farmers through what they call “Climate Smart Agriculture”.

“Mason training is just one part of our soft skills training,” said Ms Zhang. “There are droughts, there are floods…so we want to ensure that farmers can protect their crops and their livelihood in the event of a natural disaster, whatever it may be.”

In the meantime, however, the Phulpingkot community is eagerly awaiting the completion of the new, earthquake-resilient school. The school, which has more than 200 students aged 6 to 16, was badly damaged during the earthquake, with two out of its three buildings completely destroyed.

“The students were traumatised and very scared to come to school after the earthquake,” said Damber Thapa, chairman of Phulpingkot’s School Management Committee. Just 20 of the approximately 217 students in the school turned up for lessons when the zinc shelters were first constructed, he said.  

But with the promise of a new, sturdy school building on the horizon, the students’ fears are starting to dissipate.

“As a new school, it will be strong, clean and earthquake-resilient, and we can deliver quality education,” he said. “Many students have felt safer, and even compared to yesterday, they are returning.

“Nineteen students have just been added today.”

SINGAPORE: It’s 5am and the neighbourhood is fast asleep, but 68-year-old Koh Peck Hiang is already bustling about her kitchen. The smell of garlic and five-spice powder fills the air as she begins stir-frying glutinous rice that has been soaking in water since 3am.

The long toil ahead in the kitchen is an annual ritual for the homemaker, whose Chinese rice dumplings or bak chang are well-loved and oft-requested by family members and friends.  

“I can make about 500 to 800 bak chang every Dragon Boat Festival,” she said. “My family is Teochew. But my friends say they taste more like Hokkien dumplings.”

Mdm Koh has been cooking since the tender age of five – helping her mother make Chinese cakes or kueh for sale was how their family of 10 had survived in those lean years. The bak chang they made back in those day was very different, she recalls.

“My mother used meat from the pig’s head – the cheapest type,” she said. “She would cut a small mushroom into 10 pieces and use just one piece. You couldn’t even chew on it!”

That’s a long way from the fat chunks of pork belly that Mdm Koh deftly places in a bubbling bed of dark soya sauce to braise. Then she reaches for the ultimate decadence – the large bottle of Martell cognac on her countertop.

“It’s very fragrant after you add this,” she said. “I add it to everything that has an odour to mask it.”

WATCH: Her way of making it (3:36)

COMPETING ORIGINS, CONTRASTING TASTES

The tradition of eating Chinese rice dumplings during the annual Dragon Boat Festival – which this year falls on May 30 – has been practised for centuries, but its precise origins remain unclear.

Most Singaporeans would be familiar with the legend of Qu Yuan, an advisor and poet in ancient China who was said to have committed suicide by throwing himself into a river. The locals rushed out in their boats, beat drums and threw rice dumplings in the river to prevent the fish from eating his body. His death is commemorated every fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.

But there are other stories as well. In parts of Zhejiang, for instance, the festival is celebrated in honour of Cao-E, a young maiden whose father had drowned in a river. A filial daughter, she drowned herself to join him in death.

Like these legends, the rice dumplings from the various regions in China vary just as widely. And it’s reflected in the different styles of bak chang enjoyed by the dialect groups in Singapore.

For example, the Cantonese bak chang is known for its bean paste filling, and the Hokkien version for its use of dark soya sauce in the glutinous rice.

The Nonya bak chang, however, is a creation unique to this region. “Our forefathers came down from China to Southeast Asia,” said Mr Edmond Wong, corporate social responsibility director at Kim Choo Kueh Chang. “And because they couldn’t find chestnuts or shiitake mushrooms, they would have used local ingredients.

“While traditional rice dumplings are meant to be savoury, the Nonya dumpling is sweet, because we use wintermelon.”

REINVENTING TRADITIONAL RECIPES

This spirit of improvisation appears to have been passed on to the Singaporean home cooks of today who still make bak chang.

Take homemaker Felicia Ng’s recipe, which she describes as a cross between the Hokkien and Teochew style – but using the cut of pork belly more commonly used in kong bak pau (braised pork buns). Said the 51-year-old:

“I have tried the traditional way, but my husband really loves my kong bak, So he said, why don’t we try using it? And it was really more tasty.”

Senior manager Teo Ek Thong, 54, has broadly stuck by the Teochew bak chang recipe he learnt from his mother – but he uses much more five spice powder.

Mr Teo, whose ancestors came from Swatow, describes his mother’s recipe as “100 per cent Teochew style”. She used less soya sauce, black sauce, salt and five spice powder as the dumplings were meant to be consumed a day after they were boiled, when the flavouring had “gone into the rice”.

But these days, to get the full flavor without having to wait, he uses a “very scary” amount of five spice powder. To make 300 dumplings, he said, “I asked my wife to buy 500 grams, and the shopkeeper was asking why she needed so much”.

Mr Wong isn’t surprised that home cooks are experimenting, and sees it as a good thing. “Some people say it’s not good to bastardise the dish,” he said. “Singapore is largely a migrant society… We came together to this place, and then we assimilated with the local culture.

“Every household should be able to say that their family recipe chang is authentic. Households should be free to experiment on their own.”

FROM ACT OF LABOUR, TO ACT OF LOVE

For Mdm Koh, the changes in her bak chang recipe tell the story of how her family’s economic circumstances have transformed.

The eldest daughter of eight siblings, she started cooking at age five out of necessity. Her physically-frail father was unable to do much work, so she was the main assistant to her mother, who made a living selling kueh on the streets. Mdm Koh recalled:

“After giving birth, she wrapped a handkerchief around her forehead and went right back to work. She didn’t even go to sleep at night.

If she stopped making (kueh), we wouldn’t have food to eat.”

But it was during the long, hard hours in the family kitchen that her own love for cooking grew as well.

“I loved observing what she did,” Mdm Koh said. “I would ask, ‘Ma, how much salt did you put exactly?’ and she would say, ‘Agak-agak (more or less) lor!’ So now when I cook, everything is agak-agak as well!”

A shrewd businesswoman, her mother knew she could never afford to buy huge amounts of high-quality ingredients. So she would focus on her technique to make her dishes delicious.

“People said her kueh were like durians, and if they saw them they just had to eat them. They didn’t eat just one, some would buy 10 at one go,” Mdm Koh recounted with a laugh.

Today, Mdm Koh’s cooking is no longer constrained by cost. And instead of cooking for customers, she’s cooking for loved ones. Her neat kitchen is well-stocked with spices and ingredients – either bought by herself, or given to her by her friends and relatives in return for the many dishes she’s cooked for them.

LOSING A TRADITION?

The reason she braises the pork belly filling, instead of stir-frying it like most others, is because her son-in-law and grandson love her braised meats, she explained.

Yet, Mdm Koh admits, age is catching up to her. This year, she is planning to make just around 60 rice dumplings, instead of the hundreds she usually churns out.

If she stops, she says, her daughter wouldn’t be able to take over because she’s not interested in learning.  “She says it’s a lot of work, and she doesn’t want to do it,” said Mdm Koh. “She says it’s easier to buy them.”

But if there’s one person in the family she hopes she can pass this recipe on to, it would be five-year-old Yu Xuan – who continually clamoured for her grandmother’s attention as the both of them wrapped dumplings together.

“Mama, it’s very hard!” she giggled as she struggled to fold the leaves.

Mdm Koh patiently took the leaves out of her hands and showed her how to do it. “That’s right, it’s been a year, hasn’t it? Okay! Like this, take it and fill it,” she instructed. “Watch mama. Press it evenly.”

“Press it evenly,” Yu Xuan parroted.

There is something in the young girl’s wide-eyed curiosity that evokes the memory of a Mdm Koh at that age, peppering her own mother with questions in the kitchen.  

“She will keep asking questions,” said Mdm Koh, laughing. “Even when you’re making Milo for her, she’ll ask, ‘Mama, what is this?’”

“It’s good to teach the children,” she added, about making bak chang. “We will get old… then if the children don’t know how to make it, you will lose this tradition.”

This is the third in a series on vanishing home recipes. Read: When there was no money, ikan bilis was ‘like gold’: The art of humble cooking

Know an old-time home cook we could feature? Contact CNA Insider at Facebook.com/CNAInsider, or Lam Shushan on Twitter @ShuShanCNA. 

SINGAPORE: 11-year-old Muhammad Arshad would rather play with Legos at Google’s Singapore’s office than sit still for an interview. But touch on his passion for coding and why he joined Google’s Code in the Community Programme, and his attention is all yours.

“I want to learn more about coding. Especially (the programming language) Scratch, which can be used to make games. Because it’s fun to play those games,” said the Sembawang Primary School Student, who is also among the first 500 kids to be enrolled in the programme.

Arshad’s current inspiration is the mobile phone game Dream League Soccer, and its accurate portrayal of the beautiful game digitally – from how balls are dribbled, the free kicks made and the penalties saved. But after 10 weeks of programming his own projects under Google’s tutelage, he appears to appreciate the sheer amount of effort that goes into coding seemingly simple actions and animations.

“That would be extremely hard! Since these (Google) projects already have such long scripts, can you imagine the more developed game,” said Arshad. “It’ll take the hardest of skills!”

Google’s 20-week programme is a multi-level computer science education initiative for children aged 8 to 15, and is funded by the tech giant with support from the Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC), the Eurasian Association (EA), Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) and Yayasan Mendaki. Together, they aim to enable 3,000 kids from less-well-off backgrounds to develop computational thinking and skills for a possible future career in technology.

To be eligible, students would need to be a beneficiary of the four self-help groups, or means-tested as a low-income family by the groups. They may also be eligible if they are currently under the Ministry of Education’s Financial Aid Scheme.

Speaking at an event marking the completion of the programme’s first term on Saturday (May 20), Google Asia Pacific’s Director of People Operations D N Prasad said plans were in place to further scale the programme to the wider community.

“(It’s) also for us to bring in the diversity and make this truly inclusive in the Singapore community. So the invites have been sent to all the other schools and we do hope that the initial success and then the results, the positive results that we will show, will encourage more people to come and work with us in the future,” said Mr Prasad.

“We’re trying to drive (this) long-term, with a long-term vision. It doesn’t matter who’s driving it – there needs to be just many players with the right intent and heart in the right place. And it’s our way of adding to the community and playing our part in the community as well as in partnership with everything the Government is doing or other institutions might be working on as well.”

SINDA President Indranee Rajah, who paid the students a visit, said coding was something that students should acquire naturally through fun and play so that it becomes an integral part of life.

“We didn’t want to put it as part of the formal school curriculum because that makes it yet another subject that you have to learn and test and be marked for. You don’t want to do that – you want it in the context of play,” said Ms Indranee, who is also Senior Minister of State for Finance and Law.

 “If you expose somebody at a young age, you allow them the freedom to absorb this and to play with it and to let them create with it, it just becomes something that is an inherent skill. And hopefully as they go forward in life, they will not have any fear of IT, of coding, and they will be well equipped for the future economy.”

Ms Indranee also highlighted grassroots and Government efforts such as Tiong Bahru Community Centre’s subsidised coding course for kids, as well as the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s Digital Maker Programme.

GREATER EXPOSURE NEEDED IN SCHOOLS: PARENTS

Parents Channel NewsAsia spoke with appreciated the opportunity to allow their child greater exposure to computing and programming literacy. Some pointed out that just a handful of schools offered computing and programming – whether as part of the formal syllabus or not.

“If they can introduce this into the schools it’ll be good. But if (students) have to go out to learn it, parents may say the pocket’s a bit tight,” said Gary Siriniwas, a father who sent his 10- and 12-year-old children for Google’s course.

Lessons or training pitched at younger students or beginners by local third-party external groups could range from S$150 for six sessions to thousands of dollars for in-depth courses, according to checks by Channel NewsAsia.

“If they can put it in the schools and then charge it as part of school fees, people will do it. And we must do it or we’ll be left behind,” said Mr Siriniwas. “It’s just like what China does – they get their children at five-years-old, teach them gymnastics, they become the world’s best. We can adopt the same thing – train them up at a small age, and then they’ll be one of the best people in the world in future. “

Jess Eng, who enrolled her 15 year-old-daughter in Google’s programme, said she agreed that there is merit in introducing programming and computing as an examinable subject for the Primary School Leaving Examination – as an optional subject for students with potential.

“You see the technology – you can’t live without a phone these days. So it’s very different from our time 20 years back, our parents’ time,” said Ms Eng. “You should forsee down the road, what you should be doing for your kids.”

Registration for the 2018 cohort of the Code in the Community Programme will open at the end of the year.

Interested parties can visit www.CodeInTheCommunity.com for more information.

SINGAPORE: Bangladeshi-born Singaporean Sazzad Hossain has yet to attend university, but he is already a professor of sorts. 

The 23-year-old, who recently completed his national service, has been conducting English classes for migrant workers since his junior college days. He now heads a social enterprise – SDI Academy – that lays claim to having coached more than 5,000 migrant workers in Singapore. 

Although he’s an immigrant who had to drop two levels in primary school due to his lack of proficiency in English, he has managed the impressive feat of authoring not one, but two English textbooks. A crowdfunding campaign on the GIVE.asia platform for the latest one, called Dr English, was launched last Sunday (May 14). 

Mr Hossain and his team aim to raise funds to give 100,000 migrant workers copies of Dr English by selling as many T-shirts bearing the slogan “Trust me, I’m no stranger” within four months.

It’s a goal he calls “naive”. Yet this so-called naivety has served him well in the past.

Mr Hossain started teaching four or five workers at a park bench in his neighbourhood at Lakeside but the number swelled rapidly through word of mouth. 

After his promotional exams at the end of the first year of junior college, he shelled out money to book an auditorium for his first formal English class. Being “naive and ambitious”, he decided he would aim to train 100 workers with worksheets he had painstakingly prepared himself over an eight-month period. 

A hundred and thirty-four eager students showed up. 

NOT A STRANGER

When he was 11, Mr Hossain’s family relocated from Bangladesh to Singapore. 

Coming from a Bengali-speaking background, he did not know much English and struggled to gain admission to a primary school. “Communication was a very big issue,” he said. 

When Yuhua Primary School finally admitted him, he had to drop two grades.

It was difficult initially: “I felt alone, had no one to play with. I used to play cricket back at home … I didn’t have that community here.”

Mr Hossain reckons it was this experience of being new to the country that has helped him relate better to migrant workers. 

“Because I went through a similar journey, I can tell what are the very specific problems that they might encounter while trying to learn.”

In secondary school, he first started making friends with migrant workers living in dormitories near his home in Lakeside. 

“They used to ask me for directions to the mall or to the bus stop. After a while when I started recognising familiar faces, we started chatting more and friendships formed.”

They treated him like a younger brother, inviting him to picnics on their off-days or welcoming him to join in their Hari Raya celebrations. As they got closer, they also started telling him about some of the language-related struggles they faced in situations like seeing the doctor or understanding safety instructions at work.

It was a particularly bad incident in 2009 – when Mr Hossain was just 15 – that pushed him to do more to help his new friends. 

One of the migrant workers was working as an aircon technician and saw that one of the cylinders was leaking gas. He had been briefed on how to handle the situation, but could not understand the instructions. 

Instinct kicked in and he put his bare hand over the cylinder in a panicked attempt to stop the leak.

The hand was completely charred and had to be amputated. No longer of value to his employers, he was sent home. 

“That was really, really horrible. It got me thinking: This is a life and death situation for them. I have to do something.”

BARE ESSENTIALS

What he did, ultimately, was to start SDI Academy. His first textbook came about in response to requests from students who wanted to self-study outside of lesson time.  

The Conversational English Guide for Beginners, which he published in 2014, had a limited run of just 200 copies for workers attending the academy’s four-month everyday English courses.

But when his students brought the books back to their dormitories and workplaces, other migrant workers soon grew interested and wanted to learn more English as well.

To better understand how to help migrant workers pick up important language skills, Mr Hossain ordered various English textbooks and pored over their style.

What he realised, he said, was that people in English-speaking countries pick up the language faster than those in non-English-speaking countries because instead of being bogged down with formal grammatical rules, they start with the essentials first. 

“As a child, we start asking for things that are really necessary – water, food and stuff like that. That’s how we start, with words, then small phrases and as we learn, proper sentence structures. That’s how any language is taught in its natural process,” his eyes sparkling with excitement as he spoke of the breakthrough. 

Based on this, he came up with the idea of using practical scenarios the workers go through every day – such as going to the train station or buying groceries – and then breaking these down into categories of words and phrases to go through in class.

As the method proved effective for many of the workers – he tells me with great pride that one of his students recently spoke at a TEDx event – he started thinking of scaling it up to not just students at SDI Academy, but other migrant workers who may not be able to commit to attending lessons. 

MAKING DIVERSITY MAINSTREAM

Mr Hossain is confident that with enough support, he can distribute Dr English to the targeted 100,000 migrant workers. 

SDI Academy has an existing partnership with the Dormitory Association of Singapore, which runs 40 of Singapore’s largest dormitories housing about 238,000 workers, he said. 

There are about 1.4 million migrant workers in Singapore, and lowering the number of workplace accidents due to the communication barrier remains a priority, according to Mr Hossain. 

But another important part of his mission is to engage Singaporeans and encourage them to challenge negative stereotypes about migrant workers. 

The crowdfunding campaign will result in a physical launch on Jul 16, where sponsors can personally gift the textbook to a migrant worker, as well as take part in games and activities together. 

“We want the idea of an inclusive society to become a mainstream idea, to let people know we’re not strangers with one another and it’s good to warm up to each other,” he said. 

“Our one core message is that we are a lot more similar than we realise and diversity is something that really complements us. It’s not just a buzz word that we like to use but we want people to understand that diversity is something that enriches our society.”

The message, he said, goes beyond just the campaign: “We want to turn some of the negative perceptions into positivity by encouraging people to take actions that are simple and yet profound.”

SINGAPORE: To prepare our healthcare system to deal with palliative care, increasing hospital or hospice beds or hiring more therapists or nurses are not the solutions.

The vast majority of us will face a life-threatening illness at some stage in our lives. When we do, what will be most important to us are how we want to be cared for during this illness and where we want to pass our days.

The illness may be a relatively short one, like cancer, and curable if diagnosed early, but often we might have to live with the disease for months, even years while undergoing cancer treatment. And each treatment session may be less effective, with more side effects than the one before, until we end up dying from the disease.

We may face other life-limiting illnesses, like heart failure or kidney failure. Treatment will sustain us for a while, again months or years. But there is no cure short of getting a new organ and that has its own problems, such as organ rejection and associated risks of infection.

Many of us will end up with long-drawn out illnesses that include dementia, stroke and various relapses. We will survive for many years but have to be content with disability.

We as a society need to discuss these issues and plan for different options that might be preferred by different people.

There is no one size that fits all.

GIVE PEOPLE CHOICES

For some, institutional care in a nursing home may be preferred. So we need to have institutions where people can thrive, not just subsist, where they can stay until they die and receive different levels of care according to their needs and as their conditions progress. 

Many people say they want to be cared for and die in their own homes. That depends on whether there is anyone at home to care for us and what kind of support we can get at home.

Expansion of hospice home care services will obviously help. Skilled caregivers who are able to provide day-to-day care will also help.

Singapore is currently blessed with foreign domestic helpers who are affordable to many. But this may not necessarily continue in the future. Will our local people want to take up this work and even so, will the care remain affordable?

Most of us would not want to spend our last days in hospital, unless the medical interventions available there will actually prolong our lives and give us a life of reasonable quality. It is possible to spend a fortune on medical advances that may prolong life by a few weeks or months. This may be the wish of some and they should go for it, if they can afford it.

Others may not think the expense worthwhile, or find the burden of treatment too great. They should also be allowed their choice to spend their time and resources on different things.

So palliative care services should be designed to provide people with choices, whether it is outpatient care, home care, in-patient hospice care or care in nursing homes.

We should not leave it to voluntary welfare organisations to find solutions. For those not in need of government subsidies, or those not eligible for them, private enterprises should take up the challenge.

Retirement communities that cater to the healthy elderly, who can then transition to a higher level of care as one spouse becomes more dependent, or a person gets diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, is an idea. These may enable people to stay within their community and obtain needed medical and nursing input there, while enjoying familiar surroundings and the company of friends.

Different kinds of funding models can be experimented with, such as reverse mortgages or pooled risk.

CREATE SOLUTIONS OF OUR OWN

I think we need to think out of the box. We also need many heads to think and come up with new ideas. Different models of care and different kinds of services should be tried and tested out to see whether people like them, whether they can deliver what people want and whether they are sustainable.

I believe the consumer, and eventually this will include all of us, needs to play a much more active part in this discussion. I don’t think we should be doomed to whatever services evolve, but instead, create solutions of our own.

People should be encouraged to come up with new ideas. Funding should be made available to try out the better ideas, to see if they work and whether they can be scaled up.

A raft of ideas will provide options for different groups of people at different stages of their lives.

Yes, we shall have to train more therapists, more people in the healthcare sector and the care industry. But over-medicalisation of the situation is not desirable.

While people with life-threatening illnesses will need medical care, that is only one aspect of their care. They will also need a social life. They need to see their families, go out to eat, celebrate birthdays, or weddings, or anniversaries.

Some may need emotional support. Others might have financial worries. Still, others may have spiritual concerns or unfinished business.

Life is so much more than medical treatment.

So I think it is far too simplistic to think only about adding more hospital or hospice beds, which is what some people might have in mind. Understanding what people in different parts of our community want and trying out different ways of providing for choices is the way forward.

Associate Professor Cynthia Goh is a senior consultant at National Cancer Centre of Singapore’s Division of Palliative Medicine. 

This is the third commentary in Channel NewsAsia’s series exploring key issues and challenges facing patients with terminal illness and care at the end of life. 

• Read the first commentary on what well-being means for someone with terminal illness here.
• Read the second commentary on the challenges faced by our young who contract terminal illness, for whom growing old isn’t an option here.

SINGAPORE: Businessman Greg Choong lives about a kilometre away from Bukit Gombak MRT station. Rather than take the bus to work, he now prefers to use a bicycle from one of the bicycle sharing stations in the area.

“We can ride (the bicycle) to the MRT and back home without having to return the bike to a station,” he said. “Our travelling time is usually within 15 minutes … and the cost of bike sharing is very affordable. It is cheaper than taking a bus.”

Mr Choong, who spends about S$0.50 per ride, is one of a growing number of Singaporeans ditching four wheels for two.

“You can see a lot of students riding them to the market, to the MRT stations or to bus stops,“ he said.

This scenario has become increasingly common in other parts of Singapore. Bike-sharing operators have set up stations across the island in recent months. As such, residents now do not need to go to great lengths to rent a bicycle.

Jurong is a case in point, according to Jurong MP Ang Wei Neng, who recently launched a bicycle sharing pilot scheme in the constituency.

“After office hours in the evenings and especially (during) the weekends, I see a lot more families using the bicycles going to the neighbourood centres … (and) Jurong Lake for leisure cycling,” Mr Ang said. 

Bike-sharing operator oBike said it has seen more demand for bicycles in areas like the Central Business District, Buona Vista, Woodlands, Ang Mo Kio, Admiralty and Tampines. On average, its customers ride for about 15 minutes per trip and travel about three kilometres, the company said.

It also found that most cyclists use their bike-sharing service to get from their homes to bus stops or MRT stations and vice versa, according to oBike general manager Elgin Ee.

“The average (usage time) of 15 minutes shows that people do consider bikes as an alternative form of transport – but not for long distances,” Mr Ee told Channel NewsAsia.

CYCLING = THE WAY AHEAD?

In dense urban cities like Singapore, cycling has been touted as the way ahead towards a better transport system.

According to a 2012 survey by the Land Transport Authority, about 1.5 per cent of people in Singapore cycle as part of their daily commute, and authorities have said that they would like to triple this number over the next decade.

But even as more Singaporeans pick bicycles over cars or buses, stories of reckless riding and bad parking have stuck a wrench in the movement. Cases of “indiscriminate parking” and reckless riding have raised the ire of many residents, forcing the hand of authorities.

Mr Ang said that residents have complained about dockless bicycles being parked along the roads, corridors, on staircases and even blocking fire escapes.

“There’s plenty of room for improvement,” Mr Ang added. “Especially come June, when the Active Mobility Act comes into the picture. Most of the pedestrian pathways will be considered shared pathways, and this is where the cyclists will have to adhere to some code of conduct.”

Currently, bike operators use various credit or demerit systems to encourage good behaviour. However, National University of Singapore transport researcher Prof Lee Der Horng believes that user behaviour is difficult to regulate. “That’s why the different operators must come forward, to the frontline to be responsible in the event that a user is actually abusing the system,” said Prof Lee. 

The authorities are also playing a part to curb the problem. 

As part of a new framework developed by the Land Transport Authority and the 15 PAP Town Councils, operators will be penalised if they do not ensure bikes are properly parked.

Mr Ee said oBike is looking to work with the town councils to avoid causing inconvenience while providing services to the residents. 

“Ultimately it’s about working hand-in-hand rather than seeing it as an obstruction to our business, or a barrier to us,” he added. “We have to look at this issue deeply, whether it’s penalising us – then we will penalise the users.”

But ultimately, Mr Ang believes it may be too early to put the brakes on bike-sharing as the industry is still in its infancy. And with new rules ahead, both the operators and authorities seem to be on the right path.

“It’s only in recent years that we are very seriously promoting cycling as a way of life,” Mr Ang said. “There are many infrastructures that are not built for cycling, so now we have to do retrofitting as well as education. It will take a while, I believe.”

“Rome was not built in one day,” he added. “But we have to start somewhere.”