Stories around a choked pipe

Ghastly looking. The plumber showed this to me after he had sawn the U-bent of the waste water pipe off. My neighbor upstairs had a renovation contractor from hell. The dastardly act committed there which caused his kitchen to flood, but the solution is to be found at my place. What to do? Water flows from higher to lower ground.

They are so grateful we have been so accommodating. I think nothing of this but something else he said I would not forget for a long time - lucky for him we are not PRCs. If we were the Chinese mainlanders he would have assumed the worst. I don't want to record the details here. It is not difficult to find anecdotes that this group is not integrating well in our society.

I spoke to a HDB officer today. He told me some PRC Chinese had broken into a vacant rental apartment to occupy recently. This is only the latest of his many stories but I have no time to listen to more. My takeaway is we have a social problem and it is not easy to solve.

Am I not blogging the obvious? Many of us have unpleasant anecdotes to share. I am not even thinking about I know of someone who had experienced this or that category. Just during lunch with a couple of ex-colleagues today, one of them told me how his new PRC neighbor has the habit of leaving his front door open, talking at the top of their voices and standing along the corridor to smoke. This is not a HDB flat but one of the more upscale condos where people expect doors to be closed, neighbors to be considerate and well mannered.

I don't know how we are going to solve these problems. Everyone feels that the government must be more strong armed with them. We don't want to end in altercations with them and so regulatory and police powers are needed. I don't believe the carrot would work with them. In China the armed policed is larger than the regular police. Perhaps we need to take a page from Theodore Roosevelt playbook: speak softly but carry a big stick. I think many of us are speaking softly but we still lack the big stick. We gotta get our act together quickly as patience among Singaporeans is running thin.