Living in Pasir Ris - Suburban Singapore Town

I grew up in Pasir Ris. It is home to close to 150,000 people in Singapore. When my parents bought their house here in 1993, it was a new town built at the eastern-most edge of the island. All the HDB flats were new, and so were the shopping malls, roads and schools. Over the years, new condominiums sprouted out on vacant forest land, new sidewalks and bicycle paths were built, and upgrades were made to the many parks dotting Pasir Ris. As I begin to recount and re-live these numerous changes, my childhood emotions and nostalgia begin to resurface. It is a feeling of comfort, a feeling of home.

For most Singaporeans, when I mentioned to them that I live in Pasir Ris, an immediate reaction would be something like - "Wah, it's so far away." The statement seems a little overdramatic considering it takes only two hours to get from one end of Singapore to the other. But there is some truth in that. For a very long time, even to this day, our town's train station remains the last train stop to the east of our country's ever-expanding metro line (also called the MRT aka the Mass Rapid Transit). It can be inconvenient if one has to travel to the western-most end of the country where most of the top universities are, but really it is only an hour's train ride to the country's city centre.

However, when one were to ask about people's impression of Pasir Ris if they were to live here, generally, people would gladly agree that it is a quiet and calm place with many greenery and a lot less bustle than other parts of Singapore. It is a welcome treat to life in busy urban Singapore. Our closest neighbouring town is Tampines. In comparison to Pasir Ris, Tampines has three shopping malls built around their main train station - Tampines (Green Line) - compared to Pasir Ris' one. In fact, Tampines now boasts three train stations catering to their town alone, so much it feels like a mini city within Singapore city. 

A large part of the suburban feeling of Pasir Ris lies in its proximity to a beach, and acres of forested and farm lands surrounding the town. My parent's home, a 5 room HDB apartment, faces a small forest which itself is surrounded by fish farms, a military camp, and Pasir Ris Beach. The forest land itself is restricted land and is owned by the military thus occasionally, one can hear the sounds of live firing when the soldiers conduct their drills, though they are uncommon and certainly taking place a far distance from the civilian population. With these natural elements in our area, it is no wonder that the area is teeming with rare wildlife.

Just a ten minutes walk away from my parents house is Sungai Api Api, a small river stream that runs from Pasir Ris Beach deep into Pasir Ris. The stream houses a nest of majestic hornbills, water birds and swallows that scurry and fleet past you, a rare sight in Singapore. A five minutes walk away, you will come across dozens of wild boars that will appear around sunset and remain late into the night before disappearing in the morning. The authorities had created a fence between the forested land and the rest of Pasir Ris Town, essentially enclosing the entire forested land and making it unlikely for a wild boar to find its way on our streets or vice versa, for someone to enter the forested land. And did I mention chickens? All around Pasir Ris Beach and the surrounding residential areas near the to the beach, including my area, you will find chickens everywhere. The chicken population was actually pretty small initially. They may not have been part of the natural eco-system and may have been introduced to the area by one of the owners of the landed properties that line Sungai Api Api. Over the years, devoid of natural predators that would otherwise have been shunned by human presence when Pasir Ris Town was created, the population of the chicken grew. Other than chickens, one can also find green sunbirds that fly in the hundreds around the Elias Mall area, one-metre long sea otters and an enormous crane that lives on Sungai Tampines, and the neighbourhood owl that lives at the entrance of Pasir Ris Beach. The wildlife in the Pasir Ris area is amazing.

New Towns

The creation of New Towns in Singapore was actually an initiative of the Singapore government and are strategically planned. Each New Town has all the required necessities that a family will need to raise their kids. Grocery stores, schools, shopping malls, entertainment, restaurants, gyms, library, cinemas, just to name a few. Everything that you could possibly need can be found in the neighbourhood. Generally, new families move into new New Towns. As such, usually the first few schools that are opened in the New Towns cater to younger kids. As these families mature, new schools catering to older kids are opened and the older schools catering to younger kids may merge to cater to the changing student population size. Everything is systematic and well-run in Singapore and that adds up to the convenience of living in one of such New Towns. Essentially, the New Towns that we live in are self-sustaining and incredibly convenient and as we speak now, new towns are being created in phases all over Singapore.

Growing Up In Pasir Ris

Having lived in Pasir Ris, my schools had also been in the area. My parents sent me to a PAP Nursery and then PAP Kindergarten when I was four or five. These early childhood centers were directly affiliated with the government, although over the years early childhood centers in Singapore have moved towards the private sector. My nursery and kindergarten took place at the void deck of a couple of HDB flats right next to West Plaza, a small shopping mall just a ten minutes walk away from my parent's house. I remember singing the 'Good Morning' and 'Good-Bye, Teacher' song everyday, attending painting and drawing classes and bringing toys to the kindergarten to show off to the other kids. My mum who is a housewife would cycle me and my brother to the nursery and kindergarten every weekday and then fetch us back after. After kindergarten, I went to a local neighbourhood school, Meridian Primary School, which was the school that my elder sister went to two years prior. Meridian Primary School back then was an entirely new school. It was so new that my principal, Mr Eric Lim, was the composer of our school song that is sang to this day twenty years later. Everything in the school was spick and span new and even then it was further renovated during my time as well. I spent six years in that school and for my mandatory co-curricular activity, I was in Green Club, essentially a gardening club or environmental-advocate sort of club. I did not really have much of a say in the clubs or activities that I take part in when I was younger. My parents were strict and have this huge influence over my choices and decisions in my early years, thus they when they asked me to join Green Club, I didn't object. Eventually when I was in Primary 5, I was elected to be an Environmental Champion and started giving talks and speeches to the school assembly. After Primary School, like other regular Singaporean kids, I had to apply for a Secondary School. I was doing alright academically, scoring straight As for my Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). My parent's strict discipline certainly helped for sure. Thus, I had the option to pick any school that I wanted. I eventually chose Dunman Secondary School, which was, during my time, the highest ranked neighbourhood school in the east, which also happens to be the school my elder sister went to.

Dunman Secondary School is not in Pasir Ris. It is actually in Tampines, the town right next to Pasir Ris. It is possible to cycle to my school from where I live and reach the school in twenty minutes, but there is also a direct bus that takes me there for around the same time. I spent four years in that school. During this time, I made lifelong friends along the way whom I still am in contact with. The school back then had such a homely environment. No bullying of any sorts, friendly and helpful friends and all sorts of characters. The class that I was in went on to break all kinds of academic records for our school for our O level examination. I did not get straight As, unfortunately. I had an L1R5 of 10 because I got a B3 for English and Biology. After Secondary School, I had the choice of going to a Junior College or a Polytechnic. My score did not qualify me for a prestigious junior college such as Victoria Junior College or Raffles Junior College, but I got in fairly easily into Meridian Junior College (MJC), a new junior college that was built in Pasir Ris right next to my former primary school, Meridian Primary School. 

I spent another two years in junior college. MJC was so new, it was still under construction when I was still studying in Meridian Primary School. It does not have the best reputation and its merger with Tampines Junior College a few years after I had left certainly did not help much. It is known as the school with out-going and lively culture and people, but with a lot of retainers (this means that the students are unable to move on to the next grade due to academic performance). I did not have the best of times there. I had depression around the middle of year 1. During that time, I broke up with my girlfriend (of sorts) whom I met and started dating towards the end of Secondary School, my parents and sister were fighting and shouting every single day late into the night at home for all kinds of trivial reasons, and I just could not bring myself to approach anyone else for support. At my low point, I met an incredible person, a classmate, a true brother, who came into my life and handed me the support that I needed to push me through this phase. I suppose his wisdom and kindness really did rub off on me and shaped me as a person. With his help, I graduated Junior College with decent results and qualified to study in a local university.

There are good and bad events and emotions attached to the Town that I grew up in. Thanks to the New Town policy that Singapore had, a lot of the activities of my childhood certainly revolved around Pasir Ris and its surrounding area. It is the place where I had my first girlfriend, the place where I hang out with friends after school at the local 711 and ordered tasty waffles, the place where I basked in the sun during my evening runs at the parks, and the place where I just go to buy my groceries or snacks or get a haircut at the barber. It is a typical suburban Singapore New Town life.

The fish farms are gradually moving out as the government is planning to lay new MRT lines and develop new towns in the area. There was an amusement park called Escape Theme Park that had closed and a shopping mall was built in its place. A water theme park called Wild Wild Wet opened a few years back with new rides being introduced every few years. A hawker centre and a public swimming pool finished construction near the Pasir Ris MRT station. Bicycle paths were created all over the town that helped to widen the walking surface for pedestrians and cyclists. No longer must a cyclist cycle on the grass to get around a pedestrian. Many condominiums were built around the area and the construction of the international school brought a lot of international students to the area as well. Even our old small bus interchange recently received a big upgrade and was expanded. There are always new faces you will see in the area and always something new to look forward to throughout the year, and it is really nice to see the changes and make the comparison of what the place was versus now.

Yes, it has been a little more noisy lately with more people around and a lot more activities and developments happening across town. But to me, Pasir Ris Town will still be the same in my memory. After Junior College, I spent a lot of my time away from Pasir Ris while serving my National Service and then spending more time away for the next four years while studying and living in a dormitory in NTU (Nanyang Technological University). If someone were to ask me what is Pasir Ris like, I still think I would give the same response as I did when I was much younger. I would tell them it is the place where I grew up in, and it is that 'far-away, quite ulu' place, very quite, very nice.