My last rant on addresses

It is in my humble opinion, essential that a city, and the richest city in the world at that, have a proper mailing addressing system. Otherwise, it’s like trying to visit 2^nd Auntie, and having 3^rd Uncle shout from his house, “Turn right at the 4^th house from the 5^th corner, it is the 6^th house straight down!”

I know this place was a desert kampong 30 years ago, but didn’t most of Singapore start out as swamp kampong 40 years ago? Now, the typical post code is 6 digits long, and pinpoints the HDB block! This is a little island that doesn't exactly have a building fund in the form of petroleum underneath its weathered granite subsoil.

So where in the world, is one’s flat number decided by the watchman with his black (hopefully permanent) flat tip marker? Where in the world, do I have 2 streets with exactly the same name, one after another, right in front of my villa? Where in the world, does one need to triangulate one’s place of residence with positions of nearby school/malls just to apply for internet? (which they tell you takes 2 weeks, but I know people who have waited for 5 months..)

A place’s inertia to change is probably directly correlated to the relative abundance of its natural resources. I mean, mainstream Australia skipped the entire VCD phase of home entertainment, and went straight from video tapes (that’s right, video tapes were still prevalent in 1998!!) to DVDs. LDs were probably a rare sight there too.

And here, well, I’ll not be holding my breath. At least not whilst there’s still oil down there.