Uniquely Singapore Problems

We have been in Singapore for a few months. We observed a few things uniquely Singapore (*) when compared to US.  The first observation was that few people was out and about during the day, which was due to high UV year-round from 10am to 4pm. The second observation was, after I started driving in Singapore,  tight parking spaces and annoying and confusing changing street names for one straight street.

Once we moved from hotel to apartment, I paid more attentions to the buildings and the rooms, and observed and confirmed more uniquely Singapore problems.

No ventilation to outdoors

When we were in hotels, I suspected that there was no ventilation to outdoors. The suspicion was confirmed, and reconfirmed when we moved into an apartment building. Initially I thought it was because of the age of the buildings, but checking with locals, and people who live in new high rises, Singapore residential buildings have no ventilations to outdoor!

So what?

This is a serious issue to me, no ventilation to outdoor means staled air stays inside - heat and smells from cooking or dryer, odor from trash, exhale from our own breath, and thus poor indoor air quality!*

Locals typically open their windows during the days, and close windows and turn on AC for nights. This makes rooms hot and humid during the day, a big issue for work from home people.

When I noticed the problem, I initially open windows everyday in early morning when it is relatively cool, and close windows when the Sun rises. The problem we had was that bugs, insects, especially mosquitos accumulated indoor despite the fact we are in 8th floor. After a while, we got frequent bug bites! Now I open windows once a week during a sunny time, when those insects are hiding.

The ventilator in the kitchen is a joke. It sucks the oil and hot air from cooking pans and eject them into the whole kitchen. Checking with others, this is a universal problem as well.

Lousy Laundry Machines for people living in Apartments

While apartment hunting, we noticed many people dry their laundry on drying racks or on balcony cloth lines. Initially I thought how environmentally conscious those people were. 

In reality the fact is that the laundry machines in Singapore are lousy. Due to space limitation in apartment buildings, the laundry machines are small in sizes, and no ventilation to outdoor makes the dryer inefficient.

When we were in an apartment in a service hotel, the 2 in 1 laundry machine was very inefficient - it took a few hours to wash a small load of laundry and a few more to dry the laundry. What made the laundry machine not acceptable was that it was a wrinkling machine, it wrinkled our clothes to the  point of no return, we could not iron out the wrinkles.

When we moved to a large regular apartment, we have separate unit for washing and drying, the machines' volume is slightly larger, the wrinkling issue is lessened, but the inefficiency is still there. Washing machine takes a couple hours or more to wash, and in the end the laundry is till damp; drying machine takes long time to dry.

The Most Light Polluted City

We were amazed by the beautiful night scenes at Marina Bay when we first went there - landmark of Sands Hotel and its Sky park. These lights and other lights in surrounding high rises are on for the whole night time! Not only pedestrians don't need street lights for walk, the low clouds passing by are light up by these lights. It seems all commercial buildings keep their lights on for the whole night. We were surprised to see many apartment buildings keep the outside lights on during our January29-30, 2022 coast to coast overnight hike!  

Marina Bay Night Scene

The impact of the light pollution is obvious, we can only see moon and/or a handful stars on a clear night. According to one study, Singaporeans can only see 0.5% of visible stars. Children lose their wonder of the galaxy we are in. Migrating birds are misguided by the man made lights. The light pollution is also detrimental to our health in long term.

I am aware of this first hand because I look up to the sky frequently. I could not see anything in a clear night sky most of the time when we walked Fort Canning Park at night, I could not see stars when I am in Singapore Botanic Garden at night. We saw a handful of stars during our coast to coast night hiking. 

The fact that Singapore is the most light polluted city in the world is well documented in a blog from NUS, and references therein. The following is light emission intensity map for Singapore and surround areas, link to the source of information. 

I know many of the lights are for tourism purpose. How about turn the decorative lights off after midnight for commercial buildings? Install sensors for outdoor night lights? 

*The one thing we noticed early on was the Sunrise, Sunset times were nearly constant due to its proximity to equator (1.29 degree North). Not a problem, but a fact.

** AC outside unit does not bring outside air in.