[h=1]
Joo Chiat Today[/h]
Making Joo Chiat a better home
[h=1]Group action by residents to solve flooding resulted in an annual street party[/h] I had looked forward to 25 Aug 2012. Once again, I was invited to the annual street party at Jalan Bintang Tiga, tucked away in a corner of Opera Estate. Last year, I was invited to the same party and found the event very meaningful.
I had then blogged about it. Jalan Bintang Tiga is afterall, in the neighbourhood of where I grew up in.
Piñata hanging across the street
The event had its usual generous spread of food, prepared by residents who had each brought their special dish. The decors were up, with the Pinata hanging across the street, lit up by temporary lights set up by a resident who runs a construction business.
There were various games too. For the young ones, it was a night time ‘F1 rally’ on the streets. The boys and girls teams each jumped into a cardboard car, raced down to the middle of the street and then back like the Flintstones, and passed the car on the the next member of their relay team. Those below 12 years lined up to have a whack at the Piñata, which was very stubborn this year. It took several rounds of whacking before the bag finally broke, releasing goodies onto the streets that were quickly grabbed by the kids and loaded into small plastic bags generously given out to them. The teenagers had their waterbomb fun.
Getting ready to start their F1 race
The race is on!
Whacking the piñata
Adults mingled with one another, having a good chat over food and drinks. Even old neighbours that had shifted out came back. One told me it was a big decision for her to move out as her family love the neighbourliness of this street.
Glorious yummy home-cooked food
It was from the conversations that I found out how this annual street party came to be. And it is certainly a very good story to tell.
Opera Estate used to suffer from nasty floods. I know. I had lived there since birth until my marriage. I remember the regular floods up till the 1970s. Then my dad decided to raise the flooring of our house. There were floods but less regularly, at least in our house. I was told our street was slightly better elevated and had better drainage. At Jalan Bintang Tiga, residents were less fortunate. One year, they had 3 bad floods within the year. Tired of the situation, nearly the entire street petitioned their Member of Parliament. The group lobby action worked. The Opera Estate canal was widened and drainage improved.
During the drainage improvement works, one part of Jalan Bintang Tiga was closed off to traffic. The residents got together and decided they might as well hold a street party since the road was available. And so they celebrated their group lobby success with a party. It has since carried on till today, the 13th street party in an unbroken fashion, held near National Day each year. In fact, some residents do not even know about the origin for this party. They are just happy to come together to party yearly.
Having attended the party twice in a row now, I can see the enormous pride the residents have. One resident told me proudly that after their 2nd street party in 2001, a newspaper carried the story. Upon reading the news, his colleague asked if he had remembered correctly that this resident was living in that street. “Yes!”, the resident declared with great pride, “And we are the only street party in Singapore.”
You can see the great effort in the food, the wide variety and good home-cook taste. The agar agar declaring the street party is now a regular feature. It is painstakenly prepared by a resident, so beautiful that one can hardly bear to eat it.
The special agar agar, a regular feature of this party
The street party shows that group action can work. The residents had been facing great inconveniences from the flood, and had made various individual appeals in the past. The neighbour came together to lobby. The action worked. What followed was even better – an annual event that has now brought the neighbourhood together. It will be wonderful if we can see more of such neighbourliness throughout Singapore. Yes, there are sometimes challenges living together in a congested island. Cars parked by the road will sometimes cause problems. Some traditions and customs of our varied cultures or even cooking of certain foods may irritate others. It will help with some neighbourliness to ease these problems.
