Episode 13: Work and Play

FACTORIES - The setting up of the first factories wrought a social revolution in Singapore. New career options opened up, especially for young women with little education. Today, a different revolution is underway as factories fight to remain competitive in a global marketplace and workers upgrade to stay relevant.

BIOTECH & MEDIA - One constant theme in Singapore is the search for the next sunrise industry to remain competitive in the global economy. From manufacturing and IT in the past, to biotech and media today.

MOVIES - The story of movies begins in the 60s when it was the principal entertainment option. But things began to change with technology - VHS and later LDs led to decline of cinemas as pirates began to fill living rooms with movies before distributors could bring them in. Then once again technology began to change all that. Cineplexes with state of the art equipment brought in a new movie going experience. And as Singapore became increasingly connected to the rest of the world, the same day launches of Hollywood flicks has brought movie going firmly back into the Singapore social scene.

NIGHTLIFE - After 30 years of working hard, Singapore started to party hard. A new nightlife scene began to emerge along the river at Boat Quay, Zouk and later Mohd Sultan. Singapore after 5 has never been the same again.

by MediaCorp

Episode 12: Changing Priorities - The Finer Things In Life

MUSIC - This story traces the fortunes of the Singapore music scene from its heyday in the 1960s. Then a growing pragmatism, the opening up of new career options, the war against drugs and "hippie" influence led to a period of decline and consolidation before new bands began to emerge in the 1990s. Forming the backbone of the story to carry the chronology is the case study of music from Talent-Time to Singapore Idol.

ARTS - With the bread and butter issues of the early years resolved by the late 1970s, Singapore over the last 20 years saw a resurgence of the arts in many languages and mediums. The larger story will be told using a case study e.g. English theatre.

ENVIRONMENT - The story of the "karang guni" forms the backbone of a story that tells of how recycling came to mean different things to different generations as our priorities changed.

KEEPING FIT - In the 60s, you needed some bulk if you didn't want people to think you were a malnourished. But by the 80s, being lean and trim was a sign of health as gyms began to sprout all over town, and an exercise routine and balanced diets became a part of our lives. Keeping to the theme of this episode, this story again reinforces the theme of how affluence has changed our priorities and perceptions.

by MediaCorp

Episode 11: Neighbourhoods

NEIGHBOURHOODS - This story looks at the neighbourhoods we loved and lost; and the attempts over the years to create new neighbourhoods with distinct identities and recognizable landmarks - from Simei and Marine Parade to the new Yishun Starlight and Tampines Polyview.

COMMUNITY CENTRES - Once centres for social activity (and a spot to watch television), especially in kampong type neighbourhoods, some argue today that the community centres have served their purpose. Not true argue the people who flock there for taiji, cooking or tuition classes. This story examines the debate over the changing role of community centres.

CONSERVATION - This story looks at the changing value we place on old landmarks and neighbourhoods like Chinatown, Arab Street etc. and efforts to make icons of the past relevant to a new generation.

Episode 10: Creating and Capturing the Singapore Experience

NATIONAL SERVICE - The definitive experience of being Singaporeans for any Singapore male - and their mothers, girlfriends, sisters and wives. National service is not just a rite of passage for males growing up in Singapore, it provides the avenue for guys from all social and cultural background to interact as equals and find common ground.

CHINESE DRAMA & LOCAL TELEVISION - The maturing of television in the 1980s provided Singaporeans a chance to see what they had been missing for the first 20 years of television - local stories and local characters. Where Dallas, Charlie's Angels, Hawaii Five-O and Hong Kong serials once dominated prime time, suddenly Singaporeans saw the flowering of local talent bringing to life very local stories - and it all started with Channel 8 dramas. The dramas created our very own celebrity craze. And they captured not just a Chinese audience, but subtitle reading audiences as well.

SOCCER - In the heyday of the Malaysia Cup, soccer came to symbolize what it meant to identify yourself as Singaporean. Across races, backgrounds and experiences, people were united by the Kallang Roar. Today the S League tries to create a different Singapore experience - an identification with one's neighbourhood. Is Singapore too small for this to happen or is that a dream ahead of its time?

by MediaCorp

Episode 9: National Day

NATIONAL DAY PARADE - The changing face of the National Day Parade from the military precision to the party atmosphere of today is captured in this story of a people and system that's now more relaxed, open and confident.

NATIONAL DAY SONGS - Paralleling the story of national day parades is the story of the changing rhythms of our national songs. Kids in schools once learnt to sing "Planting Rice, but to reach an increasingly sophisticated population, an explosion of songs with more contemporary themes and arrangements hit the airwaves in the 1980s.

THE SEARCH FOR A SINGAPORE ICON - For forty years, Singapore has searched and tried to create the definitive Singapore icon. We've had the merlion, the Singapore girl, the national flower that hardly ever blooms and more recently the "Singapore lion dance". Symbolising the search for the definitive Singapore identity, this story about icons is cast against the accompanying debate - is there one Singapore identity or is our identity better captured in our diversity?

by MediaCorp

Episode 8: Buying and Eating - Choice and Consumerism in Singapore

SHOPPING - Before Orchard Road, there was High Street, and streets specializing in certain products. Then sometime in the 70s, Singapore became a shopping paradise not only for locals but visitors. Using Orchard Road as the central profile, the story of shopping is told against the backdrop of the changing fortunes of Singapore's tourism industry and how the marketing image of Singapore as shopping paradise was created and sold.

MARKETING - From wet markets, to hypermarkets to gourmet shops, the way we get our groceries has changed over the years. Some of our options like the "hole in the wall" Indian corner stall are gone. So is there still room for the neighbourhood provision shop and its smiling "Ah Pek"?

HAWKER FOOD - Traces the story of our love affair with hawker food from the days of itinerant hawkers, to food centres to the airconditioned food court... with the corresponding loss of many old favourites as food court chains emerge and hawker food gets commercialised in central kitchens.

by MediaCorp

Episode 7: No. 1, Campaigns, Singlish

TO BE NO. 1 -- the first segment looks at Singapore's drive to be the first and best in everything, e.g. airport, airline, green city, etc. This drive to be the best has filtered down to our everyday lives, e.g. exam scores, professional goals, etc. Ang Peng Siong was formerly the world's fastest swimmer, but failed to capture the elusive Olympic gold medal. He said that failure is what drives people to do their best, and he tries to instil that in his students. Abigail Sin has been hailed by Time magazine as one of Asia's best child prodigies due to her gift in piano. She admits that she has to sacrifice a lot of her personal life to excel in music, yet she manages to balance school and music successfully.

CAMPAIGN CITY -- whenever the government needs to teach the people something, it embarks on a campaign, e.g. Stop At Two, Stop Spitting, Speak Mandarin, etc. In particular, campaigns have to change as the population becomes more mature, e.g. the Speak Mandarin campaign has moved towards depicting Mandarin as "cool". Outwardly, this has resulted in a country that is well-known for its orderliness and discipline. Inwardly, it is unclear if people have truly learned from this. An experiment is done to see if passers-by will share their umbrellas with Yu Beng on a rainy day. In another experiment, passers-by are asked to help an intern hold his things while he struggles to answer his phone. Only one passer-by stops for him.

SINGLISH OR ENGLISH -- if there is one thing that is truly uniquely Singaporeans, it is Singlish. As a result of our multiracial culture, we have evolved our own unique blend of English, which has even spawned a dictionary. Colin Goh, editor of TalkingCock.com and the Singlish dictionary, says that there is nothing shameful about Singlish and that it is easy for Singaporeans to switch easily between Singlish and English. But the Speak Good English organisers believe that Singlish degrades the image of Singaporeans and it is not easily understood by English-speaking foreigners. Schools are now reinforcing the importance and correctness of the language in our young students.

Episode 6: House and Home

HDB HOMES - What more can we say about HDB but that it has literally changed the way we live and that the touches that come with our flats (from cement floors to marble) have come to symbolize our changing lifestyle and aspiration.

CONDOS & LANDED PROPERTY - Still on the theme of aspirations, owning a house ("landed property" we call it) and later in the 80s, a condo with country club facilities, has always been a Singaporean dream, despite having one of the most expensive real estate prices in the world. So what drives that dream? Status, investment or just the good life?

by MediaCorp

Episode 5: Going Overseas

FOREIGNERS IN TOWN - Singapore has always welcomed foreigners. The forefathers of Singaporeans today came from China, India and the region. We may not see it in quite the same way, but that story continues today with the foreigners who continues to come to our shores.. some eventually to settle down.

STUDYING AND WORKING ABROAD - Forty years ago, even a university education was uncommon. But over time, more young Singaporeans are going abroad for a degree... and returning with experiences and an outlook on life that would have seemed alien to young Singaporeans 40 years ago. Then in the 1990s another breed of Singaporean emerged. The push to globalize and regionalize has created the Singaporean expat - with their communities and schools - all over the region.

HOLIDAYS - From Kota Tinggi and Cameron Highlands, we branched out to conducted tours and 18 countries in 7 days' packages to the free and easy' on budget airlines.

by MediaCorp

Episode 4: Coping With Size

PHYSICAL LANDSCAPE - From kampong to skyline, narrow streets to expressways, one constant in Singaporean life is the constantly changing physical landscape. Few localities exist in Singapore that have remained unchanged since the 1960s and Singaporeans joke that they come back to a new city if they leave town for more than a month. With few options available to a small country, we coped with our lack of land by expanding over the past.

LAND RECLAIMATION - It's a reflection of Singapore's never-say-die attitude that we've never allowed our constrains to get the better of us. Along with changing the old city, we grew by creating land. This story looks at Singapore's changing attitudes towards reclaimation. From the days when people used to be amazed by reclaimation and asked if their Marine Parade flats were safe; to the situation today where it's so much a part of our lives that our most important installations are build on reclaimed land (airport, port, expressway, Shenton Way, Jurong Island) We are hard pressed today to know where the original island ended and where the new Singapore began.

NEW WATER - All Singaporeans grow up knowing we don't have enough water. But the way we've coped with that has changed over the years: from water rationing, to the development of new catchment areas right in the middle of HDB estates, to the development of new water.

by MediaCorp

Episode 3: Maids, Tutors, Typical Singaporean Parent

MAIDS - They look after our young and our elderly. They keep our homes clean and cook our meals and have freed Singapore women to enter the workforce. Singaporean maids have evolved from the amahs to the Filipina. And their numbers have grown over the years as the typical Singaporean family one sees in the malls or restaurant these days invariably include a maid in tow.

TUITION TEACHER - Over the past 40 years one typically Singaporean archetype has emerged - the tuition teacher. Whether students out for some pocket money or retired teacher, the tuition teacher has become a feature of Singaporean life and he exists to feed a very Singaporean need - parental obsession with grades.

THE SINGAPORE PARENT AND THE EDUCATION SYSTEM - There was a time when kindergarten were little more than play schools and kids didn't sit for their first exam till they were in Primary 3. The changing face of Singapore schools and Singapore education is examined through the eyes of a character that has emerged over the last 40 years - the extremely concerned Singaporean parent.

by MediaCorp

Episode 2: Matchmaking, baby births, child raising

The first segment covers how Singaporeans find a life partner. In the old days, when men and women rarely interacted, matchmakers, who were usually the town gossip, would pair couples together. When television was introduced, men and women discovered new ideas, and in the 1960s, almost all couples married for love, with the "old fogies" being matchmade. Today, as Singaporeans become busier and have less time for socialising, matchmaking has become popular again, through dating agencies, both public (Social Development Unit) and private (e.g. Lunch Actually). The difference is that these agencies do not blatantly state that their clients should get married, though that is still the ideal end-result.


The next segment talks about how Singapore's baby policy has affected the country. After independence, the average family had about five to six children. The government was worried that with such a booming population, the small country would not have the resources to care for its people, e.g. in providing quality education and healthcare. So the government started its "Stop At Two" policy. But with more women getting better education and higher paying jobs, couples were marrying later and having children even later, if at all. Singapore's population growth plummeted and now the government encourages couples to have "three or more, if you can afford it". However, couples are still unwilling to sacrifice their lives to look after children, who will become their "time managers".

Families that do have children have found new ways to look after them, as the last segment shows. In the old days, when families were large and lived close by, children would play with one another while being under the watchful eye of a relative or neighbour. Today, with both parents working and families more isolated, grandparents have taken over the role of looking after the children. In addition, a new phenomenon has arisen: day care centres and preschools are becoming popular as places for young children to learn to socialise while getting a proper education before starting formal school.

Episode 1: MRT, car policy, telephone

This episode begins with a look back at how Singapore's subway system, the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit), came about. As Singapore became more affluent, the vehicle population began to soar, leading to congested roads. Foreign experts were flown in to provide recommendations. One suggestion was to improve the public bus system. Another was to build a subway. Today, we know which recommendation won. It would be difficult to imagine not being able to say "Meet you at City Hall MRT!"

The second segment is about Singapore's car policy. As the vehicle population grew, there was a need to control the growth of vehicles to reduce road congestion. Policies implemented include the Certificate of Entitlement and the Area Licensing Scheme, which is known today as the Electronic Road Pricing scheme. A phenomenon that resulted due to these policies is that Singapore has one of the youngest car population in the world, with cars being replaced about every two years.


The final segment shows the evolution of the telephone in Singapore, from its humble days when you had to share a telephone, to the modern day when almost everyone has a handphone. People who try to hold out against owning a handphone find themselves being "forced" to own one so that they can stay in contact with friends and family. Also, as technology has improved, the size and weight of handphones have come down such that no one would want to be seen carrying an old school, bulky Motorola phone -- with no SMS and camera capabilities!