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2004-09-11 - 3:34 a.m. For Vince Corridor -------- Upon exiting the house, the first space I encounter is the corridor. I have two other neighbours sharing this corridor, namely a Chinese one that inhabits a remote unit at the end, and an Indian one adjacent to my flat. The act of possessing this public space involves various strategies, which on the outset appears to be merely aesthetic, or even economic, if one perceives such claims to be an attempt at the extension of floor-units. The Chinese family has marked ownership by the literal purchase of a segment of the corridor; this they have converted into a transitional space which one could term a patio or veranda. The outermost limit of this space is a gate that fills in the outline of the corridor; through this gate one spies the occupants' shoes, umbrellas, etc. These objects are ostracised from the interior of the house (the umbrella is wet, the shoes' soles are unclean) yet also protected from the occasional pilferer, by virtue of their position as being simultaneously inside and outside. Both privacy and security seem to be motivations for imposing this barrier, but the elevation of status plays a role as well. The residents demonstrate that they have not only been able to afford those extra square units, they have also imposed an additional, formal distance between the visitor and themselves: the doubling of the portals (first the gate, then the actual door), is a luxury afforded to people on landed property and not HDB flats. As for my family and the Indians next door, dominion is expressed through the arrangement of potted plants as well as shoe racks. They act in lieu of actual fences, although the prohibitive dimension of such boundaries is mitigated by the notion that they represent a spillage of the actual items (furniture, household botany) populating the home, a riotous excess of the interior. Yet there is counterpoint: like compass needles, the footwear (and the doormat) are oriented towards the direction of the door, a sign that attempts to reverse the traffic of overflow. In other words, to maintain an ecology where the luxuriance of objects does not displace the public character of the corridor; anyone who traverses a HDB corridor will thus not have his or her conscience tainted by notions of trespassing. The space of the corridor is apprehended, yet also free: a continuous footpath running across other people's gardens. Closing Down Sale ----------------- The phrase 'Closing Down Sale', printed prominently on a banner fronting the shop, provokes ambivalence. One part responds to the word 'sale': the consumer is stirred to action. Another part, however, is activated by 'closing down': one wonders how the shopkeepers are coping with hard times. The shop thus successfully manages to blur the line between retail and charity. There is a shop across my block that has been advertising its demise for about a year. 'Everything Must Go', declares one of its banners. The net effect of such signage is to justify a shop design that is mostly haphazard: there are no well ordered shelves and aesthetic displays, only plastic baskets containing mounds of rifled-through items signposted by neon-coloured price tags. There are batteries ('not for sale outside of South Korea'), face towels ('made in China'), plastic clothes pegs (in sets of eight) and even rattan canes that are topped with pastel-coloured hooks (it has always bewildered me, an affectation of a candy cane at the tip of an instrument administering pain). As I pay for a trio of pens at the cashier, a thought strikes me: each purchase will help to delay the shop's closure by keeping business afloat. However, at the same time, each day the shop remains in business reduces its advertising credo to a tired lie. As long as there is someone to buy the stocks, the shop will never close down. And as long as the shop announces it is closing down, providing the illusion of a desperate refugee auction, people will buy. Retail and charity: a business-like part will point out the fraudulent advertising: how can a shop claim to close down yet lift its shutters every morning for 12 whole months? A charitable part, though, will say: no, one of these days, at a point in the near or far-off future, the signs will finally speak the truth. Inevitability has been known to take its own sweet time. Letterbox --------- The letterbox is located at the lift lobby, a rectangular block of metal whose façade consists of identical receptacles, each one labelled with a unit number. It stands as a miniature replica of a block of flats, where apartments are also designated by their unit numbers, locked and anonymous and arranged in a grid-like pattern. It is a doll's house where one can imagine each receptacle containing not letters but tiny furniture. A computer sits in the little house with the Internet bill; a piano in the one with the music certificate; a pillow radiates its preciousness in the one with a National Service enlistment document; chairs overturned in rage in the little house with an electricity bill printed in red ink. Sometimes what already exists in a little house is a compressed scene that will later unfold in the actual apartment, swelling to its full size and magnitude: reverse Chinese boxes, a bomb. A postcard from overseas will be passed from hand to hand, subjected to inordinate scrutiny; reading glasses will be worn, comments made on the stamp affixed and the penmanship; smiles will be worn on faces before being finally erased by sleep. A fashion catalogue, addressed to someone who is already dead, will generate a scenario where a woman opens a cupboard in the middle of the night and packs her daughter's clothes into a rubbish bag. There is a temptation to peer through the flaps into the little houses, but one knows only darkness will be encountered. It goes without saying: the lights are all upstairs.
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