Home on the Dot

About 80% of Singapore’s resident population lives in public housing, more commonly referred to as ‘HDBs’ (after the organisation-in-charge, the Housing Development Board). The quality and affordability of HDBs have been celebrated by many. However, public housing in Singapore is imbued with state assumptions about the notion of home. In this episode, producers Tang Hui Jun and Ryan Ang demonstrate how the state uses the provision of housing to institutionalise ideas of community, race, family structure, and above all: home.

Home. A common word with just one syllable. And yet a word teeming with subjectivity, so personal and abstract that it eludes universal definition. Chris McMorran, the narrator and editor of this project, is an American teaching Japanese Studies in Singapore. He speaks about his own attempts to understand his students’ lives in order to inform his teaching – beginning with what home means to them.

A Nation's Dining Room by Home on the Dot

Why do the dead need homes? This episodes highlights the Chinese tradition of burning paper houses at funerals and other annual ritual events. NUS professor Richard Lee, an expert on this Chinese custom, details the history behind this practice, which today involves decadent mansions with pools, manicured lawns, luxury cars, and servants, all of which is burned in order to accompany the deceased into the next world. On this journey, all kinds of questions surface: What kind of homes do the deceased want? Where do you want to die? And how does death complicate the comfort we typically associate with home. The relationship between death and home is a sobering but important topic.

Do you love museums or hate them? Are they curio cabinets displaying old junk or treasure chests filled with carefully curated objects that transport you to another time and place? In this episode, Max walks us around the National Museum of Singapore. Along the way, he admits how distant he feels from the exhibits and tries to understand why. To do so he talks to NUS professor TC Chang, who speaks about Benedict Anderson’s idea of the imagined community and how this powerful notion plays out in museums and songs for National Day in Singapore.