Now on my third school attachment, I have various observations about the different lengths of the commutes and the regions around the schools themselves.

This commute is definitely the farthest for me. It took 1.5 hours this morning via bus-train-bus to get to Woodlands. One of my NCP colleagues reminded me that some of our students have one-way commutes like that and that now I know what they experience. That’s partially true. I can relate to the time aspect of traveling across a city on public transit to get to a school, but I can’t relate to the other barriers that some of them face as a result of living in neglected parts of Chicago and going to school in a generally safer, not-neglected neighborhood. In fact, I have not encountered an unsafe part of Singapore, though I’ve been told to avoid the Geylang neighborhood at night…not that I was thinking about it. My navigation here does not compare to theirs in Chicago.

My commute to my first attachment at KRSS was only 45 minutes and to TSS only 60 minutes. I laugh that I write “only” in front of those numbers when I would have found those to be utterly unacceptable for me back home. My and my family’s quality of life is significantly and positively impacted by keeping most of our lives’ activities with a 1.5-mile radius of our home. I realize that we are fortunate in that regard.

Another observation I’ve made while getting off the train at Woodlands and heading to my bus is that I’m the only white person moving through the crowds of people. At the Tampines stop, I was one of a few. And at the Clementi stop, there were a few more. Most of the white/European population is closer to the city center. We didn’t know that when we picked our apartment. I was told to find something central and I assumed that it was for ease in commute to all the school locations.  
The northern part of the city is much less developed than the southern part. I imagine that it’s for historical reasons and that the seaports were the main economic drivers for many decades. Those ports are still mostly south and central, hence the population and development concentration there. The first time I rode the redline all the way around its loop, I was shocked at how many trees there were and how many fewer high rises there were, compared to most regions around the green line, which is the oldest line in the city and runs East-West through downtown and stays mostly south. 

In a previous post, I’ve commented on being in an ethnic minority group for the first time in my life. As the only white person, or one of a few,  for miles around, I know that my experience of being in the minority does not compare to those who do that regularly in the US. If anyone ever believed that white privilege doesn’t exist, I can assure them that it does – even when whiteness is not the majority. I know that it’s far easier for me in my light skin to be among darker-skinned folks than it is for one dark-skinned person to be among all whites. I wish that weren’t true, but it is.

Back to life on the bus/train…I’m doing my best to embrace this life of spending nearly 20% of my waking hours on a train or bus. I read when I can find a seat. I catch up on emails that arrive from US folks when I’m sleeping. I do most of my facebooking and tweeting then, too. While sitting on the 901 and 963 to AST now, I’ve written this entire blog post. I can’t say that I’m productive all the time, but I’m keeping my eyes and mind open while I move about this spectacular city.