WHILE the title may be enticing enough to make you pause and read this, you might not expect the city I am about to mention: Singapore.
For someone who visited Singapore recently, I have always thought of it as a beautiful country, at least from my perspective.
Today, Singapore feels different from the Singapore I remember visiting almost 10 years ago. It has transformed tremendously, not just through its skyline, architecture and beautiful landscapes, but also in the way the city seems to encourage people to live.
And when I say “beautiful”, I am not referring only to the things we can see. There is also something beautiful about its food culture, public spaces and, perhaps most interestingly, the way people seem to live their everyday lives.
During my recent visit, I had less than 24 hours in Singapore, yet I found myself constantly observing the little things happening around me.
Part of me was also trying to validate what I had seen in Netflix’s ‘Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones’, which explores some of the world’s longest-living communities and the habits and environments that contribute to longevity. Singapore was also featured in the documentary.
The more I walked around Singapore, the more I realised that a healthy lifestyle is not always about individual discipline. Sometimes, the environment around us simply makes healthier choices easier.
And here’s why.
I am not someone who naturally wakes up in the morning to go for a walk. Yet somehow, Singapore had the magic to make me want to do exactly that.
It was a weekend morning, and almost every road I took seemed to come with its own stream of joggers and cyclists, whether around the CBD, residential areas or along the waterfront.
Even at night, I spotted people running around Marina Bay, and there was something comforting about it. Nobody seemed to be making a big statement about exercising. They were simply doing it.
As I strolled around the city, my friends and I found ourselves talking about how good Singapore’s city planning seemed to be. The infrastructure appeared to encourage people to move naturally as part of their everyday lives.
In Singapore, you walk to the MRT. From the MRT, you walk to your destination through malls, hawker centres, parks and neighbourhoods. Owing to the fact that public transport is so accessible, getting around without a car becomes surprisingly easy.
Of course, taking a Grab is always an option, but the cost can quickly add up. More importantly, the city itself makes walking practical.
By the end of that one day, I had clocked around 12,000 steps without deliberately setting out to exercise.
That got me thinking.
How often do we walk? Or rather, how many of us struggle to find 30 minutes to exercise, yet spend hours sitting because our environment allows us to?
In fact, if you ask someone around you how they would get somewhere nearby, chances are they would suggest driving or taking a Grab, even when the destination is actually quite close.
So maybe the question is not always, “Why aren’t we walking enough?” Instead, the question should be, “Have we designed our lives to move enough?”
Another lesson from the Blue Zones documentary that stayed with me is the importance of community.
And Singapore’s hawker centres and food courts are a wonderful example of how food can become much more than food.
They become places to connect, places to communicate and places where relationships are maintained through something as simple as sharing a meal.
Even on a weekend morning, the hawker centre was alive with joggers and cyclists stopping for breakfast, neighbours gathering around tables and friends meeting over coffee.
In just one glance, you could see different generations sharing the same space, eating, chatting and catching up on each other’s lives.
More often than not, we think of communication as something that requires intention, from a meaningful conversation, a planned gathering or deliberately setting aside time to catch up.
However, some of our most important conversations happen simply because our environment gives us the opportunity to have them.
It could be as simple as walking to the MRT, having a cup of coffee at a kopitiam or making small talk while waiting for food.
These moments may seem insignificant, but over time, they become the threads that keep relationships together.
Certainly, I am not saying Singapore has discovered the perfect way to live, nor am I suggesting that every city should simply copy Singapore.
In fact, there are places closer to home that remind me of the same thing. I still miss those mornings having breakfast at a kopitiam, where a simple plate of noodles or a cup of coffee can easily turn into a long conversation with friends or family.
Some places within Malaysia already have these ingredients. All we need to do is recognise their value.
I left Singapore after less than 24 hours, but somehow came away with much more than a list of places I visited or food I ate.
I came away thinking about how much our surroundings influence who we become.
We often talk about living healthier and more meaningful lives as though it is entirely an individual responsibility. But what if the environment we live in either makes these things easier or harder?
Maybe that is the bigger lesson I took away from Singapore. A good city does not merely give us somewhere to live. It can give us an environment that encourages us to live better, and perhaps even to communicate better.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at Shirley.suat@gmail.com.
