A man who lived in a Singapore forest for 30 years | Hacker News Reader

A man who lived in a Singapore forest for 30 years

bbc.com

73 pointscaaqil46 comments

This is supposed to be heartwarming story but I'm personally a bit shocked that this 79 year old man now has to share a 1-room flat with another man (after 30 years of living alone) and has to work as a driver and doing some other low-wage jobs to sustain himself at that age. Give this man a garden.

The Singapore government’s attitude is everyone has to contribute to the best of their abilities.

If you’re destitute, HDB will rent you a cheap 2 room apartment for $20/month. But you will have a roommate and you’ll be expected to pay your rent on time.

The universal healthcare is paid for out of employment contributions (heavily subsidized for low income folks) and each visit costs money. If you’re destitute you’ll get an even higher level of subsidy, but you’ll be expected to pay some token amount. Cant afford that? Appeal to the hospital which has a special fund which can help (after a thorough determination of your financial status).

He's already 79, which is older than the average man in a rich country lives. How about when he's 89 or 99?

Is there no retirement age?

There is, but its difficult to gague if people work to live or live to work when they reach retirement. Alot of the taxi drivers are really old. But speaking to them I've had a couple say they retired, got bored and took up taxi driving. While others say their CPF is too low and they need to continue working to support their family.

Sing pension funds last at most 15-20 years for most of people of his generation without white collar job.

People are expected to only "semi"-retire

You are supposed to fund it yourself with a forced savings account. It works provided you earned enough in your working years, didnt get too sick, didnt buy a too expensive flat.

There are legions of elderly workers who sell tissues in food courts to live who dont have enough saved. They have access to subsidized healthcare and apartments but they are still scrabbling for pennies to keep their head above the water.

It's an interesting approach in that the elderly arent completely hung out to dry but they're expected to still participate in a rat race and be subjected to market discipline albeit in a lower gear.

Macroeconomically, by expanding the labor pool it helps keep a lid on inflation. Hawker food, taxis, cleaners, etc. are all very cheap in SG.

That's so sad. Most of humanity is from hand to mouth through out their lives. Never having the luxury of doing nothing.

There should be something beyond democracy to make people less of cogs in a machine. As it stands all its doing is perpetuating intolerable levels of inequity where some have enough that their next 100 generations don't have to do anything and others don't know where their next meal will come from.

Democracy is a straight jacket where rich get security and poor gets the stick and nothing can be done to change the status quo.

There was a party in the 1950s Singapore who said things along these lines. They were unceremoniously tossed in prison in a political crackdown, but they still left a long lasting imprint on the country despite constant attempts to exorcize their ghost.

HDBs exist largely because it was an idea of theirs that was popular and because Lee Kuan Yew was afraid of their popularity. Officially, though, it happened because of LKY's "pragmatism".

That’s the miracle of Singapore. Opposition made inelegible through bogus tax fraud charges, elderlies working at McDonalds, bus drivers paid differently depending of their ethnicity and forcibly deported when they strike, executions every Thursday, canning still part of the penal code, first ranked exams deciding your education tracks at six, everything is fine as long as the financial industry keeps happily churning benefits. A true paradise on earth.

Eh, token visit pay is good. Otherwise system gets clogged by old people who come up with fake issues just to come talk to nurses and doctor. Which is a serious issue as well. But it should be addressed by community centers where lonely people can meet other people

In Norway for the same reason one is supposed to pay for a doctor. That amount is limited to about 250 USD per year, anything above that is covered by the state. Still it is quite effective to prevent visiting a doctor for trivial issues.

And it is not only elderly people who just want to chat to a doctor. When I was a student a girl from the university told that she invented symptoms just to visit a doctor who was handsome and cute.

Norways healthcare system is one of the most expensive in Europe. Far more so than e. g. in the UK with no copay, and one of only a couple to occasionally compete with the US on high cost...

On the other hand, because of the need for a medical certificate [1] in most conventional companies (there's even a centralised system for this [2]), students and workers often have to clog up the healthcare system just to prove that they're ill.

[1] https://www.sma.org.sg/UploadedImg/files/Publications%20-%20...

[2] https://www.mc.gov.sg/

What would you do instead? If someone says he's ill, trust him? :) But someone is paying for sick days, right? :) At least in my countries sick days are covered (first 3? days by employer, then the state). Naturally paper trail is necessary to avoid abusing the system.

Back in my school days, for some time parents-written sick note was accepted up to 5 days. So many kids had vacation pictures to show after being „sick“.

I don't think there is a best way, but something like 1-2 sick days every 3 months without documentation would sound reasonable to me.

If I'm far too sick to work in a white-collar job, I'm probably not in a good state to drag myself down to a doctor either.

That'd be like checking average body temperature of the hospital and declaring everybody healthy since it's 36.6.

Many people won't need get sick for years and just use those sick days as extra holidays. Because why would you let this go to waste :) But those who do get ill, most likely will be off for more than 1-2 days at a time.

Do you have a source for this or know how prolific this was?

> Give this man a garden.

No developed country cares about man this much.

“Give this man a garden.”

He still has his garden at gets up at 3 a.m. so he can go check on it every day.

The news here is that there's a forest in Singapore. I thought the space inside Changhi airport must be the only jungle left.

Actually there is TONS of forest in Singapore, it is literally a city in a garden.

Plenty of forest, but relatively little forest away from well marked trails, urban developments and authorities that don't think people should be living in forests.

Indeed. “Urban forest” is probably the best descriptor.

To give you a sense - Golden Gate Park in SF is 5km wide (East to West) which is 10% of the width of the entire island of Singapore.

Go look at Singapore on Google maps. There doesn't seem to be much, and all of it has marked trails. Are you sure there's "tons"? I admit I thought it had much more.

There's one beside my flat, even.

https://media.karousell.com/media/photos/products/2020/12/2/...

There is quite a lot of natural forest in Singapore, although you’re never far from the roar of a highway.

Singapore has very little primary forest left, it was almost all cut down for plantations in the British colonial era. But since independence they're done a pretty decent job of reforesting, and in the tropics it doesn't take long at all to go from a field back to an impenetrable jungle.

Yep, wild monkeys, civet cats and monitor lizards are regulars outside our living room window in a fairly dense wild rainforest.

Had a big green snake in downstairs in the garden.

Much to the disdain of virtually every male between 18 and 20 in Singapore, there remains a large amount of jungle in Singapore. Muddy, sticky, often stormed in jungle.

I assume your are referring to the land used by the military?

Pretty much. Most of the conscripts will rapidly realise that there is still plenty of jungle in Singapore.

Related story: A Maine (US) hermit lived in the forest for nearly 30 years.

https://www.gq.com/story/the-last-true-hermit?printable=true

And the related HN post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993

Also Masafumi Nagasaki:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtBePnUOZU

I remember reading this when it came out and from time to time I catch myself thinking about this man's life in the woods.

> "Mr Oh was stopped by officials and found to be trading without a licence"

The guy is living alone in a forest and he still can't escape the collective insanity in the few brief interactions he has with society.

Trading without a license... That's BS... Soon you will need a license to take a shit.

It is generally not in society's best interest to have random people squatting on the sidewalk selling random foods, which is why basically every developed country has a licensing system.

That might be a partial reason why licensing is required, but if we're being intellectually honest, taxes and fees play a very large part (larger?) in why a society (read: government) enacts licensing laws. Surely safety is a factor, but it's unfair to have a licensing conversation without acknowledging the cynical side.

I do not agree with this. Some level of chaos adds charm and authenticity to the place. Not allowing people to do what they want (provided that it doesn't physically hurt anyone) is a suppression of freedom and culture. One of the most wonderful things about south east Asia are the people selling random things on the sidewalk.

Life is chaos and we should embrace it, incorporate it, not hide it.

> Not allowing people to do what they want (provided that it doesn't physically hurt anyone) is a suppression of freedom and culture. One of the most wonderful things about south east Asia are the people selling random things on the sidewalk.

I don't think it makes sense to treat the various countries in Southeast Asia, which differ on some fundamental values, as a whole.

The social contract for most Singapore residents supposedly trade individual freedoms for physical and economic safety.

Singapore actually has surprising amount of nature (for a dense city state). Big forests are in the north but even in the south there's this coastal hiking trail that mostly stays within the jungle, with occasional parks/gardens etc. It took me more than 4 hours to walk it all.

http://trimread.org/articles/68314

Reduces page load from 6 MB to 45 KB.

I noticed you posted trimread on another post (from CNN) so I wanted to mention two things: (1) on this site the images and captions have vanished, and (2) on the other post, several links have [Trim] appended, which made it slightly harder to read.

This story is so incomplete. I hope someone actually does a deep dive on this man’s life some day.

Consider me surprised since it is _illegal_ to be sleeping on the streets/“homeless”

Strictly speaking, it is illegal [1], but not a crime punishable with a fine or jail term.

[1] https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/DPA1989

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