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S’porean in Yishun Revives ‘Kampung Spirit’ By Delivering Food To Neighbours At No Extra Cost

Boon Hun

2018-10-04 , 11:11 am

Last Updated on 2020-12-01 , 12:10 pm

Ask any Singaporean on the street and they’ll likely tell you that Singapore doesn’t have the “kampung spirit” anymore.

But is that true?

Well, this one man might just prove you wrong.

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S’porean Delivers Food To Neighbours For Free

Meet James Chen, a 37-year-old resident of an executive condominium, Signature, in Yishun.

A Senior Marketing Manager by day, his sideline involves him delivering food to his neighbours at his executive condominium and a nearby executive condominium, The Criterion, at no extra charge.

That’s right, free delivery for his neighbours whenever he’s able to.

He Started This From A Whatsapp Chat Group

A self-professed foodie, he travels around Singapore often in search of good food.

Back in July, he had started a Whatsapp group chat with his neighbours to share about food and related stuff.

But pretty soon, he realised that while members of the group chat were excited about food, they did not really have the time to travel for good food like he does.

Which is when he decided, Hey, I should deliver food to them instead!

And The Best Part? He’s Not Doing It For Extra Cash

He merely charges them the amount he paid to get the food, no more. And his reasoning for doing so is pretty awesome.

He said, “Since I am already in the queue, I might as well offer to buy food for my neighbours to save them the time of queueing up.”

One of his neighbours, 26-year-old Cindy Chan, said that there are a lot of mothers in the area that is stuck at home looking after the kids or pregnant and unable to venture far.

It doesn’t help that the executive condominiums are not located near a shopping mall, and the nearby food court doesn’t have a lot of options too.

It’s All in The Spirit of Neighbourliness

Now, most might’ve thought that it’s easy for him to do so. He admitted it’s not. Once, he had to bring back 30 packets of food for his neighbours.

According to YES 933 this morning, a neighbour allegedly WhatsApp the radio station and said that 30 packets is the maximum he’ll take, and he’ll be the one who decides what food to dabao.

They’ll then collect it from the “void deck” (so no, he didn’t deliver to each unit lah – that one is called Foodpanda or Deliveroo).

Hard work? Yeah, but he’s more than happy to do it anyway.

“After all, these people are my neighbours.”

By doing this, he hopes to share good food with his neighbours who are unable to venture far for various reasons.

“Food is as common a language to Singaporeans as Singlish is.”

Now, imagine if every Singaporean was like him, Singapore’s going to go through a golden era.

#MakeYishunGreatAgain

(Article continues below) Xing Xing is a 34-year-old Singaporean lady who decides to meet up with an online friend she found in Facebook. But it turns out that he’s not what he seems to be: Prepare boxes of tissue and watch the saddest Singapore Facebook love story here:

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But there’s something to be learned from Mr Chen:

Most of the time, the fact that kampung spirit doesn’t exist in your area isn’t because nobody wants to be friendly with each other.

It’s just that no one wants to start the ball rolling.

After all, it takes two hands to clap, no?

So when you go home today, just say hi to your neighbour as you pass by their gate. Maybe a couple of months down the road, we’ll be writing about you and your revival of the kampung spirit.

And by the way, did you realize that new HDBs now have names, much like condos? Bet you didn’t know that the objective is actually to create this kampung spirit?

According to HDB, the name is “to create local identities that residents can relate to and foster neighbourliness.”

Cool, isn’t it?

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