Revenge of the Random Construction Work?

I build stuff in the form of software. I am quite understanding when it comes to realising that some types of work requires a little bit of extra structural stuff first before being torn down and replaced with the final bit.

But even my understanding fails when it comes to the massive amounts of rework recently in my neighbourhood.

The pillar walls of the nearby block have recently been undergoing quite a fair bit of hacking and replacement. Why that is needed, I have no idea.

Work on the inter-block covered walkways have been randomly started/stopped throughout this period, leaving the mostly metal skeleton lying about. Why that particular work schedule, I also have no idea.

The covered walkway linking my cluster of apartment blocks to the Hougang Village area across Hougang St 61 recently had its road-spanning roof mounted, while its counterpart on the other end of the same street had its removed. This particular work has been delayed for at least three times---it was supposed to have completed by last year, which got pushed to early this year, which got pushed to God knows when. Yes, I understand that ``management debt'' of bad labour control with respect to workers finally rearing its ugly head from COVID-19's complications, but I don't understand why work on it is still spotty, with no obvious completion.

Meanwhile, they somehow had time to:

1. Repave the sidewalk parallel to Hougang St 61, raising the height by about 3 cm;
2. Add a weird ``bicycle only'' lane to that said repaving, without adding appropriate lane markings for crossing points to the road crossing areas;
3. Add `p' and `q'-shaped metal barriers in pairs along some (not all) feeder walkways to the now divided pavement, restricting the available width;
4. Tear down the metal fixtures that used to comprise the hang out area closest to the opening of the Neighbourhood 6 Park;
5. Replace all the fancy cast iron garden benches with fugly rectangular stainless steel ones that had sharp ass corners;
6. Have someone shove fertiliser and water the grass that grew in between the concrete floor of the parking areas;
7. Install ``digital surveillance advertising bulletin board'' beside some (not all) ground floor elevator lobbies.

Honestly, I just don't get it. I'm not even going to play the ``请有关当局……'' card.

I'm not angry just... disappointed.

The construction process is so drawn out. If there is concrete involved, I can sort of empathise, since there are specific [weather] conditions that are needed to get the chemistry right so that the pour is of the correct form. But it doesn't seem to be the case: a lot of the ``improvement works'' seem very poorly coordinated and haphazard. At this point I cannot even tell if these ``improvement works'' are really sufficiently well thought out to actually do improvement, or is it some kind of busy work to prop certain industries/companies up.

It's at times like this that I wish I knew about the Town Council's inner workings, or more specifically, how the precinct ``improvement works'' processes are carried out. Do they take dressing from HDB, or from MND, or from the council members? If it is from the council members, do residents in these apartments have a say? If yes, how do they get their say; if not, why don't they get a say if they are really lease-hold ``owners'' of their apartments as repeatedly stated in the Housing and Development Act (Cap 129)?

Normally I'm less interested in thinking about these things out loud, going by the simple principle of ``live and let live, unless the other person's manner of living is adversely affecting mine''. And that condition was triggered with the hard-to-justify amounts of loud-ass work noise today. Battling the heat and humidity is bad enough, and now I need to deal with noise pollution as well? I mean, yes, I have noise cancelling headphones, but those are bloody hot to use in a non-air-conditioned place like where I am.

Urgh.

Speaking of non-air-conditioned, I am now wondering if the next developmental phase of public apartments under the HDB scheme will move towards having a centralised cooling system with ``sealed'' apartments by default. As the climate gets crappier in the tropics, it may prove to be more energy and space efficient to centralise the heat exchange in one place out of direct reach of individual apartment dwellers. The current way is for anyone who wants to have their unit air-conditioned will need to set up their own heat exchanger, with the hot side facing outside. But the places in which these radiators may be placed are very controlled, and often end up being an entire column of it from one floor to the next. Since hot air rises, this means that the bugger who lives on the higher floor is likely to have his/her radiator go at a much lower efficiency as compared to someon who has set up his/her radiator at the lower one. I know that the higher floors have a tendency to experience better air flow from wind, but with the construction schemes these days, all the buildings are crammed so closely that there just really isn't any such wide spaces to effect good convectional movement of heated air.

Who knows? I'm not even sure if I can live long enough for climate change to affect me to the point that a solution is desperately needed, as opposed to being ``merely'' definitely needed.

Oh, the bloody banging has stopped. Back to doing whatever I was before I decided to rant.

Till the next update.