The ravages of disease has burnt off many of our old ways and will bring new things to come. My generation saw the death of the home land-line telephone and the office fax, ushered pagers in and out. I am the very first generation of digital natives, when I joined the workforce, emails are already a way of life, but the generation before me still needed superiors to approve before emails are sent. It is during my young adulthood when credit cards become an essential mode of payment. My generation saw air travel become banal and commonplace. Now, a new age dawns on my generation due to Covid.
I have always placed a premium on space and bought the biggest home that my money could afford. During this season of WFH, I have a private study the size of a proper bedroom to carry out my work. There is enough room for a single sized mattress where I lie on whenever I need a nap or when I am on war-mode. It gives me the peace and privacy to facilitate maximum concentration and creativity. Not everyone is as fortunate as me, I know of people who have gone into the lockdown without as much as a study desk, citing lack of space as a reason. Reluctant resignation to shrinking home sizes is a development of our society for the worse. It represents several steps backwards whereas our country should be advancing with time. After covid, the importance of residential size would be reinstated. We would look at pantries masquerading as kitchenettes with disdain. We will frown on bedrooms of substandard sizes. We would write off homes lacking home office space with disdain. The absurdity of shoebox-sized apartments will become glaringly self-evident. We do not want to be struck by cabin fever when a next lockdown occurs. If it has happened, it will happen again.
Society would place more premium on home decor than ever before, as this is where we will spend a lot of time. For those of us who can afford it, we would aspire to a hotel-like experience at home by upgrading our home-ware. We would demand more of practical and technologically fanciful kitchen gadgets, as home cooking and baking enjoy renaissance. We would increase purchase of exercise-from-home equipment.
The way in which our recreation takes place would change. Cinema theatres, already a sunset industry, will die out, consolidate or reinvent themselves. Netflix, already a killer of networks, will reign supreme. We would become more sceptical of gyms, at least, among those of us who are not die-hard or hard-core. As these lock-down days convinces us that life goes on and perhaps even better when it is spent inside the house, we would exercise greater selectivity in the places of recreation places we go to, whether it is a cafe or a restaurant. The F&B industry has to offer more in terms of experience and ambience than ever. Staycations would no longer make sense, as we have had a taste that sedentary recreation can well be conducted at home. The foreign tourist will no longer be greeted wholeheartedly as a welcomed wanderer, but will be viewed with a degree of wariness.
I sigh to contemplate that my generation has seen the last of the physical handshake. This social etiquette will be relegated to antiquity. I wonder what the masters and mistresses of etiquette would re-introduce in its place.
We would become more suspicious of other physical beings, and rightfully so. I may belong to the last generation to see air travel as casual and frequent. Days where public transport is necessarily crammed and passengers press onto one another, squeezing shoulder to shoulder may be gone for good. Post-war, betterment in medical care had made the world oblivious to the threats posed by crowds in terms of sanitation and disease-control. Now, we are regaining our awareness that the stranger in proximity is a risk. We realise that commuting is itself a wasteful drain on energy and resources and will seek to minimise it.
As WFH forces all of us to work remotely, it becomes clear that technology can supplant physical presence in many situations. Office space face a dire existential threat. Video conferencing software will become a permanent fixture in all work settings.
On the other hand, physical spaces that support the new virtually-conducted economy will flourish. Data centres will thrive, logistics centres and providers will continue to boom. When we realise that we can shop from home efficiently and securely, e-commerce is killing physical retail. Physical retail must attain e-commerce outreach as a matter of life and death.
Shopping centres have to re-invent themselves to offer that can neither be remote nor conducted at home. As department stores fade away into history, shopping centres will host services like physical massage therapy, beauty services (nail, face, spa), hair grooming. They will house shops selling high-end products like jeweller y, products that are best experienced in a tactile manner such as skincare, toiletries and cosmetics, or intimate items such as lingerie. F&B, which have grown in presence in shopping malls over the past decade, will increase its dominance. One thing I am truly looking forward to see is change in the dining format in shopping malls. Due to high rental, tables in an average F&B outlet are situated unacceptably close to one another, flouting desired standards of personal space. In many entry level eateries, customers are giving tiny stools to sit and discouraged from lingering. When department stores die out, the additional space could be used for enhanced F&B experience.
Covid tilts us towards a Brave New World scenario by accelerating death of the hard currency. I call it ominous because it is supplanted by digital cash, which leaves us open to surveillance. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I fear the dark. When the eyes are hidden in the dark and you are the one out in the open, you become the prey. There is nothing in the least interesting about the mundane things that I spend on. From my recent purchases, anyone spying on me can only conclude that I am one very basic Singaporean woman. Over the Covid period, here are the list of things I bought online:
- skipping rope for home exercise
- Sulwhasoo skincare products
- vitamins from iHerb
- two jars of chocolate spread
- a pair of binoculars to admire the scenery from my window
Yet, wouldn't it be nicer if no tracks are left behind?
