The Avoid Deck

A term that I have added to my vocabulary since arriving in Singapore is “void deck.” For you newcomers, this is not what you might think. A void deck is not the level on a ship where you find the toilets. Nor does the term derive from Star Trek: “What it’ll be today, Scotty -- the holodeck or the void deck?” Rather, it is the name for that breezy expanse that is the ground floor of many HDB apartment blocks.

I may be mistaken, but I believe the motivation for creating such open areas was to provide a meeting place for the local community. There may have been a concern that when people moved from kampongs to HDB flats, there would be less contact and a consequent deterioration of social life. The void deck would then provide a place for people to hang out, meet and mingle.

Whatever the reason, I know for sure that void decks are regularly called into service for that great rite of passage -- The Wedding.

My condo is bounded on three sides by HDB flats, and a morning walk will sometimes take me past a void deck bustling with much unloading, cooking and arranging in preparation for a wedding reception or some other celebration. I’ve noticed that the sound system is set up and tested early, reflecting the importance of music for the festivities.

That’s because, as I’ve learned the hard way, Singaporeans love to sing. Which is great in itself. Most people in the West don’t sing enough. Singing per se is not my problem. My problem is volume. Loudness. Decibels. The unremitting pounding on my eardrums unleashed by singer after singer from the reverberating void deck, now transformed into The Boom Box from Hell; The Concrete Concusser; The Impossible to Avoid Deck.

So far as I can tell, the music at a Singaporean wedding is considered a flop unless it can be heard in Johor Baru. I’ll bet that one or two hours before the celebrations begin, an uncle, brother, cousin or friend heads over to sit on the shore on the Malaysian side. Someone back at the void deck cranks up the music to an ear-splitting blare, and then phones the relative across the Strait.

“Can you hear it?”
“Mmm…nah.”
“Wait…OK, I doubled the volume. Can you hear now?
“Yeah! Great!”
“What? Say again? I can’t hear you! The music’s too loud!”

Having determined the appropriate assault from the loud-speakers, the party can begin. The nice thing about Singaporean weddings is that it's a time to make the tone-deaf members of the family feel accepted. So for the next four or five or ten hours, no one between Johor and Bintan can escape the off-key warblings of every musically challenged relative, right out to 14th cousins.

This may be useful in helping ships to navigate through fog in the Strait of Malacca, but because my apartment is a lot closer, I feel like I’m at the wedding myself. More accurately, I feel like I’m inside a loudspeaker at the wedding. Since this makes me a de facto participant, I think I have the right to head over and say, “Gosh, all this singing’s given me an appetite. Any left-overs? Can I kiss the bride? Strangle the karaoke guy?” But I don’t. Nobody would hear me anyway. Instead, I take it for a while, then barricade myself in the living room, shove towels under the door, plug my ears, and sing anything I can remember. Probably "Silent Night".

Something similar happens at West Mall when the floor of the cavernous central space is turned over to a stage from which one man -- a lone, sadistic singer -- attempts to render hundreds of shoppers permanently deaf. I’m never sure what the occasion is, though I suspect there is at least one national “Make the Customer Suffer Day.” Being inside the shopping mall, it’s more difficult for the sound to reach Johor. That little problem is easily overcome by turning up the volume even louder than at the wedding. As a result, the singer’s voice now batters the walls and balconies at every level with an atomizing barrage that makes you long for the peace and quiet of a jack-hammer at a rock concert.

At first glance, you think some shoppers are enjoying it, because people on all four floors are leaning over the railings and looking down toward the stage. But I think they’re desperately warning the guy that if he doesn't stop, they’ll jump.

I pity the store clerks who are bound to stay at their posts while their eardrums turn to tofu. I wonder how they restrain themselves from lynching the malicious crooner. Maybe they console themselves with the thought that it’s only a matter of time till they exact their revenge. At the next wedding, they are the ones who will be holding the microphone.

Mark Featherstone is a Canadian and a Professor at the School of Biological Sciences at Nanyang Technological University. He will come to your wedding if you let him sing.