Miss Teo Jiamin will soon be bidding goodbye to Khaiseng Fish Farm, the place she calls home as the government will be reclaiming the land next July.

 

Amongst the 238 farms in Singapore, lives Miss Teo and her family who owns the local fish farm located in Lim Chu Kang. Established in 1997, the farm is the size of 3.8 acres and consists of more than 30 fish ponds. With that huge space, it created a different meaning of ‘fun’ to her.

 

“I swam in ponds, [and went to] longkang (drain)  [to] catch fish,” says Miss Teo. She would occasionally row boats with her neighbours when they were young. Now, she uses that space to unwind and plays her music aloud, as she takes in the sunset at the end of the day.

 

As far as fun goes, the 19-year-old has also been helping out around the farm for as long as she can remember. She now wakes up at eight in the morning during weekends to help with the family business. 

 

When COVID-19 restrictions were implemented, their business delivered fish to restaurants. Even though it has re-opened for visiting, business has yet to fully recover as customers have been gradually decreasing in general. 

 

The farm will be reclaimed by the government in July 2023, but Miss Teo’s parents are planning to bid for another piece of land to continue with their fish farm business. However, she says that if “they didn’t get the [bidded] land”, her parents would most likely retire.

 

Miss Teo also shared that if her parents were able to successfully own a new piece of land to continue their business, they would continue to stay on the farm while she and her brother will stay in the HDB flat. 

 

The business will soon be taken over by her older brother. 

 

Mr Teo Jia Quan, 21, is learning the ropes of managing what it means to run the aquatic business from their father, the founder of Khaiseng Fish Farm. He says that he is learning “lots of things, [like] how to manage the business monetarily and also all the mechanical aspects of the jobs, as well as the human resources”. 

 

Both siblings shared that while the environment is scenic, it is inconvenient to travel to other parts of Singapore. This is especially so for Miss Teo, as she requires the public transport to get to school.

 

“When nobody drives me out, I have to walk 30 to 45 minutes to the nearest bus-stop on weekdays,” she says. The journey to the nearest bus-stop is potentially dangerous due to the presence of fast-moving industrial vehicles, roaming wild boars and stray dogs.

 

Because of the environment she lives in, she says that there is a misconception that people think she lives in a kampong (village) with no basic electricity and clean water.

 

“I was expecting it to smell a little bad considering she lives in a fish farm but it didn’t,” says Miss Charlene Tan, 19, who has been Miss Teo’s friend since secondary school. 

She was shocked to find out how inaccessible it was to take public transport to and from the farm. 

 

However, Miss Tan recalls fondly how different of an experience it was when Miss Teo’s family hosted barbeque parties. Instead of renting barbeque pits like what people normally do, they had the whole place to themselves, which gave them more freedom to have fun.

 

Just as Miss Tan needed to get used to rural living, Miss Teo, too, had a shock when she heard the sound of toilet flushing when she went to a friend’s HDB flat.

 

As she holds onto the remaining months until she has to relocate from the farm to a HDB flat, she admits that she no longer does the things she used to do at the farm when she was younger. 

 

“But I will miss them,” she says, “letting my cats run wild, this is what I do now and what I will miss.”