A tomato vs a house: the giant Singaporean blind spot

Hello guys, I have recently traveled to Finland for a holiday and instead of going to the capital city Helsinki, I was actually visiting the ski resort of Himos which is in a remote part of rural south-central Finland. The day after I returned from my holidays, I spoke to my parents in Singapore over Skype who asked me about my trip to Finland. Obviously, they have never been to Finland and one of the topics they asked me about was food, since it was something they could relate to. It's pointless for me to try to describe what skiing was like to them but I could tell them about the food. So I explained that using AirBNB, I could rent a holiday cottage which comes with a well-stocked kitchen, then I can go to the supermarket, buy what I like to eat and prepare my own meals. When you're in that part of rural Finland, your nearest restaurant may be a half an hour drive away and I like that option. I then mentioned that fresh fruit and vegetables in your typical Finnish supermarket are expensive - hardly anything is grown locally, nothing can be grown locally in the cold, harsh winters and so everything is imported. I paid 1 euro (about S$1.52) for a big tomato in the supermarket, it was a nice tomato but it was certainly a lot more expensive than what I would have paid in London, where typically I would pay £0.60 (S$1.09) for a pack of six tomatoes. My father then went off on a rant on how he could buy a whole kilogram of tomatoes for S$1.50 in Singapore and how that's so much cheaper than in Finland. I explained that for him, the tomatoes were probably grown in a southern Malaysia state like Johor and thus only had a very short journey to his local market, whereas in Finland, their imported tomatoes have to come from much, much further away, from a warmer country such as Spain or Morocco. 

I explained another facet of life in Finland to my parents: the population of Finland is 5.5 million but it has a land mass of 338,440 square km - that means that despite having a population slightly smaller than that of Singapore's 5.7 million, it is 465 times larger. However, if you were to visit the big cities like Helsinki, Turku, Tampere and Oulu, then you will find modern apartment blocks similar to those in Singapore. It is quite a different picture when you go to the countryside: I was staying in the tiny village of Längelmäki which is in the Central Finland region - it covers a land area of 19,950 square km and has a population of 275,000. That population is similar to that of a HDB town in Singapore like Jurong West except of course, the land area of Jurong West is just 9.87 square km. This means that the population density of Jurong West is about 2,000 times higher than that of Central Finland. Oh and to make things even worse for the residents of Jurong West, this 9.87 square km covers parkland (like Jurong Central park) and only less than half of the land area (4.8 square km) is used for housing. This means much cheaper housing in Central Finland given that there's plenty of land; just driving from our holiday cottage to the ski resort in the morning, we passed through so much pristine countryside - central Finland is very empty and is mostly just forest. This means that housing is thus a lot cheaper in Central Finland than Jurong West; this shouldn't come as a surprise as Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world whilst Finland is pretty much on the other extreme. We can decide not to consume tomatoes but we need a roof over our heads, right? We all need somewhere to live, whether we're in Jurong West or Central Finland. 

So I had a look at the website of an estate agent in central Finland: prices start from just 69,000 euros (S$105,770) for an apartment of 91 square meters to 199,000 euros (S$305,050) for a massive house with four bedrooms and a garden with 179 square meters of living space (excluding the garden). I tried to look for an equivalent property in Jurong West and bear in mind, these are the results I have found at the time I am writing this (on the 3rd January 2021) so by the time you're reading this, these properties may no longer be on the market but this is just a comparison to give you an idea of the prices in Jurong West. I managed to find one which is 1000 sq ft (which is 92.9 square meters) in Boon Lay Drive and the asking price was S$545,000. For a landed property with the equivalent of 179 square meters of living space, allow me to explain what I had to do: firstly in Singapore, they include all garden/outdoor space for the land area (unlike in Finland, where they exclude it) and in the listing I found, I found one property at 156 square meters and then the next one was 203 square meters - I couldn't find a property that was approximately 179 square meters. However, both of these properties were not only on the same road (Westwood Terrace, Westville), the asking price was virtually the same (S$2.088 million and S$2.1 million) so I'm just going to use the figure of S$2.094 million for the equivalent of the house in Finland. Bear in mind that the house in Finland is a bungalow, that means you have no neighbours - you're completely surrounded by your own garden. Furthermore, you have your own separate garage for your car(s) and there is even a sauna on the property as that's a Finnish thing, oh they love their saunas in Finland as it gets very cold in the winter. Whereas the best I can do in Jurong West is a 'corner terrace', thus you still have neighbours on one side of your house. 

Allow me to now make a few obvious comparisons: firstly, the modest HDB flat in Jurong West costs more than five times the equivalent in central Finland. In fact, if you sold your HDB flat in Jurong West and moved to Central Finland, you could easily afford to buy a stunning property and still have plenty of cash left over to spend on not one, but two flats (you can collect some rent, be a landlord). Whereas on the other hand of the scale, space comes at a premium in Jurong West given how high the population density is: the landed property in Jurong West costs 6.86 times more than the equivalent in Finland. There is also very limited options for residents in Jurong West looking for higher end, bigger landed properties whereas in Central Finland, the majority of the properties on the market are houses rather than flats. One of the perks of living in Jurong West is  the great public transport system - you don't need a car, whereas in Central Finland, you're completely dependent on your private car to get around given that the population density is way too low to support any kind of public transport system. Sure there are regular bus services to take you from Jyväskylä (the biggest city in Central Finland) to the capital Helsinki 269 km away but if you want to go to the supermarket that is 5 km down the road, forget it - you're on your own: you'll need to drive or cycle (or use a taxi). However, the key reason why you would choose to live in rural Finland (as opposed to central Helsinki) is the beautiful, pristine countryside. In the summer, there are beautiful lakes to swim in, hills to climb and loads of wildlife in the forests. In the winter, the lakes freeze over and you can go skating on them, I was skiing in the local ski resort of Himos and the pictures I posted on Instagram show you how the snow transforms the whole area into a truly magical winter wonderland. The air there is so crisp and fresh as you're far away from the pollution of the city; I'm afraid I can't say the same about Jurong West in hot tropical Singapore. 

When you go to a supermarket in Central Finland, you would end up paying quite a lot more for fresh vegetables like tomatoes because none of it is grown locally. The summers in Central Finland are short and cool, the growing season is way too short to try to grow tomatoes there - as a gardener who has tomato plants in my garden, it is impossible to try to persuade your tomato plants to bear fruit once the temperature gets too low. Even the green tomatoes hanging on the vine stubbornly refuse to grow any bigger or ripen when it is just too cold, so Finland has to import tomatoes from places like Spain and France. Thus the price you would have to pay in Finland for a tomato is substantially more than in Spain or France, where the crop can be grown locally. However, given the price of property is so cheap, your average Finnish citizen can afford to pay more for their groceries than your average Singaporean in Jurong West once they have secured their first property in Finland. Your average Singaporean citizen has to spend many more years trying to clear their mortgage in order to get that first step on the property ladder compared to their counterparts in Finland and they will also have to spend a higher percentage of their income on housing. In every country, people will spend money on different things they need: so in Finland, they will have to allocate part of their household expenditure to their heating bills but in Singapore, that same money would instead be spent on air-conditioning. Thus it would be  rather misleading to simply focus on one particular item like 'tomatoes' to determine the cost of living - instead, we ought to look at the overall basket of goods that a typical citizen in the country would have to consume to then sustain a reasonably high standard of living.

But wait: we need to consume food everyday - three meals a day, whereas most people only purchase one home (well not unless you like to invest in property the way I do and build up a property investment portfolio). Thus paying more for fresh vegetables like tomatoes would be the equivalent of the death of a thousand paper cuts, given that each time you pay 1 euro for a tomato, that's one paper cut, one tiny assault on your efforts to accumulate wealth. Even if property is cheap, wouldn't having to spend so much on ordinary items like tomatoes leave your average Finnish citizen with not much left to invest in their quest to get on the property ladder? Let's deal with that thought: there are some food items which are produced locally in Finland which are extremely cheap actually. I adore Finnish blueberry yogurt which I paid just 0.95 euros (S$1.45) for 1 kg at the K-supermarket chain: blueberries grow locally in the cold, Nordic climate there and there is a local Finnish dairy industry. So when you take two local ingredients produced in abundance: milk and blueberries, then blueberry yogurt is one of the cheaply produced local food products. If you wanted to buy blueberry yogurt in Singapore, it is a lot more expensive. At Cold Storage, you can get a tub of blueberry yogurt for S$4.20 but that tub is just 160 grams so to get a whole kg of blueberry yogurt at Cold Storage Singapore, you would have to pay the S$26.25 - that's 18.1 times the price you would pay for the same product in a Finnish supermarket. I am simply stating the obvious here: locally produced food products are always going to be cheaper so Finnish people are going to eat more blueberries and fewer tomatoes - whilst Singaporeans are going to eat more pineapples and far fewer blueberries. 

Ultimately, you're only much worse off in Finland if you're addicted to tomatoes and simply have to eat fresh tomatoes as part of your every meal. Don't get me wrong, whilst I do like tomatoes, I'm quite happy to eat a range of fruits and vegetables - I'm not that fussy or demanding when it comes to my choice of vegetables. Likewise, your wallet is going to feel the pain if you insist on eating expensive imported blueberries with every meal in Singapore. However, whilst there are cheaper alternatives to tomatoes when it comes to the choice of food one consumes in Finland, there really isn't a cheaper alternative to the property market in Singapore. A HDB flat is basically the cheapest option there is in Singapore. Apart from that, the only alternative is to simply give up on this quest to get on the properly ladder and accept that you have to live with your parents all the way into your adulthood. But is that something you really want to contemplate? My nephew is an only child and he is currently only 18, but say in about ten years or so he wants to get married, how would his future wife feel if he said to her, "my parents have a really nice house, so we can live with them after we get married." Well, that would depend on whether or not his future wife can get along well with her in-laws but certainly some women would certainly balk at the idea of living with their husband's parents and they would prefer more privacy, rather than have their every move scrutinized by the in-laws. Furthermore, what is going to happen once the young couple decide to have children and need more space? A young couple in Finland would be in a much better position, being able to find a much more affordable place to start a new life, away from their parents - even if that means eating fresh fewer tomatoes.

What frustrates me of course is how my father is subject to confirmation bias: he knows virtually nothing about Finland, he certainly hasn't ever been there. He probably only knows that it is a country in Europe and he wants evidence that life in Singapore is better than life in Europe because he is a racist who really hates white people. Thus he latches onto this one very specific example of the cost of tomatoes as evidence to support his theory and ignores everything else such as the price of property in Finland or even the much shorter working hours in Northern Europe compared to Singapore. But allow me to use a very Singaporean analogy to explain the comparison: when I was in Singapore with a friend from Finland, we visited a hawker center and he was fascinated by all this delicious Singaporean hawker food and so he asked me which are my favourite noodle dishes. I told him that I really like laksa and char kway teow - he then asked me a question, "which one is nicer?" And I found it impossible to answer that question: I explained that they are different and some people prefer laksa, whilst others prefer char kway teow; it's not a case of "if you like one, you must automatically by default hate the other", you can certainly choose to like both dishes the way I do. Likewise, life in Central Finland is very different from life in Jurong West, but trying to pick one over the other, to try to judge which one is better is like trying to choose between laksa and char kway teow - it will boil down to your personal preferences and so I can make a statement like, "I prefer laksa to char kway teow" but no, I cannot categorically say, "laksa is nicer than char kway teow." 

I remember when I was strolling across a frozen lake in Tampere with my husband, he asked me the question, "could you live in a place like this, if you could work from home all the time and thus you didn't need to go to the office in London?" Without hesitating, I said yes of course - it is currently -10 degrees and we're walking across this beautiful frozen lake, what is there not to like about this winter wonderland? I would gladly live in Finland and become fluent in Finnish, Finland is so beautiful especially in the winter months. My husband laughed and he said that's the answer he had expected from me, but he couldn't possibly contemplate living in Finland as it was too bitterly cold - the winters were far too long and dark. Ironically, I have a good friend from Northern Finland whose mother loves nothing more than escaping to Gambia in Africa during the winter months in Finland. I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence: for her, sitting on a tropical beach, feeling the warm sand between her toes in January was her idea of paradise whilst my idea of paradise is Finland in the winter, where everything is frozen and I can dance on a frozen lake singing that line from 'Let It Go', "the cold never bothered me anyway." For me, you simply can't put a price on the beauty of the winter wonderland that Finland has to offer and if paying more for fresh vegetables is part of life in Finland, then I think it is a small price that is definitely worth paying. But of course, that's completely contingent on you liking the winter weather in Finland and I adore it but many people would find the winters there way too cold. There is a reason why my nickname is 'the penguin'.

Let's end by going back to that K-supermarket in Central Finland where I paid 1 euro for that tomato. Whilst I did think it was quite expensive for what was quite an ordinary looking tomato, I could afford it. Skiing holidays are never cheap to begin with and I spent a lot more on the skiing component of the holiday than on food whilst in Finland! If you want to be in a position whereby you can afford to pay for the nice things in life you desire (whether they be fancy holidays or fresh tomatoes), then the key thing is to make sure that you earn enough money so that you can say yes anything you want. Put yourself in a position where you can earn plenty of money.. A country where tomatoes are very cheap is Vietnam: you could get a single tomato for as little as 1,500 Vietnamese dong (about 5.7 euro cents only) depending on the size and quality of the tomato  and it can be even cheaper if you buy in bulk - it is of course very cheap compared to what one would pay in Finland. However, are the average working class folks in Vietnam as rich as their counterparts in Finland because tomatoes are so cheap in Vietnam? Of course not, they are a lot poorer and the standard of living in Vietnam is much lower than in Finland. Cheap tomatoes don't give you a better standard of living: quite simply, you need to earn plenty of money to allow you to buy the expensive things in life that you and your family need to have a decent standard of living. Thus it would be erroneous and misleading to simply use 'the price of tomatoes' as the benchmark to measure how good life is in a country, but that was exactly what my father did much to my frustration. Sigh? What can I do? I have learnt to just bite my tongue and ignore him and it is impossible to try to reason with a severely autistic old man like him. 

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic. How would you react to having to pay a lot more for fresh fruits and vegetables in a place like Finland? Have you ever traveled to a country where everything was very expensive? Why did my father become so obsessed with the price of a tomato in Finland - is it because he doesn't understand concepts like 'the cost of living' but he does know what a tomato is and how much he has to pay for it in Singapore? Why do Singaporeans develop blind spots when it comes to focusing on things like "the price of a tomato" whilst ignoring how expensive property is in Singapore compared to places like Finland? And if you could work 100% from home, would you like to live in Central Finland or do you prefer Jurong West? Please do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.