I got to admit, turning 31 this year really made me think a lot on the community around me. I am married, and thinking of having kids. I am also holding a full time economist job but increasingly frustrated with the corporate life. Everytime I am back at home after work, it’s already close to 8pm. I am tired and all I want to do is just take a shower and lie in bed. By the time it’s 11pm, I am back in bed, trying to sleep and wake up at 6.30am the next morning to repeat the cycle.

There’s just no … sense of community. This 85-year old Harvard study on happiness only had this to say about the “secret” to happiness

“Positive relationships keep us happier, healthier, and help us live longer”

I have been living in the city all my life. Technology enabled me to be connected to the world 24/7 but the more I was connected, the more lonely and lost I felt in the world. I have a very close relationship with my wife and family, and periodically meet up with my friends. However, that is all. I am in the rat race everyday, running the wheel constantly, until I am all burned out and tired.

Now, what does that have got to with the title on top. You see, I have always gone to this neighbourhood kopitiam near my house for breakfast and lunch since I was young. I grew up with all the uncles and aunties there, whether they were manning the stores or just regular blue-collar workers. Yes, you can picture these uncles still wearing checkered shirts and baggy pants on, held together by a belt and combed hair.

Coming here invokes a sense of nostalgia and most importantly, community. Now, I do not know all these people all that well, but I regularly greet them good morning and they greet back with a smile. They were not filthy rich, at least not from what I saw but they were rich in their own ways. They seemed like they have had a hard life but it doesn’t bother them. They still laughed with each other, occasionally screaming their heads off for a Kopi or Teh C.

What was common here was that everyone seems to help each other out. The Chee Cheong Fun auntie will go over to the chicken rice stall to help scoop chicken soup for customers, and help them clear their dishes. The chicken rice uncle will go over to the pork noodle shop auntie’s stall and take orders from other customers. The wantan mee auntie will help the western food uncle to put the chicken chop on top of the grill. Never have they said a word or ask for help. Everyone just naturally helped each other.

Sometimes, the regular uncles sipping coffee will even help out the stall owners to clear the dishes away and speak in a loud Hakka dialect. The aunties will keep chatting amongst each other and even to the stall owners, and occasionally bring over some produce from the Pasar to give away.

Do you know what stick out the most? They were all old. People my age are rare in the kopitiam I go to, and my wife and I are normally the only “young” people there. Most of my peers are at Cafes and upscale bakeries, sipping RM14 latte and RM10 croissants, taking Instagram photos and making TikTok reels about their experience, and going back to scrolling social media when that’s done. There’s air conditioner and calming music.

Meanwhile, back in the kopitiam, it is hot and humid. The food comes in a mess, unlike the carefully curated IG photos they could take in Cafes. I might sound like a boomer, but I prefer the good ol’ kopitiam days. My father used to just buy the Star newspaper and read there while occasionally saying hi to the people that passed through. I will look around for things to see, and the uncles and aunties around will always tease that I look chubby but proceed to shove more food onto my table.

There’s just like a sense of being brought up by a community when I was younger and it hit me harder when some of the uncles and aunties start saying “Wah, you are married already. It feels like just yesterday that you were this small”. They did watch me grow up and I watched them grow old too.

Nowadays, old style kopitiams have been replaced by gentrified Cafes and fancy eateries that look nice on the outside but feel hollow on the inside. I know, times are changing, but for the sake of our future generations, I want to recapture that sense of community that I had growing up in kopitiams. I don’t want my children to complain “Why got no air-cond? Why the food look so cheap? Daddy, can we go somewhere nicer?” and proceeds to scroll on their phones in a Cafe.