EDITOR'S NOTE: We've received feedback from the residents whose comments we previously featured in our article. We thank them for their feedback and have since opted to remove their personal details to protect their identities.

A new DBSS project called Pasir Ris One is getting all the brickbats despite its minimalistic, back-to-basics design (read: built like rental flats) and progressive initiatives (read: overhead gas vents and malleable grills).

The naysayers seem to be missing out on one thing: its acronym. It's PRO for a reason, you know.

Tuesday evening saw National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan telling the media that there are "more positives than negatives" if more Singaporeans can be given the opportunity of staying in HDB towns.

Because, as we all know, living in high-rise apartments is "part and parcel of a Singaporean way of life".

Like Minister Khaw, let's look on the bright side of life, as we show you 10 wonderful things you'll gain by living at Pasir Ris One.

1. Increased motivation to lose weight

Specially-designed 1.2-metre corridors between units motivate you not only to slim down in order to fit between open gates from opposite units, but also encourage neighbourly cohesion and camaraderie (kampong spirit), when you have to coordinate the opening of your respective gates to ensure they do not crash noisily into each other.

Level up and challenge yourself with City View in Boon Keng:

2. Protection from fires at BBQ pits for children and shorter people:

Intelligently-built common barbecue pits, according to socio-political site TheOnlineCitizen, comes with a safety feature - a height of 1.3 metres.

This is to ensure that children and shorter adults will be protected from the danger of excessive heat or burning from the fire or coals - they will not be able to cook any food on it.

3. Convenient escape route: O$P$ and still be able to escape your house easily

In the untimely event of a lockdown of your gates and front door by an angry Ah Long (loanshark), all you have to do is bend open your balcony grilles to leave the house when you need to. Problem solved!

Also effective, especially on the first and second-floor units, when you forget to bring your house keys out of the house and get locked outside. Simply pull apart and hop in.

Oh, did we forget to explain why we mentioned the second floor too? The grilles on the first floor are low and horizontal, providing a nifty ladder for any random person you to climb up to reach the second floor balcony. Brilliant!

4. Your very own smoking area (for one):

What was promised:

What was delivered:

Smokers rejoice! You no longer need to scurry all the way down the 1.2-metre-wide corridor and down the lift to the ground floor to light up. No more second-hand smoke for your loved ones too as this nifty balcony is only good for one!

It makes the guys miss National Service and in camp training more — you long for the yellow box maisonette offered by the Singapore Armed Forces.

If no one in the house smokes, there are other perks to this — you'll spend more time fulfilling your national duty of making babies instead of sitting outside at the balcony with your spouse wasting time.

Also, consider the fact that evidently, unlike other DBSS projects, the balcony is totally NOT robbing you of your total home floor space!

5. The opportunity to better trust your neighbours — and indeed, anyone who comes by:

One developer obviously had the homeowner in mind — by generously leaving the buyer's gate and door wide open, probably all night long, he or she is maximising the amount of paint-smell molecules that can escape through the entrance. This also likely accelerates the paint-drying process.

6. Increased opportunities to befriend the folks at lift maintenance

Because we're all about building our forgotten kampong spirit, right? What better way to do that than for the lifts to spoil as often as twice a week so we have to keep calling lift maintenance for fixing?

We should therefore forge firm friendships with everyone who can fix problems we encounter — this will happen naturally, from the sheer frequency of these incidents. These would likely include people from the town council, lift maintenance, the cleaners and perhaps even the garbage collectors.

7. Cannot find the lift maintenance guy? You can keep fit!

At the rate that lifts are breaking down, who needs gym memberships?

Pasir Ris One residents will without a doubt be the fittest residents in Pasir Ris — we're sure they'll come up tops in any community sporting competitions, anytime.

8. Learning to accept imperfections in people, and things, and workmanship

We agree that for a brand new home, this isn't too impressive a sight.

But hey, what's better than the sheer hopelessness of realising that there's just about nothing you can do to make the developer rectify it to your satisfaction, transitioning into a gradual resignation and acceptance of the massive dent in your CPF your fate?

9. Get better acquainted with nature — ants, cockroaches and the occasional rat

DBSS projects like this give you great opportunities to reconnect with your favourite household pests — superficially-covered gaps and holes between the floor and the wall that can be scratched off easily and without any tools will facilitate excitement-filled parties for you and them.

10. Cracks on your home's brand-new ledge remind you to live life on the edge

(A resident has requested that we remove his photo)

Of course, one would necessarily expect, in line with point number 8, that a brand-new home might come fitted with cracks in your balcony ledge.

But hey, obviously it was planned way ahead with you, the owner, in mind — remember to live life on the edge; take risks, dare to be different!

Because the truth is, you can just as easily die at home as you might in the African outback.

Bonus point 11. Looks like a rental flat development, you say? Of course it does!

This is of course planned. It's a new design! It's called Minimalist Retro and it's based on the latest housing trend to take Singapore by storm: small units with big problems.

*This article previously mistakenly cited a photo of the corner gates of two units as being taken from The Peak in Toa Payoh. It has been revised to reflect its accurate location of City View in Boon Keng. We thank Twitter user @harahyuna for alerting us to the error.

Top photo from DBSS Pasir Ris One Facebook page.

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