INTERVIEW WITH INTERNATIONAL WORKER

To further look beyond the case study, interview was conducted to find out the problems of collective living space and how they solved them.

Interviewee's profile:

• Name: Lai Xue Er
• Age: 19 years old
• Sex: Female
• Race: Chinese

Xue Er is a worker who comes from Kluang, Malaysia. She earns money by herself for furthering her study as she wants to ease the burden of her parents. In order to save enough money for furthering her study, she has to rent a room which is around SGD350 per month and living in cooperative. So rental is the most important thing that she will consider before renting a room. Finally, her rental meets her budget. She is currently living and sharing a room with others two people in Ang Mo Kio. Living in cooperative has both its pros and cons. Pros can be share rental and resources, improve the skill for conflict resolution, stronger social networks and others. Cons include conflict, hygiene, noise, limited space and others. 

 However, PRIVACY is the most difficult problem that she faced when living in cooperative and she is not prefer to live with owner as there was a time, the owner went into her room without permission. However, there's a rule in tenant contract shows that the owner must not check or simply go into her room. She was angry but she tried to control her temper. She talked to her nicely and then the owner never go into her room after all. Also, she has faced this problem from her roommate too. Her roommate has opened her letter without permission. She felt that this was a sign of disrespect of any way. So to be on the safe side, she has decided to buy a lock catch to lock her drawer and kept her valuables in it.