during my teens, my mom would never ever hesitate to criticise the way i dressed or the friends i made or the things i did. most of the time it was about the way i looked - she detested my wardrobe for its ‘immodesty’. being all spaghetti straps and skin-tight tops my mom saw it as signs of my imminent future as a streetwalker.

and she told me so. everytime i was about to step out of the house to go somewhere fun and exciting, while justifying her harsh criticism with this:

it’s only because i love you and i care about you that i tell you the truth. do you think anyone else cares?

and so that was my introduction to a new aspect of my traditional harsh-love upbringing. the previous examples being caning, scaring by threats of being given away to [monsters/bad men/foreigners], expressions of affection conditional upon exam results, etc.

anyway, my upbringing isn’t the point. the point is this:

while i may be highly critical about singapore, its people, its society, its government, its politics, its policies, my criticism doesn’t stem from a superiority complex or a hatred of the country. instead it stems from my love of a place i know could be much better that it already is.

the changes i hope for Singapore are not for the purposes of making it up to par with other countries. i don’t really care about how Singapore compares to the rest of the world. i care about making Singapore better for Singaporeans. if it happens that in that process, the adoption of methods and policies already used by other countries is necessary, then so be it - what matters is that the people of Singapore benefit from it.

i feel that way because i care about the future of singapore and care about the future of singaporeans, because i’m a singaporean. and i’m sure many people feel the same way that i do. it’s never been about ‘us vs them’, ‘you’re with us or against us, or ‘if you’re not PAP you must be in the opposition’.

i do it because i love singapore and want to be proud of singapore and want to be proud to be singaporean. it’s always going to be where i call home. it’s my place of birth, where my childhood memories lie, where my instinctive language was formed. it’s where my loyalties lie, where my grandparents are buried, where my family still is and most of my friends are. and because of that, i can see the faults more clearly, feel the mistakes with greater depths, empathise with those that have fallen by the wayside in this race to the top.

and if trying to better this place i love makes me seem like a dissident, at least i’m not apathetic.

happy birthday singapore, here’s to our brilliant future.

so tell me, what’s the point in having a card centre that shares its number with FOUR OTHER SERVICES..

and telling the cardholder to call collect when its a machine operated phone-in system.

and having the SAME NUMBER for local and overseas calls.

and having a website that tells you nothing. nothing about transaction limits, nothing about the card in question, nothing nothing nothing.

i am so going to change banks when i get back to singapore.

hmm… it’s scary how easy it is to be so lazy.

i wake up, make breakfast, have a cup of tea and then a sit down (or sometimes a lie down on the couch), maybe watch the morning news programme, maybe read the papers online, maybe just do nothing but stare at the ceiling. for hours.

and then it’s lunch time, so i feel compelled to do something, and i do do something (packing, pottering, surfing the internet…) for a couple of hours, and then presto the day is almost over and it’s dinnertime.

i really don’t do very much.

but in my head it’s justified by the fact that i will most likely be working 18 hour days for the next two years, so it’s okay! i’m just using up all the free time i will not have for those two years in these 6 months.

(i am perhaps being overparanoid about my training contract hours - current trainees have indicated that the hours aren’t really all that bad *cross fingers*)

and also, when i say i’m doing nothing, i consider trying to sort out problems with my UOB card as ALOTTATHINGS - which also fills me with loathing - so for every minute spent trying to deal with UOB, i get to veg out for 3 minutes because that is really how long it takes me to recover from other peoples’ stupidity.

Nick Cohen in the Observer on blogs and the Web 2.0 phenomenon:

“Anonymity may give free reign to spluttering buffoons to write without being held to account for their words, but it also allows police officers and NHS doctors to describe the faults of the public sector without the fear of their bosses firing them. The medium’s unlimited space allows millions to drone on in blogs that no one but their friends will read, but the same lack of constraint allows professors to bring their knowledge to a general audience without adhering to the stultifying styles of academia.”

fascist america in ten easy steps.

in summary:

1. invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

2. create a prison system outside the rule of law

3. maintain a body of spies/thugs/mercenaries to terrify the population

4. set up an internal surveillance system

5. harass citizen’s groups

6. engage in arbitrary detention and release

7. target key individuals, threatening civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don’t toe the line

8. control the press

9. dissent equals treason

10. suspend the rule of law

whilst the article is discussing the state of America, what flashed through my mind while reading it was how much it applied to singapore as well.

just a few examples.

dissent equals treason. obviously, since if you’re not with them you’re against them. i mean, no one in their right mind could ever possibly think that the PAP is wrong, and if you do, then you must be a traitor. because PAP is singapore, and if you’re not in complete support of the PAP, then ergo you are not in complete support of singapore, and consequentially, must be annihilated, humiliated, exiled, jailed, etc. because there cannot be more than one way of doing things, and the PAP way is the only way. capisce?

our terrifying internal and external enemy? internally –> terrorists, racial/religious riots, economic slowdown/crash, non-PAP government. externally –> just about every neighbouring country that singapore has the (mis)fortune of sharing the seabed/airspace/waterpipes with.

control of the press? enough said.

harass citizens’ groups, and threatening key individuals. well. to fully explore this would require a week-long exposition, and there’s enough out there to google. let’s just say that it’s clear these things happen in singapore, and no one could dare deny it. if in doubt, please remove the wool over your eyes and take a look around the real world. i bet THE MAN himself would probably gleefully admit it to the public, and probably say something like ‘of course we do, how else do you think we have been able to stay in power for so long?'’

so, is singapore a fascist state? or about to be a fascist state?

i would say that it might have been, but currently it isn’t and it probably won’t descend into a fascist state in the near future. i think, deficient as it is, there is still some substance (however lip-service only it may be) to the democratic processes in singapore. on the other hand, it is obvious that there is still a very long way to go before singapore enjoys the open and civil society that it ought to be aiming for.

it’s already got the skeleton of a democracy in place, now all it needs is the fleshing out of the body.

everyone’s talking about buying flats and houses. everyone.

my friends are doing it, my classmates are doing it, the newspapers are doing it. apparently, for every 1 property that goes on the market in london, there are up to 8 people vying to put down a deposit. and, apparently, prices are rising at about £40 a day or something stupid like that.

so what am i doing about this?

am i jumping onto this flat-buying bandwagon, considering that i can get a 100% mortgage because i’m a graduate and/or a professional mortgage because i’m going to be a solicitor? am i saving up money now to put a downpayment on a nice 1/2-bedroom flat in east/south london? am i?

well, i’m paying rent to my landlord who owns at least 3 properties around east london, that’s what. and i’ve decided that it’s not that bad a thing to be doing right now.

see, i refuse to jointly own a property, so i’ll have to buy a 2-bed property to rent out one room to collect half the mortgage payment. and until what i have to pay on my mortgage is less than what i pay for rent on a similar property, i’m not going to drown myself in all this mortgage/housebuying/debt malarkey. and i’d only buy in london (i don’t believe in commuting), so my market is already very small. and the choices aren’t exactly great for my price range. unless, of course, i win the lottery and have a quarter of a million pounds to spare.

and anyway, there’s nothing bad about renting. sure, you can view it as me paying someone else’s mortgage for them… but i’m living here not them, so it really amounts to the same thing. who cares whose name is on the property deed as long as i’m the legal occupier. the only difference is that the landlord is in debt and i’m not.

the other thing is, since everyone is mortgaged up to the hilt, one day everything is going to come tumbling down. not by loads, but enough. and when that happens, and if it happens in the next 5 years, i’ll go in for the kill. otherwise, i’m quite happy to remain debt-free thank you very much.

after all, i’m still rather young, and my benchmark age is 30 to be property-owning. i think this is related to my mother - we had a conversation once in the car and she said that if i couldn’t afford a HDB-flat by the time i’m 30 i ought to be reconsidering what i’ve been doing with my career. so, somehow this has translated into my belief that if i don’t own a property by the time i’m 30, i’m a failure. no, not really, i don’t believe that at all. it’s just a random milestone that i’ve decided upon. if all goes well career-wise, 30 is the age to be signing away a significant portion of my income to the bloodthirsty institutions we call banks. it’s like those population control campaigns: stop at two, but have 3 if you can afford it. my mantra is: carry on renting, but buy if i can afford it.

but even if i don’t end up owning anything for the next few decades, there’s no significant drawbacks i can think of at the moment. the lack of debt and the liquidity of my finances just mean that when the time comes, it’ll be much easier for me to ditch my career and become a world traveller instead.

i’ve just watched Martyn See’s film Zahari’s 17 Years, and i had/have so many things to say about it and Said Zahari and Martyn See. but then again, the whole thing makes me very sad and very angry, and more than a bit empty inside.

Said Zahari says of Lee Kuan Yew, that whoever is not with him is his enemy.

and somewhere in the middle of the film, Said Zahari says “i’m still a singapore citizen. i was born in singapore, i grew up in singapore. i love singapore, singapore is my country“.

and perhaps that is what the government has to understand. i might not agree with everything that they do, and i will continue to critically assess their actions. but this is not because i’m communist or i’m anti-singapore. in fact, it’s because i love singapore so damn bloody much that i’m doing it. who else, if not singaporeans, have a right to question the way in which we are governed? who else, if not singaporeans, have a vested interest in the governance of singapore? who else, if not singaporeans, should speak up?

it’s not about the government, it’s about singaporeans.

but y’know, i don’t think they care. they’re in power, and they’ll do whatever it takes to stay in power, and reap all the benefits that come with it.

the other day kim and i were talking, and we were saying what makes a successful politician: is it one who does what he/she says in his/her mandate that got he/she elected, or one who is in power term after term. obviously, if you ask the electorate they’d say the former, but if you ask a politician, it’s the latter. and never the twain shall meet.

anyway, it all makes me feel so very pathetic and wishing that i had the guts to do something. really really do something. but instead, here are pictures of pretty things.