have wasted my whole day today on meaningless stuff so i felt i should blog to make the day a little more "productive". yes, blogging is something productive. to me at least. I seldom title my blog posts, but here goes:

Of Singapore and All She's Worth

i dunno why, but im somewhat in a reflective mood about this country we call home. maybe its because of the "prechat discussion" for the MOE webchat about NE. now, this webchat thingy. i must have drunk something wrong that night to have felt remotely interested and replied to the egroups foolishly. ne is perhaps one of the most shunned topics students avoid, but therein lies the challenge: why is it so shunned? anyway, this whole mood and feeling about singapore could also be triggered as im now reading neil humphrey's final notes from a great island. its a great book i tell you and all should go read it.

since the start of the hols, ive been going a few places and exploring singapore on foot and on bike, mostly with weepin and michelle ooi. occasionally joined by xinzi or kiampa or zhuoyi. ah they have all been very best companions wandering with me around labrador park, going night cycling, kent ridge park, tanjong pagar train station, macritchie hike etc. i guess it was to kill time, but through all this aimless wandering, you get the idea that there is actually quite a lot of interesting places, people and things you never knew existed on this island. and that is exactly what neil humphrey sets out to do in his book. in a very humourous and british-dry-humour manner, with his "cheerios! bye!" and half past six. bottomline: go read it.

one of the conclusions i can draw from his book is perhaps that, singaporeans do not enjoy their country enough. im not saying singapoerans don't love singapore, i believe they do, more than they dare to admit. if i were to ask you to migrate somewhere else tomorrow, would there at least be one thing strong enough to hold you back, to put some reluctance in you? i think for most of us, yes. but singaporeans tend to be too comfortable with the stability of their living conditions and life around them, that life becomes too boring. i guess that is why i always love city/downtown/outdoors singapore more than the heartlands. true, the "heartlands" system of housing worked wonders for singapore and was ingenious in its own right, but somehow im very scared of it and can't stand staying too long in it. perhaps its because i just feel terribly bored by the heartlands.

perhaps it takes foreigners to see singapore in a different light and appreciate her for all the things we take granted. like our excellent transport network and cheap movie tickets. perhaps we singaporeans have never experienced the hardship and inconvenience as a result of less orderly societies, like strikes and demonstrations, that we mock what we are blessed with. perhaps its our tendency to complain about anything and everything at all, that makes us, sadly, the least happy populace in Asia.

do not mistake me, i'm by no means singaporean-bashing or what. im just feeling sad that sometimes we do not appreciate what we have enough, me included. i guess its lamentable that as we swarm NATAS travel fairs and snap up travel packages like we do free hello kittys, we do not go out enough and enjoy the places for recreation in singapore. in fact, as humphrey rightly puts it, we are sometimes ashamed to tell others we've been to some "touristy" location in singapore to have a getaway.

i'm reminded of a very surreal sight that greeted me onboard 153 today. this young guy asking an old couple for coins so he could pay the bus fair. i half-expected the ah pek and ah ma to conveniently say they didnt have change and leave him in his predicament, which is quite the singaporean response. but the ah pek actually made the effort to search for his coins and his wife also chipped in, all so they could help this young man. and all the while, the couple exuded this feeling that helping this chap was the very natural thing to do. it came as quite a surprise to me, having met one-too-many old folk who is jaded and cursing away at life. i guess the older generation does have their share of knowledge and experience. just waiting to be discovered, by overly reluctant youngsters like us. some say its a generation gap. but could it also be because we're unwilling and afraid to relate ourselves to them and in so doing, hope they relate to us?

all in all, singapore is not as culturally barren as outsiders, and unfortunately singaporeans, would like to believe. that is much culture to be celebrated and proud of, just as soon as we get ourselves off the idea that any culture not akin or aligned to that of the historically richer western or asian nations (japan, china etc) is not worth keeping. i think that, is what singapore is worth.