keninabu!

National Day

This is the first National Day that I'm spending in Singapore, actually. In previous years, I tried my best to avoid National Day like the plague.

I dunno. Having undergone brainwashing for the greater part of my childhood, I am inherently suspicious about claims of national identity.

What is Singaporean?

Obsessive cleanliness? Social conservativeness? Victorian-type doublestandards towards sexuality and towards homosexuals? A pathetic state of individual rights and freedoms? What about an ueber-materialistic culture that determines a person's social standing based on the type of car he drives and the type of mobile phone he uses? Or a society that addresses racism by celebrating tolerance and by jailing anyone who touches too close to sensitive racial topics, without addressing any underlying resentment at exhibited xenophobia towards foreigners?

How about the colonial mentality that looks up towards the White Man's culture (e.g. Australian, American and UK culture), but looks down on Chinese and Indian culture?

The refusal to save and think for oneself?

And as a Singaporean, I am supposed to be proud of all that?


The things which stand for Singapore in my eyes, are the very things which are NOT represented in the National Day celebrations:

-Singlish, for instance. It might sound crude, and it is. But it is very much of a creole-language in the evolution. It is local.

-mr brown. Nobody is better suited at making fun of a government and society that takes itself too seriously. All this, while pointing out valid local concerns.

-The uncles and aunties who sell things in hawker centres and local HDB estates. The "heartlanders".

-The interracial couples (Malay-Chinese, Indian-Malay, Indian-Chinese, etc.), who have had to put up with shit from their own families, as well as indirect shit from society.

-The foreign workers who took huge risks to come here for a better future, like my own grandfather, and who are often treated as second-class citizens.

All of these things that represent Singapore to me are not constructed or conceived at the governmental level.

In a lot of ways, Singapore is a very artificial and contrived place. And I can't wait to leave, honestly.

posted by keninabu @ 5:28 AM