Singapore’s National Day is tomorrow, the day of our independence 61 years ago. I wasn’t actually planning on writing anything about it, but a short conversation with a friend today sparked some nationalistic pride.
Singapore is an extremely safe place. Things don’t really go missing often but if they do, there are a million cameras watching, and you would be able to get the police to assist you in retrieving your lost items. It does mean a lot of things are lying around, and if you were a kleptomaniac, you would find yourself in a heaven of sorts. But most Singaporeans are also extremely proud, so they would much rather work hard and earn the item instead of stealing it. But theft does happen, rarely.
Singapore is also has a lot of technology at its fingertips. I’ve lived without physical cash for a good couple of years so far, and I’ve had almost no issue. Maybe two or three stores out of a hundred would take cash only. We scan QR codes for everything under the sun, and we’ve also got half of our security under passcodes linked to our accounts. SingPass is our governmental administrative hub, and all of us basically just scan our biometrics to access it on our phones. And everyone has a smart phone.
I think the hardest part about Singapore is how people based we still are, despite our technology and our safety. By hardest, I mean it is the part of Singapore you need to negotiate through, and it comes with no manuals of any sort. Singaporeans expect you to learn quick, and to learn by copying. It is ok for you to poke fun of a Singaporean accent, because Singaporeans would immediately accept you for attempting it. But you can’t speak English expecting to be understood immediately. The baseline language is Singlish, with its tones and dialects. You could attempt English, but it still has to have a Singlish understanding coming across at some point. The closest experience I had to this on reverse was saying the word “Stew” to Americans. In Singapore, we call it “st-eww”, but Americans call it “st-oo”. I remember this vividly because I see it happening thereafter when English speaking tourists attempt to speak English to store owners, only to have the same phrase repeated back in Singlish.
But this just shows truly the communication we have as a people. Our Singlish Shibboleth gives an exclusivity, not for the upper class, but for the middle class. The common man understands his privilege as the common man, and there are too many memes about the average uniform in Singapore. It becomes an understanding that Singaporeans behave, dress, and speak a certain way.
Our military protects our way of life, but many Singapore National Servicemen would tell you it’s nonsense. That being said, we still hold our time in service as a badge of honor. Every older generation will tell the younger ones how easy their lives are. The most recent one I’ve heard is how there is hot water in the military showers (what kind of easy life is that!). But truly, what other country allows its citizens privy information for military action, and then release them back into the working world, having the conscription in the back of their minds. Wartime and peace time are ideas we are trained with, but to many Singaporeans, they are as imaginary as economic dowturns. That being said, we are experience inflation. And yet, there are huge advertisements in our public transports about the National Day sales, 8.8 sales, or something along the lines. We still want everyone to spend, because we can actually afford to. We just have to save a little less.
Do I personally want to protect this country? Heck yeah. I think it’s worth protecting, especially with my child coming into the picture. But before this, I still think it’s so difficult to pull any other country into comparison with Singapore. Sure we’re small, but there’s so much to unpack with a Singaporean. They just don’t know it yet. Have a chat with one and ask them their purpose for life. I enjoy those conversations for myself with my friends and the young people I get to work with. In a time of a pinch, I would do my best to help those after me to have a taste of life in this country, as I have experienced it for myself.
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