trisected

Tag: singapore

  • National Day Thoughts

    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.

  • Misinformed Opinions and Choices.

    Today I went to a mall in an attempt to get some new art materials. I actually looked up the store online, and I checked Google Maps to make sure I got all the timings right. But lo and behold, the entire mall was under construction. Worst part is that I was just at this same mall a few weeks back, and for some reason, it never occurred to me that there was definitely going to be renovations because a few shops had moved away.

    I had to walk to another mall down the road, to look for the same type of art materials.

    On the train, the station displays on the train were off. They were supposed to light up when you get to each stop, but instead, the whole map was just off. Thank goodness I knew Singapore well enough to get out at the right stop with or without the station display lights.

    Sometimes, they even announce the wrong stop.

    Singapore has such a strange relationship with technology and convenience to the point that a lot of people don’t even check it. But if this happened anywhere else in the world, a Singaporean would be completely upset.

    Thus the relationship of Singaporeans and misinformed opinions and choices.

  • Cool Days for Cool People

    I keep thinking if I should have a better scheme, or a better content plan for my blog. My own answers to myself are: No, it is a blog, and the spontaneity is part of who I am. Secondly, I do have some specific content that I want people to read, and that’s on my pages. So I will always write as I feel like, and if it stretches over a series of posts, then good for you, the reader who is looking for specific content that is only that one single strain of things. I am, unfortunately, not a very one tracked person, and I am also unapologetic about it, as my life is increasingly varied.

    I am learning more and more about the effects of denim on myself, on cold days like today. Today it finally rained cats and dogs, and maybe guinea pigs too. There was a pure sheet of white over the cityscape as I looked out, and the day kept its cool til the night. But my denim jacket on me started to lose its point, and I started to become this mix of cold and hot at the same time. I think something similar happens to me when I wear hoodies, but I think it happens differently then. I need to figure out what that difference is.

    Also, I am realising that I really need to air my denim jacket often. I failed to do so last week, and today I smelled the jacket, and it smelt as a damp denim jacket should smell: Sweaty.

    So my jacket is now currently airing, next to my jeans, and hopefully it clears itself out of my sweaty smells.

    On a cool day like this, I remained the cool guy who decided not to wear his mask as he walked home from the clubbing districts of Singapore. I decided that I would embrace the cold air of the night, and just enjoy my walk home, after an evening of clearing up work. It was a nice walk, but I saw so many younger people just wearing their masks in packs. I was held my uncertainty within me, as I strode against their direction. They were going to club, but I was going home. And then it hit me. I am not a cool guy unmasked, but I’m the not cool guy unmasked not going out on a Tuesday night.

    This is all sarcasm, in case it is misread and taken that I think myself not cool. But okay, whether you decide to wear your mask or not outdoors, I really can’t. Personally, I get too sweaty, and it just bugs me and makes me really uncomfortable. Don’t judge me, I was just telling a joke. It’s a prank bro.

    Okay, gonna go do some laundry, good night world.

  • Thirty-Two Year Old Soldier

    In Singapore, we have to serve National Service. That’s for about two years, my own time of service was about a year and ten months. It’s part of Singapore’s conscription, because of our really small population. All boys at the age of eighteen are required to serve our National Service to our country, and after that, continue to be operationally ready for the next ten years. That time means that as we start our graduate studies, or enter the workforce, we’re practicing the things that we have learnt in those two years.

    We practice shooting, also known as marksmanship. We also practice attacking and defending, as an army. These things are widely known, so I don’t think I’m saying anything I’m not supposed to be saying. Our operationally ready force would assist our regular army force in times of war, and that makes up Singapore Armed Forces (SAF).

    Every year, my army mates and me are literally drained. We are worn out from the military work that we need to do. We need to be fit, in both our mental and physical capabilities. This period of time is also known as a Reservist period. We are re-servicing ourselves as military men, and ensuring that we’re on tip top form.

    It sounds possible, but honestly, hitting thirty-two this year, I’m feeling it more. Not so much during the actual time that I’m in camp, but the time getting back out to normal everyday life. Every day life is slower, there are less immediate stressors, and you know that technically you could quit at any time. But in the army, there’s no quitting. There’s only doing, and completing the tasks at the time that they’re needed to be done by. It’s a non negotiable. The worst part is that it feels completely irrelevant. It’s in its own bubble and completely not a part of the normalcy that we think of in “living life everyday”. “Seize the day” as a phrase isn’t commonly associated with grabbing your helmet and gear, jumping into a truck, and fighting an imaginary enemy in the jungle. But that’s what we need to do.

    If you suck at being in the military, all you have to do is to imagine a war taking place, and not being able to stop any aggressive enemy. All Singaporean men, whether they like it or not, can do this. There is a certainty of this. But whether they can do this well is a completely different issue. And whether this will even be something tested is even harder to assume. What are the chances that it will be? And by the time we are actually at war, who will be alive to gauge the metrics of success for this conscription army plan? There are too many things at stake for us to not take it seriously enough.

    But like all things that are for our own good, but too far into an unknown future, most Singaporean men can’t imagine this happening. We don’t always appreciate the rigor of this annual military exercise. We enjoy our friends, and we enjoy getting out of work, but there’s always a much deeper reality behind it.

    Maybe it’s about learning what we want to care for and the lengths that we would go to protect it. If we have learnt how to manage finances and investments for our children, perhaps the physical land protection of Singapore is something that we truly ought to consider a lot more. That’s something of value, that money can’t buy. If we lose the country, we’ve lost it all. And I feel that pressure every time I go back to camp, that’s why my time every year is always going to be more stressful than going to work every day.

    I know I’m more of the minority of this view, but I still think it’s something to be said. It’s not a matter of being gregarious, or garang as we would call it, but to me, its a responsibility of protecting the future. A very necessary burden to carry as a male in Singapore.

    In all my examples, I mention Singaporean males, but females do enlist as well. However their enlistment is voluntary, whereas the men are required to by law.