Letter to Singapore
Dear Singapore,
I am afraid. I have been thinking a lot about you, and I am afraid.
I am afraid (but I haven’t told anyone) because I am starting work tomorrow on your sunny/rainy shores. I wonder if I will get used to my designated cubicle and if my colleagues will like me enough, just enough to be lunch partners. Will the boss be good? Will I get a fat bonus? How many months of bonus can an executive earn in this office? How much will I be earning in 4 years’ time?
My thoughts put a link to school and I mentally calculated how long it will take me to repay my schooling debts. (I am good at mental sums. I used to go for weekly abacus sessions) I wonder when I’ll have the money to buy myself a home. For a moment, the thought of not being able to live in one of your trendy private properties, not in this lifetime at least, depresses me.
And my thoughts scare me because I am this close to being mediocre, by your standards.
I blame you to some extent. 17 years of school, 17 years of being sifted about in your education net had been exhausting for me. It was hard to remain in the top 10 percent, or perhaps even in the top 5 percent of the cohort, but it was harder to admit that the process was tough. There are those who breeze through, climbing their way to the top, and there are those, like me, who struggle to cling on to these titles that you claim prestigious. It is dispiriting to feel average, much less be average, and to keep up, we compete against one another. After all, the “best” and the “worst” evolve from measurement, and measurement is relative, never absolute. We never stop competing, never.
You taught us meritocracy and democracy — Big words that are often more idealistic than real, contradictory than straightforward. I laugh at anyone who believes that they are getting the fair deal. Nothing is fair in this world and that is why these words contribute to an ideology you badly want us to believe. To be fair (the irony!), efforts at meritocracy seem to exist in corners of your dark streets, but there are few since your streets are well-lit and cleanly-swept, as you proudly proclaim and aggressively sell.
Meritocracy is at the mercy of bank rolls. Don’t we all already know that? And while you profess yourself democratic, you hold on to our freedom, too much of it. You said freedom is not a feature of Asian culture, and too much of it is not desirable. You coax us, like children, and tell us, like a parent, an “Asian” parent, that we must be grateful of what you have provided for us.
You almost had me convinced there. All I needed to do was listen while you rattled on about history — your side of history — and how we changed from a poor and developing nation into a more developed and economically-strong one. The trouble is, I am not too s ure what constitute “Asian” because Asia is so diverse. At times you appear to be more liberal and receptive to Western influences, and at times, you hold on dearly to your so-called “Asian” roots which, you tell us (again), lean towards the conservative.
Your sacrifice for us was undeniable, but a well-developed people is not just about dollars and cents, a HDB flat, and babies. It is about the intangible. It is the magnanimity to embrace, not merely tolerate, difference, the willingness to release your grip and allow us to breathe so we can be the artist or musician that we may aspire to be. It is about allowing us to dream the dream that you so often brush aside as impractical. But dreams are themselves often illogical, aren’t they. It is about cutting us some slack and allowing us to fall and climb back, stronger and better than before.
You claim you have our best interests at heart but something must be wrong when so many of them are not coming back. It is not in the leaving, but the returning. You attempt to lure them back with promises of wealth, the same tactic you used on married couples to entice them to deliver babies, but it is not really working. Something must be wrong.
I am afraid because I cannot leave. I have decided to end my formal education and to start shouldering family responsibilities. Like the good filial “Asian” child, I must provide for my parents. I cannot take off and leave everything behind. That is why I am here instead of exploring the world, at my own time and pace. I’ve always missed you when I am away. I was even proud of you. You are Home to me after all, but I am afraid I will remain here forever, in the same cubicle you find in every office. Forever is extremely apt, I must add.
I am afraid I will unlearn creativity and learn to get by. Creativity is hard to come by when you have a tendency to tell us what we must do. The morning coffee and clinkin g of metal spoons against ceramic mugs, against incessant sounds of typing on keyboards and stapling of documents, threaten my zealousness and I am afraid. I am afraid of having my unrealistic and beautiful dreams cast aside because they are irrelevant to your economy. I am not merely a tool in your large development project; I don’t want to take calculated moves all the time and be told when the right time to be silly is and when it is not. I want to be a being who can be impractical and foolish at the snap of her fingers.
Leave me room to be foolhardy, once in a while, because it will delight me so.