Of Corgis and Cun...I Wanted to Do An Alliteration Here, But It Would Be Crude.

It’s going to take a lot more than posters to reverse whatever process it was that turned many Singaporeans into complete and utter assholes. I’ve noticed that the Singapore government has reinstated the 1980s courtesy campaign, revamped and recharged, warning of dire, but undefined, outcomes: BEING INCONSIDERATE…HAS CONSEQUENCES. They’ve gotten rid of the little splotch of courtesy lion of the halcyon yesteryears, and have started using a rather ominous red and black colour scheme.

Is being a jerk such a widespread problem in Singapore that there need to be publicly-funded crusades against it?

Without hesitation, a resounding “yes.”

I think the problem is that a social grace isn’t very widespread, as such; people don’t really give a shit about how things they do make other people around them feel. There’s even a name for this mindset. It’s called kiasu, and is characterized by the saying “everything also must grab.” To further unpack this, it means that everyone is out for themselves, i.e. to get as much as they can as fast as they can, whether necessary or not.

Think of it as a giant game of Supermarket Sweep with the world’s supply of Singaporeans careening around the aisles elbowing each other out of the way in order to knock as many bottles of vinegar, cans of air-freshener and tins of powdered milk into their shopping carts as they can.

(Meanwhile, their children are hitting each other over the head with massive textbooks and screaming at each other in broken Mandarin while their Filipina maids bandage up wounds and dry their tears, but that’s a whole different bag of fish)

For example, I was having breakfast at the Ghim Moh hawker centre this morning, and in sashays this well-groomed young woman in a dark blue Athens 2000 tank top, orange board shorts, flip-flops and the most adorable little corgi you’ve ever seen.

A fucking dog.

Let me explain what a hawker centre is. It’s this big roofed-over area where a bunch of food vendors set up in permanent stalls. It’s not the cleanest of places; since the sides of the area are left open to the elements, the tiled floor is often covered with a very fine layer of dust, or mud, depending on the weather. Yes, sometimes there are rats. Bird roost in the ceiling beams. Vendors often wash their vegetables in big plastic pails which are stored on the floor.

However, I only know one person who has almost died from the lack of hygiene, so it’s not that bad (rat droppings + can of soda = coma + years of kidney dialysis).

Anyway, the rats and birds, well, what can you do about them? Sure you can lay traps down for them, but they’re going to come back. Nobody invited them along.

But you don’t purposefully bring an animal into a food-court, no matter how clean you think your dog is. Especially not a squat little thing with legs so short that it’s belly almost touches the ground. And furthermore, when somebody calls your attention to the big “NO PETS” sign tacked to the very column that your little dog raised his stumpy leg against (in a PLACE of EATING), you don’t smile sweetly and say, “I don’t tell you not to bring your children here.”

What are you, stupid?

Oh, you are stupid. And did I mention, a selfish bitch with skewed logic, too? Okay, I will try to explain the difference between dogs and children. Listen carefully:

• Children can be taught to wash their hands, but dogs tend not to have hands.
• Children do not get the uncontrollable urge to urinate against poles in hawker centres, but dogs do.
• Children do not drool into buckets of vegetables, but dogs produce a good quantity of saliva. For example, your dog was standing with his little tongue hanging out right over a big red pail of vegetables, because his legs are so short that sprinting brief distances behind you makes him very hot and tired. Also, short-legged long-haired corgis aren’t made for tropical environments, you heartless, unnatural cow.
• Children understand what you’re saying when you explain basic hygiene, but dogs just give the impression that they do.
• Children have hair only on their heads, unless they are very unfortunate, but dogs are covered in hair which they shed all over the place. This is especially a problem with long-haired dogs, like your corgi. May I add that your dog shook himself right next to that very same big red pail of vegetables, undoubtedly shooting strands of his long silky tan hair all over someone’s lunch?
• Children don’t have to be dragged around on a small blue leash, but dogs usually do, and may I compliment you on how well the dog’s leash matched your tank top?

There are a number of other reasons by which children differ from dogs. One of them has to do with the fact that dogs are a completely different species from humans, but we can cover that in the next module. You just study this list for now. I know it’s hard, but you’ll understand it eventually.

I’d have to say that the most irksome part of that whole episode was how arrogant that woman was. Perhaps I’m wrong, but maybe I had a valid point? Perhaps dogs don’t really belong in a place where food is eaten and prepared? Hmm? You think about that, honey, and get back to me, okay?

Maybe, the next time your pathetic, whipped boyfriend takes you out to an expensive restaurant, you should think about what it would be like if somebody brought their dog to that very restaurant and let it piss up against a foundational structure in the kitchen. Maybe the hawker centre doesn’t have pure damask tablecloths, imported chefs and copper saucepans, but it’s the same fucking thing, you stupid troll.

Damn, I hope that dog gets Dog Flu or something, and bites her ugly ass.

However, the fact that many Singaporeans are rude doesn’t make them terrible people, mostly (with the exception of the woman with the dog, she just plain sucks). This is reflected in the way that people donated enough money to the National Kidney Foundation charity for them to be able to provide thirty years worth of aid to patients (although it was only reported as three years, but once again, a whole different coffer of corgis). Moreover, since the government doesn’t really provide very good welfare programmes, most social welfare is private.

So it’s slightly reassuring that a social conscience is present. It just doesn’t manifest itself in everyday events.

Listening to: "Pressed in a Book" by The Shins

Borf, Muddled Politics, and the Loss of my Immortal Soul (Which May or May Not Exist)

This morning, I came into work at 8am with my cup of coffee and my iPod, sat down at my bare cubicle with my Fujitsu notebook, checked my email, scanned BBC News and wrote an update on a Japanese telecommunications company.

Yesterday, I got up late and watched a Bollywood movie on TV. I went for a swim at the country club (that’s right, country club) and had dinner with my mother at a Shanghainese restaurant in a very trendy, very expat area of Singapore. On Saturday, I woke up late, watched The Great Domestic Showdown, went for a swim at the Country Club and did some other eminently forgettable things.

On Friday, I came into work at 8am with my cup of coffee and my iPod, sat down at my bare cubicle with my tiny Fujitsu notebook, checked my email, scanned BBC News, and researched an American bank. The day before that, I came into work at 8am with my cup of coffee, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, emphasis on the latter.

This is my life. Who am I kidding? This isn’t life as it’s supposed to be. This is routine. This is habit. This is my life measured out in coffee spoons, in 45-minute lunch breaks, and in the filler dialogue between bhangra hits.

Coming into the office is like what a papaya must feel like when it’s put in the fridge. Here’s the incandescent tropical sunshine and the luminous equatorial colours, look, you can just about glimpse it through the window, behind that opaque, sun-blocking shade. And here’s where you’ll be staying, in a chilly, air-conditioned room with fluorescent lighting hurting your eyes. Here are the beige walls. Here’s your faux-wood cubicle, your stapler and your roll of tape.

Enjoy.

But on the other hand, what exactly is the alternative? What, may I ask, is the road less taken? I think that I used to know, but it’s kind of like when you wake up and you don’t remember exactly what it your dream was about. You just know that it was really cool and that you’d like to go back.

Mother of God, is this the rest of my life? Is this what I’ve got to look forward to? Will the high-pitched whine of a fax machine be the soundtrack to the rest of my life?

Maybe Borf, or one of its manifestations in John Tsombikos, has some of it right (apart from his bewildering conception of anarchy—Starbucks, police presence). Maybe age really is just a way of dividing people, of sucking the fun out of life, of thinking of free-form art in terms of $90-an-hour cleaning crews instead of a form of expression, or a cry of defiance against the colossal army of Time, Age, Maturity and Decay. Maybe we should never grow up. Maybe Grown-ups should be rendered obsolete.

Tsombikos described the daily commute as Orwellian. That’s not strictly true. We don’t have a mysterious collective watching over us day and night. Nope, our Big Brother is far more sinister, far more controlling and far more insidious. Our Big Brother is not a physical entity; rather it is our way of life—democracy and capitalism, the ultimate political and economic freedom. What better means of controlling people than to give people the impression that they are in control?

Holy crap, I just got the point of The Matrix.

But anyway, this is what capitalism tells us we want: perfection. To do this we need money. That’s the only way! How we get it is secondary to the ultimate goal; our own personal games of realpolitik.

Of course, it’s not like I have any better ideas. As far as I’m concerned, evolution functions with ideas and beliefs. Democracy, and capitalism seem to be the only memes that haven’t been voted off the island. We all know communism and dictatorships are totally passé, no matter what Cuba and North Korea think. Our buddies D&C seem to be the only viable options we have left, because they seem to fit in with what evolution dictates: that it’s every man, plant, insect, panda or platypus for himself.

I just wish there was some way that I could see an option that didn’t involve the desire to make lots of money. My parents grew up poor, desperately poor, poor in the way that only those in rapidly emerging economies can be poor: consciously so. It’s different when everyone else is poor too; there’s no point for comparison. But they grew up walking to school (hand-me-down sandals, homemade clothing, no books, no food, blazing sunshine, rappelling down ravines, fording white water rapids, etc.) while watching the rich kids get chauffeured to school in imported cars. Part of this never left my parents, especially my dad, so my siblings and I have been brought up with constant reminders that it sucks to be poor and it really sucks to be poor when everyone else is rich, so we should focus on making money.

And he’s probably right, because as my mother says, full belly leads to empty thoughts (or something to that effect, she’s always coming up with this stuff). So maybe if I stopped eating for a few days, I would stop thinking about the inherent flaws in capitalism and my dissatisfaction with the white-collar world

Listening to: "Dare" by the Gorillaz