Singapore: Slings and Arrows

Last month I flew to Singapore for a 2-week visit and met up with old friends and relations. I have always had a love-hate relationship with this place, and with each visit my feelings grew even more complicated.

Love, because Singapore is clean, tidy, relaxed and, most notably, nicely hot. The people (I used to find anyway) seem a lot more down-to-earth than their fellow counterparts in, say, Hong Kong. I felt I could let my hair down completely, wear any random top, bottoms and flip-flops I could find and wouldn't feel embarrassed or inappropriately dressed going to most places. Because I spent 6.5 of my growing years there, I have many good bosom friends from high school days. From memory our concerns were to do well in the O and A levels and know nice boys (in that order), and we didn't seem too fussed about money, fame or even beauty. It's great making friends in that context as friends such as these seem to remain forever as pure and innocent as before, no matter what time has done to us 10 years on.

Hate. Well, hate is probably too strong a word. Reservations, maybe. The usual complaints aside (e.g. the apparent homogeneity of things, the paternalistic governing, the lack of freedom, the extreme competitiveness), I always wished for in the people I met more spontaneity, more outside-the-box kind of thinking and more daring attitudes. I can't say I'm not generalising somewhat. I remember being 17 (i.e. rather naive and idealistic) and dying to express my views on certain rather politically sensitive topics in our General Paper class, and while our teacher seemed slightly pleased to see the potential of a good debate, no classmate of mine raised their hands to say anything in response. Perhaps it was a topic no one was really interested in, but on hindsight I think it was probably either apolitical indifference or some sort of subtle fear that dictated the silence of my class.

I'm not saying Singaporeans can't think for themselves, but certainly I'm not sure if they are really encouraged to, in spite of all those creative writing and thinking lessons they are made to take. Can one create creativity? It seems like most of the time the people don't feel completely free to express themselves. The inability to be free with one's thoughts, I think, curbs creativity and stifles spontaneity, and in turn further perpetuates the bubble of apparent success and security.

A good friend asked me over drinks one evening whether I thought Singaporeans were shallow. I asked her what she meant by shallow. She said: "obsessed with the materialistic, with little culture or history." This time in Singapore I did notice the increasing affluence, how everyone seemed to be all out shopping all the time, and I could hear a lot more talk about huge killings made in the property market, higher wages and bigger spending power, and was even told that government-supported scientific research institutes remunerate their staff based on their profit-making performance (instead of research ability or results). I felt sad seeing Singapore turning into another money-obsessed city, not least because I now felt less relaxed about how I dressed/looked on the street, but my response to my friend was - isn't the whole world going that way too? As for culture and history, given Singapore only has 42 years of history since its independence, can one expect much of a culture at this point? And just when we were discussing this point, a Singaporen version of the song Pretty Woman was blasting in the cafe. That's culture, no?