Singapore?
What can I say?
Love/Hate relationship, though I can say confidently that the
hate part grows more and more everyday.
More like resentment, actually.
To come from an upper middle class family and down to a
lower-middle class family as the family fortune fell into ruin. Of
course, I accept my lot in life, but the experiences as an
impressionable child of how Singaporeans are just brainwashed to
treat you like a walking bank account screen.
$2,000,000 balance on screen. (of course, balance not in
real-life lah. Wait long long. This is an example)
*ka-ching*
Everyone treats you like God incarnate. Your lifestyle is
unparalleled. The ignorance I was steeped in being well-to-do is
staggering. I had never been to an HDB flat before, not even a void
deck. Blissful. What I didn't know was the suffering of the
middle-class to poorer Singaporeans who had to get through day
after day and try not to *think* about it.
Then, bang. This is where my life changed, my eyes opened. I
thank God for making this happen,because without it I would never
be who I am today - a compassionate, thinking individual - a
human being.
We are brainwashed into selfish, self-serving idiots, divided by
the system so that we can't unite and cry foul against the very
system which imprisonates us and forces us to work for barely a
pittance.
For someone who has been to hell and back; I've been rich, I've
been poor, to the point where we did not have money to eat on some
days and we had no running water and electricity for a year. We had
to get the compassionate help from a neighbour - who, not
surprisingly - is not Singaporean. She is British.
I was 14. Climbed over her fence daily to get water in buckets
which we would squat and bathe ourselves over in the mornings
before going to school. It was freezing cold. Gosh, did we
appreciate warm running water, truly, at that moment. A year ago
from that date, we had a driver to chauffuer us around. What did we
learn? Everything.
When you are poor, people tell you to suck it
up and shut the f--k up because we don't want to hear your
complaints, you're lucky enough to be alive.
When you're poor, you're expected to get rations from help
groups, half-eaten, and when you bring it up they scold you for
being 'ungrateful'.
Excuse me, but even a poor person has dignity. You don't give
half-eaten food to them. You give it to your pets. And if they're
spoiled (like mine, and I would imagine, most of those of you who
love their pets), they would even turn their nose up at it.
This is the state of welfare in the country. I know because I've
been there. Life as a poor SG dweller is the pits.
Now of course, I'm a happy camper. Normal, well-adjusted
middle-class gal with a positive outlook on life and a desire to
help my fellow man.
At least, when I'm overseas, I'm not even their citizen but they
can offer me welfare. Wow. They offer me rights. Gee.
They treat me like a human being.
I find that I learnt how to be compassionate and stand up for
myself overseas. Strange. Isn't it? Don't your parents teach you
that? No, not in Singapore, because they themselves have never been
taught that, or were trained to just stick it to the very end of
their priorities because it doesn't matter. Not next to money,
status, material.
This is what Singapore lacks. The human spirit. Instead of being
encouraged to be compassionate, kind, thoughtful and an intelligent
thinking being, we are encouraged to shut the effing hell up, and
just work for the rich, dammit.
Pay too low? Go lor, I employ Bangladeshi.
The prevailing attitude is not the want and desire to help your
fellow Singaporeans but to screw them for your own benefit.
That's why so many Singaporeans are leaving in droves. Because
they are tired of being invisible workhorses of society and not
afforded a voice nor rights, the most basic premise of a
democracy.
I'm not asking for a U.S style "kill em' all or screw em'"
democracy. I'm not asking for Cuban communism. I'm not asking for
some Stalin Socialist state. I'm asking for a democracy where
Singaporeans are equal, afforded rights and a voice.
Not some media circus facade and empty plot of land where I can
already picture ISD clowns laying in wait to drag me off to
'indefinite detention' just because I asked a simple question which
made people think.