singapore day

Manhattan, NY

I went. I wasn't going to -- the project is due in 2 weeks, and there is a lot left to be done -- but I was feeling really burned out and incapable of working through Saturday. Also, they flew Makansutra hawkers in to cook -- PSA complex bak kut teh, Adam Road Nasi Lemak, Casuarina Road Prata -- so even though I didn't admit it to myself there was no real hope of resistance.

Besides, I figure that it's time to start healing, to start being a little bit more sanguine about my cultural identity crisis. Not that I see myself ever endorsing what we are told is "Singaporean". I don't think I'll ever not being at harsh odds with a culture so simultaneously false, hypocritical, conservative and smug. The critical thing for me, now, is to not be angry, because, really, it's not a fault. Some people are hurting, but on balance, from a purely utilitarian perspective, the vast majority of Singaporeans are getting what they want, and loving it. Where in the world don't some people hurt?

It's not a fault, it's a cultural, collective, and conscious decision, and anger does nothing because I'm getting angry not on behalf of anyone, but at the idea that people would want to live that way, much the same way you feel frustrated at a child for not understanding something that is patently obvious to you. It doesn't even have to be painful, or pitiable, or worthy of scorn. It's just...if anything, it's small. It's like...take all the rhetoric and propaganda and economic success and realise that it's all just one thing, one idea. Everything -- HDB estates, National Service, flag waving on August 9th, Phua Chu Kang, bringing satay to Wollman Rink on a sunny day in April -- for the purposes of "feelings towards Singapore" it's all quintessentially one thing, and if you can see it that way then the issue takes on manageable proportions, because now you're not getting angry with 4 million people and 40 years of public policy, but a solitary idea that vanishes in comparison to the infinity of everything else. Better still, the idea itself is circular: this is my country, this is my flag, this is my future, this is my life. Singapore is Singapore, in the way that God told Moses "I am what I am" at the burning bush. When you define a thing as "everything that you could possibly want", it's a necessary truism that you won't want anything else.

So now, as you can see, New York and the Ivy League are part of Singapore -- and I say this almost literally, because I'm not talking about the physical places, but the concepts of what they are. All borders nowadays are ideological anyway (which is why no matter where I live I'll not be Singaporean; the ethos does not encompass me). So we lined up in what may as well have been Adam Road, to all intents and purposes, and got our nasi lemak, and I called Von who was disbelieving, and anyway late to go build his table. There was a goody bag with a Bread Talk voucher ("for when you come home") and a packet of rubber bands in it, which I actually need rather urgently (the rubber bands, not the flosss). And Wong Kan Seng, and a million gay performers on stage, and finally both Kinjal and I bumped into someone we knew with the small world anthem running in an endless midi loop through my head as i nodded and smiled.

We met up with Grace and her brother for dinner much later on, after a failed trip to Serendipity Cafe (1.5-hour wait. Did you know that Kate Beckingsale was in that? It's scary how I have absolutely zero recall of that movie even though I remember with perfect clarity the details of the day I went to see it.) Grace was in town to watch Kevin Spacey on Broadway, and we had a nice normal conversation and drinks. Which brings us back to why I don't want to be angry -- because it's very tiring, and vexatious, and I talk about my frustration in 15 billion ways on this blog and to people and nothing ever comes of it, when most of what I want in life comes with nice normal conversation and drinks. The issue has been talked to death, and I'm tired of it -- and yet there's so much more, miles to go before I sleep, the quest to calmly, impartially ask: Why? Why did this single idea work so well? Why were you in Central Park that day?