Alright, Chinese New Year is a good topic since it’s CNY in a couple of days, and it’s a useful entry point for thinking and talking about the fact that I’m Singaporean. Maybe that’s the thing about these essays, I have all these drafts and words but the thing I’m always looking for is timing? A sense of relevance? resonance?

Do I love my country? Can you? Can a country be loved? What is a country? What is an environment? A tale of Two Cities. Every government is an embarrassment in some way. And Singapore is so small that I actually have friends in government, people I respect and admire who seem to listen and seem to be trying their best. And I have friends who are cynical and despairing who think nothing will ever get better, who are absolutely miserable to talk to. And I’ve spoken with insufferable expats who think of this place as some sort of hotel they can trash, make money in, spit and piss on. And I’ve also met lovely expats who I’ve shared my naive dreams with, hopes for a better tomorrow, more loving, more compassionate, and also more ambitious, with a deeper sense of cultural legacy, linguistic heritage, rootedness, historicity (we were voyagers!!)

I was born and raised in Singapore, to Tamil parents. Most Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese. Historically, the indigenous population is Malay. As I write this I wonder how much detail to get into here. What does my median reader know about the various ethnic groups of India and China and Southeast Asia? The words “Indian”, “Chinese”, “Malay” are all broad labels. I’m reminded of how in the US there’s a phase AAPI? Which is bonkers to me as a Singaporean, but that’s how the world is, all sorts of arbitrary things get lumped together. How do we even begin talking about identity when it’s all so… convoluted? I’ve tweeted before that “Asia isn’t real, there’s no such thing as Asia” – and I mean that as a bit of a joke, but also kind of serious. And also it’s especially fun to relate this back to “Santa is real”. Am I saying Santa is more real than Asia? Yeah, in some sense! Santa is an enacted phenomenon, people believe in him, or work to manifest/realize him through ritual and ceremony. Asia, on the other hand, what is it? I’ve had a conversation with a friend recently who’s been doing a bunch of reading about the British Empire and he said “y’know, the British Empire wasn’t really a thing nearly as much as we make it out to be.” And I think similar things can probably be said for, say, the Roman Empire, and the Byzantine, and when we think about things like “The Renaissance” or “The Dark Ages”, we come up with these descriptions – these caricatures, really… and how does that influence or impact our understanding? How can we understand a thing if we insist on making sense of it through a particular lens that’s chosen mainly for our own convenience? The concept of Southeast Asia was largely invented by the US. And what is “The Middle East”? Why do we just… go with such terminology? Then we get phrases like “the South China Sea” which implies that the sea is to be known and understood in relation to China, and that China owns that territory. And what is China? You know, we go on and on. It’s all maps, we have to use some labels and draw our lines somewhere in order to function.

I think it’s more intuitive to say “Asia is a myth” rather than “Asia isn’t real”… not sure I’ll leave that in for the reader.

The crossroads post idea is too intimidating because I’m trying to do and say too much. Like I’m imagining the whole book there. Let’s flesh out specifics. What would the chapters be of such a book? Altars, temples, politics, law and order? Interracial dating? My parents would bring me to the temple. And I went to an anglican kindergarten. I didn’t know what anglican was at the time, except that it’s a type of christian. And why are there multiple types of christian? It feels embarrassing and almost shameful to say this stuff out loud, but… I feel like it ought to be said? Stereotypes are real, I’m not the one that came up with them. I had friends who were muslim, muslims go to the mosque for their friday prayers and they don’t eat pork. And they slaughter goats for a festival. The Chinese are “very money-minded”, they like gambling. Indians are very good with words, very passionate, alcoholics, and I swear there was a motif of “they like to get drunk and go home and beat their wife”. As I got older I started to hear and encounter more stereotypes. “Malay poor, they take drugs, have a lot of babies, like motorcycle and guitar”.

Also became more aware of stereotypes of Singapore in general. Singaporeans have no balls, they give their balls to the government to take care for them. The government treats Singaporeans like errant children and Singaporeans will complain in private but every election vote for the PAP again. You can’t make it as a creative in Singapore. Everything only money, money, money. Soulless. Sterile. Artificial. Cruel. Selfish. Authoritarian. What people don’t tell you about living in an authoritarian state is that it produces authoritarianism in the citizens too. I caught a surprising glimpse of it in Avatar: The Legend of Korra. “Everything also call police.” “Everything also tell the teacher.” If you’re born and raised in it, you don’t realize how it is until you’ve had a chance to experience something else. Every so often I encounter some westerner breathlessly talking about how amazing Singapore is, how great Lee Kuan Yew is, because the GDP is so high in Singapore. And I want to ask, what the fuck do you even really know? Have you lived here? Have you served in the military here? Have you grown up in this atmosphere? What Singaporean art do you love? What’s your favorite Singaporean cultural export? You praise the GDP graph, sure, and the clean streets, great, but can you name a Singaporean that you admire? Because we crush the caterpillars and complain there are no butterflies.

Do you want me to tell you about Singapore’s history? I have done a bunch of rants about this. It’s hard to talk about Singapore internationally without hearing ranting and raving about Lee Kuan Yew. And you know what, I get it. LKY is like the Steve Jobs of city-states. And I have some admiration for both of them. But my issue with the fanboys of both is that they so seldom actually honor the creative, dynamic spirit of the person they are pedestalizing. I don’t believe that either LKY or Jobs was interested in being pedestalized by sycophants. Give them something real. A real criticism, real feedback, something actually consequential to deal with, point at, chew on, that makes a material difference to outcomes.

Should I write about Disneyland with the Death Penalty? A passing reference maybe. If I really do this well people are gonna repost it on hacker news and so on. Don’t think about that. Just write. Just assemble. “As a foreigner, the stereotypes I had about Singapore, before moving here, were that it is: very clean, expensive, authoritarian, doesn’t have freedom of speech, has a high power distance, has lots of respect for elders, and little respect for individual privacy. I also assumed that most people worked long gruelling hours.”

I don’t want to waste too much space listing out all the stereotypes people have of Singapore in great tedious detail. I could link to other things that have been written about them. Our treatment of migrant workers is disappointing. Is it the worst in the world? No. Should we be happy with that? No

A lot of what is bad about Singapore is something that I think we could make some serious improvements on in the next 20-30 years. A lot of it is cultural stuff, and we basically need therapy, therapeutic experiences. Problems of authoritarianism are alleviated with more open communication

There’s a joke amongst folks from other Southeast Asian countries that Singapore is the annoying spoilt teacher’s pet of the bunch. And there’s truth to that. We make more money, great. But we need permission to do anything. Recently deceased inventor of the Creative Sound Blaster, Sim Wong Hoo, called it the No U-Turn Syndrome, or NUTS. I have so many fucking feelings about this fucking country. I love it. I kinda wanna say “I wish it would love me back.” I know others who’ve had it worse. I know people who protest the death penalty.

I love my country. I honestly do. I think it has the capacity for greatness. I’m now privileged enough in life that I can probably live anywhere in the world if I really want to. But I think of myself as a Singaporean. I was born here, raised here, my friends and family are here. James Baldwin said, the moment you develop a conscience, you find yourself at war with your society. I believe this is true for all countries

Singapore is a real fine place, trying to nag and disincentivize… there’s a bit in LKY’s memoirs where he talked about newspapers being available in public and nobody steals them… civilized… it’s easier to be civilized when…

we’ve chosen to punish ourselves…

Singapore is a country that’s still figuring itself out – isn’t every country?

crossroads: wanna be like obama and bozoma

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