Forever Alone Singapore

I've recently seen this post making its rounds on Facebook. In it, the twenty-year-old girl (I am pretty sure it's a girl) writes that she has "fallen in love" with London and is "breaking up" with Singapore. It's beautiful, flowing, emotional prose, believe me; and if you don't, you should take some time to read it.

My first thought, admittedly, was: "This is the kind of girl you don't want to fall in love with." The kind of girl who doesn't accept you for who you are, tries to change you, fails, and moves on. The kind of girl who will walk out of the marriage twenty years from now because you're still the man she married. That was my first impression.

Don't get me wrong; hell yes Singapore is way too conservative and traditional and focused way too much on surviving and not living. We're not perfect, not yet. But it's not going to get any better if we turn our tails and leave the country. Who's going to replace the leaky pipe, when all the plumbers say they rather go to where the pipes are already fixed?

I love being jaded. I love being cynical, I love being misanthropic. I love seeing the world for what it really is; but that doesn't blind me to what the world can be. People think that you can't be idealist and pessimistic at the same time. You can. You hope the world is going to get better, but you doubt that it will. But that doesn't mean you stop hoping. You've lost, then. Lost everything.

And this is my second thought. The sad, inevitable future. The realisation that even if we changed this country, if we turned it around, if we managed to have a cultural revolution, throw out all the old ideas, usher in all the new ones, we'll have the exact same country, but now with the opposite minority. Can you imagine it? People leaving Singapore because it's not conservative enough?

Most of our cities and major civilisations were founded on geographic and historical bases. They have each generated and engendered a culture unique to themselves, and some people, some minority, is going to be unhappy in that culture. It is inevitable. They just don't fit in, or they prefer another culture, which, with the rise of long-distance travel, communications and globalisation, can be advertised around the world.

So here's what I propose we do. We take every single person on the planet and ship them off to the moon. There, we categorize people according to their personalities and outlooks and which city they would fit best in. We'll send the open, liberal types to London, New York, Paris, and the conservative bunch to Singapore. We'll send the rugged, adventurous group to Kathmandu, and the faithful, religious people to Vatican City, Mecca, Jerusalem, Varanasi, Lhasa.

Then we'll stay on the moon, and watch as the world slowly burns back to normal.
The Edna Man