*What Singapore Is?*

*Ahem*...idea borrowed from Paul

Here you go, mental exercise for the day: Come up with a quick list of what you associate Singapore with....say five or six...done?

Now glance through it; is there anything on the list that is not materialist in that list? Anything that speaks of some form of concept or thought or ideal? Odds are, probably not... Char Kway Teow and Chicken Rice are hardy symbols of Singapore, but there's nothing can we can call our own that speaks to a higher ideal....

Home is where the food is. The danger? If everything that we call home is physical and tangible in form, by identifying oneself with possessions, who's to say we cannot replicate it overseas? What grounds us here? What ties us together? Friends and family may be one...but uprooting yourself thus is not an impossibility when and where communication is cheap and life is greener on the other side. There must be something I know, the Afro-American cab driver in LA that drove us back from this shopping strip rightly identified us as Singaporean...by the way we dress apparently... =)

Why do I want to stay on? This is where I start speaking in really vague fuzzy terms like....Because this is Singapore, my Home and I believe that it can be a much better place. I believe that it can be a bastion of liberal democracy, meritocracy and secular humanism (I don't trust religion...don't get me started on this).

Miss Chua Mui Hoong (our resident political corrospondent for the main english daily) seems typical of much Singaporeans who cannot accept life as not being part of the dominant socio-ethnic group...shame I say....how...Chinese.... Other than that, she never makes any point that somehow differentiates Singapore from other countries...=P

*Shrugg*...ah well...