Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Singaporean, I have become

Today I as I sat on the bus leaving the office at 945pm, I noticed something.

I had that same blank look of nothingness as the rest of the people on the bus.

I had a sudden flash back - 7 months ago I had just returned from India after working for an NGO there, and I was on a train, looking at the dozens of Singaporeans with their blank faces, empty stares and morose expressions. I thought to myself, "how pitiful. I hope I never become one of them".

How pitiful indeed. When one's life is consumed by one's occupation. We were meant only to work in order to live. But here people live to work. Sadly for many, to work is to live.

It becomes even sadder when one's profession is to mess around with words. There's always a way to twist a person's words without changing the facts, and worse, twist the meaning without changing his words.

You do that often enough and you wake up one day and not know when you're telling yourself the truth and when you're not.

The mind is a devious thing and its words are slippery as silk. And my job is to milk it, to the very last drop.

Welcome to the garden of Eden...after the fall of man.