Missed the boats

In the last year since I came back to Singapore, I've been a bridesmaid twice, and had more wedding invitations, proposal events, engagement dinners, and hen parties than I can remember.

Superstition has it that once a woman is bridesmaid thrice, she's never getting married, and I'm just waiting for the third invitation this year. I know it's coming. I can feel it.

I really don't mind the weddings so much. It's nice to see couples in love. More than that, it's nice to see the gradual change from being friends, to being a couple and then husband and wife. There's something different in the way a couple behaves when they're married. The relationship is indelibly more matured. And it's great to see that it people still believe in "I want to spend the rest of my life with you". It gives me hope in a way.

But what's really irked me of late is finding out that a number of guys who used to have a crush on me back in school or college are now married, or getting married or have a baby!

Somehow it didn't hit me until my mom told me an old childhood friend (supposedly my first boyfriend when I was 6 or something) is getting married. Of course she had to add that I must "jia you".

It suddenly occurred to me, if all my ex-crushes are getting married, have I missed all my boats?

I didn't want to come back to Singapore partly because I was afraid I'd be carried away by this marrying spree. Every time I get a wedding invitation, I get the "when's your turn" question.

What kind of question is that? Makes me feel like cattle in a production line, waiting to be butchered. Ok, so I'm not doing my duty as a citizen to help boost the Chinese population in Singapore, and I'm not doing my duty as a daughter to give my parents grandchildren, nor am I doing my duty as a Christian by refusing to date another Christian.

What's wrong with that? Maybe I'm like what they like to call kids who don't do well in school here - Late Bloomers - or maybe I'm just plain not made for this game. Maybe I was made for something else.

Just don't ask me "when's your turn", cos' I might have already missed it, or sunk it completely.

Growing Up

My dad once told me when I was about 17 that I'm too idealistic, but that I should hold on to my ideals.

Then I turned 21 and again he told me (this time with a tad more exasperation) that I'm too idealistic and that life will teach me what reality is all about. He said he was afraid that life will disappoint me when I grow up.

Now I'm in my late twenties, and I finally know what he was talking about. I find myself today wondering if there can indeed be true altruism. Is there a humanitarian organisation that places its role of alleviating poverty and human suffering above its own political and self-serving interests? Are there christians who are kind to strangers without the intention of converting them? Is there a profession that focuses solely on the cause that it serves and not the returns it can bring to the individual or the company?

Can a person be just plain and simple nice, honest and open, without the risk of being manipulated, used, betrayed and stabbed in the back?

What is left of the innocence we once grew up with if this is the reality of life? Is it not possible for grown up adults to still hold on to the child-like faith in humanity - that men are essentially good; that good is stronger than evil; that you can trust in people; that as long as your conscience is clear and you believe in what you do, life will reward you?

A wise friend once told me that idealism and maturity are not mutually exclusive. One can mature in life and still be idealistic. After all, what is life without ideals?

The greatest thinkers in the world held on to their ideals well into a ripe old age and even took them to the grave. Franklin Roosevelt was 51 when he became president of the United States and created the New Deal; Karl Marx believed till his last breath that the proletariat emancipation can happen through communism; Obama is 48 and believes that beyond all odds, America is ready for big Change.

I sometimes feel discouraged by the vileness of the human pride. I like to believe that we all start out with the best of intentions, but sometimes fall victim to our own success. With the success comes flattery, then the power and the bloated ego seeps in ever so insidiously that we don't even realise that we've completely lost focus of the cause.

I refuse to accept that this is the best I can get out of life, and I refuse to let life eat away my idealism. I have precious moments kept in my heart of perfect strangers helping to fix my trash-can scooter in India and not accept a single rupee from me; friends who were there to hold my hand through the darkest moments of my life; my cleaners who are untouchables spending their month's wages to buy me a crucifix for christmas...the list goes on

If anything, life's taught me to cling on to my ideals, live for them, because without them, life won't be worth living.

BeAWARE: Keep religion out of civil society

So Reme, here's a new blog entry just for you.

I was two minds about whether to write about the recent AWARE saga or the adoption of the Slumdog millionaire actress, but thought I should diversify a little and not talk about India all the time :p

I've been following the shocking take-over of the AWARE leadership last couple of days and am appalled. This new group of women who have taken over AWARE obviously engineered a leadership grab, and have made it their personal vendetta to "consolidate" an organisation that has "diversified too much", "like any good corporation" would - in the words of its new president Josie Lau.

Firstly, the fact that the new president is talking about AWARE like she's talking about DBS Bank is very troubling. AWARE is NOT A CORPORATION for goodness sakes!!! When it comes to human needs, there is no such thing as too diversified. The people who set up AWARE drew no boundaries to what sort of women they help, regarding what issues.

The second most troubling thing is that these women are Christians! I'm Christian myself, and frankly I think they bring shame to Christianity. There is nothing Christian about the way they've handled this. I do not sense their compassion or empathy for women from all walks of life, all backgrounds, and all sexual orientations, which Christianity teaches. And judging by Josie's response in today's paper, AWARE is soon to be AWARE PTE LTD.

I am shocked that such a thing could happen in Singapore, though I cannot say I'm not thrilled by such controversy in a city where nothing usually happens. But I also find it very disturbing that these women, majority with a conservative Christian background should come into a public organisation and impose their values on it.

It is fine with me when Christians confine their religious believes and practices to their own circle. We do after all live in a multi-religious society. But the same way you don't bring your religion into politics, don't bring it to civil society. This is the one space where people of all backgrounds, class, religion and sexual orientations come to seek emotional and social support. There is no place for religion here.

If they believe so strongly that AWARE is not doing the right thing, then they should just set up their own organisation for women, and keep their crusade under their own banner for Christianity, or whatever it is they believe they're representing. Why ride on the good name AWARE and its predecessors have established, only to undo all they've achieved?

As a Christian, I'm ashamed of what my fellow "believers" are doing here.

Searching for Singapore's soul (Part 2): A losing battle for our dialects

I am truly appalled by the recent speak Mandarin drive. It says two main things:

1. that dialects are a negative interference on the learning of English and Mandarin

2. that it is restrictive because it only confines us to our ancestral village, town, or at best the province.

And to compound the absurdity of this argument, the Straits Times published a letter in the forum by an Ong Siew Chey who said:

Chinese should forget about dialects and stick to mandarin. Language is a tool and we should use the best tool available. Cultural and other values can be dissociated from languages...we do not lose much if we discard dialects

These arguments are highly flawed.

Firstly, a person's ability to learn a language is not a zero-sum game. The government should give Singaporeans greater credit for their capacity to learn. Any doctor will tell you that we do not have a fixed number of brain cells for the learning of languages and should therefore conserve them for only the languages that matter. If anything, my learning of a second and third language helped me appreciate the different languages more.

Granted, with limited time, one may argue that we should be focusing on the languages that matter. But being able to speak a language well has less to do with the number of hours one spends STUDYING it, than with the person's opportunity to practice it and understand the cultural significance of the language.

Which brings me to my next point. How can a person say that: "Cultural and other values can be dissociated from languages"???!!! Language and Culture are intrinsically linked! Good heavens! Which planet is this person coming from?!

Chinese opera sung in Mandarin as opposed to Hokkien can NEVER be the same. There are idoms, terms and phrases used in Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka etc that you cannot fully translate into Mandarin, and which are unique to the historical development of the dialect. You lose the dialect, and you lose the legends, myths and folklores of these communities.

Language is a tool, yes! But who ever said we should only work with one tool. Different tools are designed for different functions, so why rank them as best and second-best? And what's wrong with working with more than one tool?

Lastly, to say that dialects restrict us to only our ancestral town, or province is to have a very limited understanding of the function of language. Can and should we measure the value of a language based on the number of people who speak it? Must everything be valued by a quantifiable measure?

So what if only a village of 20 people speak that dialect? If one of that 20 is my grand father, that ONE person means a lot to me. And he is a part of my history and my family, which I will lose if I don't speak that dialect.

I speak from experience because my late grandparents were from Guang Zhou (a city in China), but I never learnt to speak cantonese. And I grew up very much detached from them, and I never bothered spending time with them because - "What would we talk about when I don't even speak their language?"

Nothing can be sadder than being total strangers with your own family and even when they passed on, I didn't really feel like I had lost a close family member.

Is this the kind of young generation the government really wants to nurture?

Dialects, like language, are a means of communication, and along with communication, peoples' ability to form relationships, identify with each other, and express feelings to each other. You take that away, and you break more than just the language, but the social bonds, sense of community and one's roots.

Did the government not once advocate Singaporean's living overseas to value one's roots and come back to Singapore instead of deserting? We were labeled "stayers" or "quitters".

Do our roots only stop at 1979 when the Speak Mandarin campaign was launched in Singapore?

Should we be searching for Singapore's soul? (Part 1)

I had just finished reading a book by Philip Pan, Out of Mao's Shadow: The struggle for the Soul of a New China.

The book started with a powerful presentation of the Tiananmen Massacre and a very stark contrast: before the communist revolution, the Nationalist party used water jets to quell student protests. But when the communist party came to power, they used guns and tanks in response to the students' demand for democratic reform and an end to corruption.

But what hit me harder, was the conclusion of the book, which I felt mirrored some of the issues we face here in Singapore. This is what he said in the concluding chapter:

The internet has emerged as an important venue for people with shared interests...to gather, talk and organise...The hard truth, however, is that many people aren't looking...[the communist party's] "patriotic education" classes in the schools have dulled the public's curiosity...the government has grown expert at manipulating public opinion, especially rallying nationalist sentiment to its side...The party's most important advantage, of course, is the wave of prosperity that it has been riding for more than a quarter century...the wealthiest and most influential tycoons...are the most likely to owe their wealth to the one-party system and the least likely to challenge it.

Indeed, this paragraph can be used to describe exactly Singapore. Singaporeans are very much plugged in to the world wide web, but yet to find people interested in discussing social issues in Singapore - the wrong attitudes we are having towards fertility and aging population problem, the importance of preserving our dialect as a fast disappearing link to our history and ancestry - is not so easy.

Indeed, from the western point of view business development is supposed to be good for democratic development. But the nature of business development in Asia is so different and they fail to understand that in a country where the private sector is nurtured by the state, the business community will be the last people to champion democratic reform.

A friend recently commented to me: "I'm less concerned with saving the world than saving my bank account". Indeed, the government has done a good job of setting the priorities for Singaporeans.