[Book Review] Gulliver's Travels

Lilliput

Gulliver is a large man. General restlessness compels him to go on a long cruise (Unlike slave trader Daniel Defoe, it is not entirely clear what he intends to achieve via this trip). He gets lost at sea and is marooned on an island full of little people (who sound suspiciously like orientals - they have an emperor, multiple palaces, are godless, and do dangerous dances). I say little people but they aren’t that little - larger than ants, smaller than your forefinger (for reference, their tallest trees are 6 feet tall). Think BFG proportions. They enslave him (there are a lot of them, and they took him by surprise - he was enjoying an involuntary siesta) by showering him with an avalanche of little arrows and chaining him to a, well, something heavy (it is not immediately clear what he is chained to, thought it is made immediately clear that the chain is pretty sturdy).

Linguists are ordered to teach Gulliver the Lilliputian language, the same way humans do with gorillas, rhesus monkeys, capuchins, and other members of the primate family they are obsessed with. He is fed a steady diet of meat and alcohol. He strikes up a friendship with the emperor, his consort, and certain members of their retinue (including the Treasurer’s wife, which the Treasurer takes offense to).

Eventually they realize they have more in common than they thought they did

Eventually the Lilliputians make no attempt to learn more about the ways of the savage than he has from them (what could you possibly hope to learn from someone more primitive than yourself) nor do they overly interest themselves in his family history (his wife and children are never brought up), viewing him merely as a weapon of mass destruction. Gulliver fulfills his Lilliputian destiny by marching across the sea to Blefuscu and seizing their entire fleet (because grand larceny is a somewhat lesser crime than wanton destruction of property. Also, it sounds more intelligent) before their imminent invasion of Lilliput, forcing the Blefuscuans to sue for peace.

The emperor is pleased for a second or two, then realizes that Gulliver, who has served his purpose, is now no more than a drain of resources. It doesn’t help that Gulliver pissed all over the palace to put out a fire. Machinations of various hawkish types (who were rendered obsolete by Gulliver’s might in battle) in court bear fruit, and Gulliver is condemned to be blinded (as opposed to the more severe sentence of death). Gulliver flees to Blefuscu, and the Blefuscuans, glad to see the back of him, help him build a boat. Gulliver sets sail and encounters an English vessel, who brings him back to England (of course).

Gulliver goes into some detail on the laws and customs of the Lilliputian “empire”. Fraud and ingratitude are punishable by death. Accusing the innocent is punishable by death. Job applicants are selected based on morals rather than ability (better dumb mistakes than smart maliciousness). The natural act of wanting to procreate and showing tenderness towards your young deems Lilliputians unfit for parenthood - their offspring are surrendered to a state-run educational commune, and they pay for their upkeep and limited visitation rights. Officials are appointed to high office based on their rope-dancing prowess (which they are often called upon to redemonstrate, often with tragic consequences). They obsess over insignificant details, like which side of an egg to crack it from (this led to rebellion from breakaway factions).

Gulliver spends two months with his wife and family, and giving in to an insatiable desire to see other countries, takes leave of his wife, school-going son Johnny, married daughter Betty to go traveling again.

Brobdingnag

Gulliver is abandoned by his fellow crew when a giant chases them. The giant turns out to be a farmer who exploits Gulliver as a traveling exhibit. Gulliver is near death from exhaustion when the farmer sells his meal ticket to the queen for a thousand pieces of gold. The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter joins the royal household as primary caretaker of Gulliver.

Gulliver quickly supplants the queen’s favorite dwarf (implying that there are other less favored dwarfs who are never mentioned) as her favorite. The queen’s smith constructs a box (in essence a small room for privacy and containment of personal effects) for ease of transportation (of Gulliver).

The king initially perceives Gulliver to be a piece of elaborate clockwork (this idea is swiftly dismissed with closer examination).

Knowing the King to be a fan of musick, Gulliver makes an attempt to get into his good graces with some dismal spinet playing (which doesn’t go too well owing to his diminutive stature) and telling him of the invention of gunpowder (upon which the King deems him an impotent and groveling Insect to entertain such inhuman Ideas).

The King shows a keen interest in Gulliver’s homeland, and takes detailed and precise notes while Gulliver dilates upon the history, politics, judiciary, nobility, governance, education, and many other aspects of Britain and Europe, after which the King cannot help but conclude the bulk of humanity to be the most pecunious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

Here are some things about the Brobdingnagians. They learn only about Morality, History, Poetry, and Mathematics - nothing that may not be applied to the improvement of life, agriculture, and mechanical arts (Gulliver deems their lack of abstract ideas defective). No law in the country exceeds in words the number of letters in their twenty-two letter alphabet. Crime and civil suits are absent. The king maintains an army to put down the odd rebellion. Public executions are considered a diversion.

When Gulliver isn’t busy facing a series of ridiculous and troublesome near-death run-ins with monkeys, frogs, flies, wasps, dwarf, and falls from not insignificant heights, he’s busy body-shaming maids-of-honor, who are too eager to grant him full view of their gargantuan breasts, nipples, nethers, and body odours. Yes, giant people are gross.

Gulliver is eventually spirited away from Brobdingnag by a passing bird, who drops his box in the middle of the ocean, which is then retrieved by a passing ship and towed back to England.

Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, Japan

Barely ten days on shore before Gulliver grows restless on shore and makes for the high seas, is set upon by Pirates and marooned in the middle of nowhere, where he discovers Laputa, the magnetic floating island!

The Laputians are perpetual thought engines. They wander about lost in their own thoughts, with brief pauses to fulfill basic bodily functions and respond to external stimuli. They employ a sort of servant known as a flapper, whose sole purpose is to follow their master around and slap him about with a pebble-filled bladder whenever this is necessary.

Their obsession with theoretical science, mathematics, and music lends itself to a wholly impractical, incompetent manner of life. Their houses are ill-built and clothes ill-sewn. Their food is cut in mathematical shapes. They are alarmed by slight movements in celestial bodies. Their women are vivacious sorts who carry out their infidelities right before the eyes of their sensory-impaired husbands.

The Laputians rule over a number of grounded vassal states, and enforce this rule by throwing stones from above to quell any disobedience.

Gulliver takes his leave of these tiresome folk and descends to one of these states, Balnibardi, where ruinous new rules and methods for agriculture, manufacture, building, trades put forth by the Academy of PROJECTORS have laid waste to once-fertile farmland. Gulliver visits Lagado, the capital of Balnibardi where said academy is based, and observes farcical experiments where scientists attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers and ruck through human excrement for evidence of plots and conspiracies.

Gulliver then travels to Glubbdubdrib, where his necromantic hosts summon a series of ancient and modern historical figures and subject them to his questioning. Gulliver finds the ancient beyond reproach, and the modern full of prostitutes, cowards, sodomites, flatterers. At Luggnagg (some sort of East Asian kingdom?), he crawls upon his belly and licks the floor to seek an audience with the king, and is introduced to the decrepit Struldbrugs, who enjoy eternal life without eternal youth, and are declared legally dead at eighty and banished from society.

From Luggnagg he sails forth for Japan, skirts past a cross-stamping ceremony, and finds his way back to England.

Houyhnhnms

Gulliver spends a record five months with his wife and children, before ditching his wife and unborn child for the comfort of sea travel. As is custom by now, things go awry when his mutinous crew evict him from the ship and he is set ashore on the land of the Houyhnhnms (pronounced Whinnins).

The Houyhnhnms are the most noble beings ever to trot upon the face of this earth. What they lack in intellect and high culture, they compensate with universal friendship and benevolence. They treat family, friends, strangers, and neighbors with equal respect.

They have no natural fondness for colts or foals, and consider such feelings beneath the purely rational beings that they are. Upon death, they are buried in the most obscure places - they experience no joy or grief at their departure.

They have no word for lie (in place, they use the phrase “the thing which was not”), evil (using yahoo as a suffix to denote such meaning), or opinion (pure logic dictates the right path), or any concept of war, quarrels, money, diseases, government, or lawyers (Gulliver’s master found it inconceivable that there exists a race of lawyers whose sole purpose was to inflict injustice upon others for the sake of doing so).

They have a sort of Quarterly Youth Olympics where odes are sung in the honor of the champions. They have grand assemblies and council meetings where provisions are exchanged and notions are put forward. Notions, such as - should all yahoos be exterminated and replaced with asses? Gulliver’s master, inspired by what Gulliver tells him about humankind husbandry rituals, proposes that young yahoos be castrated to render them tame, so the entire race may die out and be replaced with asses in time.

Yahoos are vile, fetid, hairy humanoid creatures with claws that they use to climb trees. They consume raw meat and have a natural inclination to hurt one another. The females, especially the red-haired ones, are salacious (Gulliver is nearly raped by one).

Gulliver cannot help but observe the similarities between the yahoos and himself. He slowly loses his mind. He makes clothing out of yahoo skin. He lines his canoe (he is forced to make one after the Houyhnhnms vote him off the island - an intelligent Yahoo is too dangerous to be released to the general Yahoo population) with yahoo skin. He is rescued by a Portuguese Captain, Don Pedro, who is a wise, courteous, and generous man. Gulliver regards him with suspicion. He returns to England and renounces human society, preferring the company of two horses in the barn.

[Book Review] Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein (no idea where the later “von” came from, maybe people conflated him with Doctor Doom) of Geneva goes to Ingolstadt for further studies in Natural Philosophy, and quickly surpasses his tutors. Swept up in religious fervour, he spends the next few years creating his Monster (built out of German body parts), whom he immediately rejects out of extreme ugliness. 

His Monster is naturally not too pleased about this, and after going through several further rounds of rejection (by some villagers, the guardian of a girl he saved, and the De Lacey family - the blind patriarch being the exception), decides to become a serial killer. He offs Victor’s youngest brother William (and frames their servant Justine for the crime) just to show he means business, and makes Victor an offer he can't refuse - make him a bride, and he will depart for the jungles of South America, never to return.

Accompanied by his best friend Henry Clarval, Victor goes on a sojourn through England and Scotland, picking up English and Scottish body parts along the way. At Orkney, he has an epiphany and realizes that maybe being the progenitor of an entire race of supermutants might not be such a good idea after all. The Monster watches in horror as he rends his nearly finished work asunder, and swears bloody vengeance.

Henry Clarval is swiftly dispatched, followed by Elizabeth Lavenza on their wedding night. A heartbroken Father (Alphonse) Frankenstein dies a few days later. Victor is not too pleased about this and, left with no purpose in life, pursues the Monster to the ends of the earth - across deserts, the Mediterranean, Russia, and eventually ending up at the North Pole, where he meets a marooned Robert Walton and his crew.

Captain Robert Walton obtains the friendship and inherits the will of a dying Victor, who manages to avert a mutiny with forceful words before drawing his final breath. The Monster appears and goes into a soliloquy about how being forced to do all these base things made him the basest of animals, and because one-upmanship is important, how sad he is compared to Victor. He declares that he will set himself upon a funeral pyre and departs, never to be seen again.

Random notes -

• The Monster : “Boo hoo hoo, look at me! I’m so erudite and talented and clever! I’ve read so many books (The Sorrows of Young Werther, Plutarch’s Lives, Paradise Lost)! If only you’d give me a chance to impress you! You superficial lot! Die!”
• Also the Monster : “Look what you made me do! I’m such a gentle soul, overflowing with the milk of human kindness! Don’t you know how remorseful I feel every time I steel my heart to do these evil and devious things? Do you think I like taunting and framing and murdering?”
• The Monster is a self-absorbed narcissist who blames the world (and his parents) for making him do all the nasty things he does. You empathise with him for a short while after his inception, when he has an appreciation for the elements of the natural world, when he is bullied by various representatives of mankind, and before he goes on a self-righteous killing spree.
• Victor’s creation is an Ubermensch - Superhuman strength, speed, agility, intelligence, and ugliness (so basically an 8 feet tall ninja, or Beast from X-men). Nuclear weapons, as dangerous as they are, have no autonomy beyond that granted of their users.
• The obvious correlation today is AI

[Book Review] Peter Pan

Peter Pan is a murderous psychopath with mommy issues. He guts lost boys when they get too old, and cries in his sleep. He is unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality (simply imagining that he is full of food makes him full - a power the lost boys do not have, which is why they go hungry from time to time - they are too afraid to defy him). He is self-obsessed to the point where he does not recognize facts unless they are overtly pointed out to him (e.g. Wendy aging) and even still, it takes some effect on his part to make sense of it all. Self-obsession may be a useful protective mechanism to someone who has lived as long as Peter did. Why would you develop an attachment to anything when everything is transient, and the only constant is you? Time and faces have no meaning to an immortal - killing is as natural an act as eating or sleeping, and he hardly sticks to the agreement (where it was agreed between Mrs. Darling, Wendy, and Peter that Wendy would go to Neverland one week every year for “spring cleaning”) at the end since one year is as good as twenty.

There are several power factions in Neverland - The Redskins (led by Tiger Lily), the Lost Boys (led by Peter Pan), the Pirates (led by James Hook), wild animals (e.g. the Neverbird), and a massive crocodile who has developed a taste for Hook’s flesh after Peter threw it Hook’s dismembered right hand (the crocodile also ate a clock at some point and regularly emits ticking noises, which is how anyone tells the time in Neverland). The Redskins are nigh useless, while the Lost Boys are only relevant because of Peter. Their failure to keep one another in balance may suggest that the pirates are a recent addition. The pirates, as a cohesive unit, vastly overpower the Redskins or the Lost Boys (sans Peter Pan, who is an otherworldly force of nature), and indeed the failure of their leadership in the end proves to be their undoing, as Hook loses the plot and the pirates are picked off one by one by the Lost Boys.

The pirates have their own mommy issues, which may suggest that they used to be lost boys. Smee wants Wendy to be his mommy. Hook has some remnant trauma from his days at public school, where actions are categorized into good form and bad form. The only thing he truly cares about is his own good form (which may also mean his opponent’s resultant bad form). Manner of dress, manner of speech, general behavior, these are all examples of good form. Unnecessary movement when fighting (as Hook goads Peter into doing at the end before plunging to his death by crocodile) - that is bad form.

At the beginning of the story, Michael, John, and Wendy are whisked away to Neverland by Peter Pan. The lost boys all suffer from memory loss owing to the magical nature of the place, and it isn’t long before the three of them succumb to the same effects (sans Wendy, who retains a sense of self as she is older and wiser). Peter brought Wendy over to be his surrogate mommy, but Tinker Bell wants Peter all to herself (it seems that they have a one-sided romance) and tries to kill Wendy at the start. She deceives the lost boys into firing arrows at Wendy, who is only saved by a freak incident. As punishment, Peter disowns Tinker Bell for a week.Tinker Bell spends the remainder of the story flying around and emitting expletives (in fairy language), and slightly redeems herself by consuming the poison meant for Peter. She doesn’t die, of course - she is, within two paragraphs, revived by the belief of little children in fairies.

Hook is an odd character. He is seemingly the most intelligent character in the story (Peter Pan, while displaying occasional feats of cunning, is let down by his naivete and saved only by his immortality and luck), capable of hatching plots to poison the lost boys with a cake or Peter Pan with some cyanide-like substance he carries around for personal consumption. He bests the Redskins with geographical advantage, and figures out Slightly’s secret (that Slightly had altered the size of his tree trunk to fit him). He is hampered only by character flaws - his own overconfident and oversuspicious nature.

The lost boys are Slightly, Toodles (the best one - an English Gentleman with self-awareness), the twins, and a few more. They live in an underground house accessible only by their own bespoke tree trunks (when they grow too fat to use their tree trunks, Peter starves them until they shrink). This may sound ridiculous, but becomes an important plot point later in the story when Hook attempts to poison Peter.

Anyway, I understand the bewitching quality of Peter Pan - it may partly explain why JM Barrie and MJ have erm, psychiatric issues. If MJ believes himself to be Peter Pan, then his actions may be construed as those of an innocent child trapped in an adult male’s body.

Happy Activist Angry Hour

So I've been to a few local activist events - Workers Made Possible, and another two I can't remember.

And what I understand from the events is this -

1) A few well-meaning local left-leaning activists get together with the odd confused opposition figure (*ahem* Leon Perera)

2) They do research, consult academics, do public engagement, burn many weekends and non-working hours collaborating and pooling their thoughts into a 50 page manifesto that no one reads

3) Or at least, no one that matters reads it. 

Oh maybe there are some outreach efforts. Maybe you tried to have a dialogue session with members of the public (who will immediately abandon that rare moment of lucidity and reembrace their own treasured conservative values once they return to social media and their own social circle, because your one-off interaction is no match for their echo chamber). But it's ok, you did something! You felt good!

Maybe Jommedia or Ricemedia or the Independent/Vulcan Post (when they aren't busy spinning full-blown narratives out of isolated anecdotes or pushing to meet their SEO KPIs) will cough out a few supportive articles in that insufferable overacademic GP style. Maybe it'll get a week, maybe two weeks of traction. Then that's it.

But is ok guys, we have to try! We have to keep trying! Can't give up the good fight!

I'm not saying we should give up. In fact, the reason 377A was repelled was partially because the government heard you. Of course, the timing is interesting, given that well, they could have repelled it at any time. It wasn't like they were forced to do it because you were all marching in the streets. In fact, you could have spent another decade shouting on social media and the government could have conveniently ignored you. After all, they didn't go around arresting you, did they? They allowed you to "make yourselves heard" on social media, at pink dot, at gay bars, at events like these.

What happened is that there was a pretty mundane consultative process where they had some focus groups with conservative and religious people, told them what to think, and this repulsion is the cumulation of that process. There were a few submissions and a few presentation slides at MCCY and MinLAW, drafted by a few executives and managers, vetted by a few directors and signed off by the CEOs, permanent secretaries, and ministers. None of you expected it, then they did it. That was it. The banality of evil.

So if the government could have done it anytime they wanted to, and they just went and did it without consulting any of you, without any of you knowing anything about it, did it really felt like you won? Yes, we have to celebrate our wins, no matter how small, but really, the nature of the victory does leave a rather bitter aftertaste doesn't it?

But I digress.

I'm saying that I disagree with the approach. What is the point of having a 50 page manifesto with 50 "demands" when the vast majority of the public doesn't know it exists? When your target audience is that small group of shouty lefties with colorful hair and multiple tats and piercings that turn up at your events? When the government can just conveniently ignore it for as long as they want? Oh, really transparent collaborative process where they gauge public opinion. None of you know what's happening behind the scenes short of hearsay. No leaked whatsapp messages, no documented evidence, no whistleblowing by disgruntled civil servants, no brilliant exposes by investigative journalists.

First, you need to be focused. Don't have a 50 page manifesto full of "demands" for every aspect of society. Oh, what are we doing for the foreign workers? The poorest and most vulnerable members of society? The trans people? The gays and lesbians? You can't cover that all - it dilutes the impact. Stick to one group. Five demands on one page. Even better, just one demand. That's it. Let It's Raining Raincoats or TWC2 handle the foreign workers. Let other groups handle the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Stay on point. The more focused you are, the more difficult it is for you to be ignored.

Second, you are a minority and will never gain broader acceptance unless you do something about it. How do you gain broader acceptance? The mass media. Straits Times is hardly going to run a full page editorial the next day championing trans rights. Ru Paul's drag race or Queer Eye is hardly going to be shown on Ch 5 the next day. But lots of people still watch Channel 8. And that should be your starting point. Not Mothership (joke) or Mustsharenews or Goodyfeed or Vulcanpost or The Independent or all these so-called independent media outlets that people can scroll through and flick away and forget about. People need sustained exposure.

This could be your one demand - more positive examples of gay people (let's start small) in Mediacorp Channel 8 dramas. And I mean Captain Holt level. Just some person who you couldn't tell is gay who *gasp*, actually is! And no more Dennis Chew or Chua En Lais please.

So maybe you can keep shouting for another ten or twenty years. Maybe some of you will eventually give up the good fight, grow up (god forbid) and buy BTOs and get plugged into the system and become staunch ruling party supporters (I've heard of a few). The government is happy to drag this on for as long as they like. In fact, they seem to like co-opting aspects of youth culture while ignoring the issues affecting youths today. Oh look! Another shiny NTUC ad with Gen Z K-Pop wannabes jumping around! The government isn't out of touch after all!

Now, ten, twenty, thirty years. Can you wait that long?

Which brings me to my third point - you need to accelerate the process. You can't let the government dictate the pace. If they aren't ever going to consult you (which admitably is a slap in the face), then turn the other cheek. Reach out to Edwin Tong and ask him the sort of very specific loaded question that will only make him look bad if he tries to weasel his way out of, and he will. For example, you can frame it this way - the rest of the world is culturally moving on while SG is being left behind. Does MCCY have a road map for LGBTQ to gain broader acceptance by society, and can MCCY share this road map with us? We are gravely concerned that a chasm will form in society if the government doesn't take steps to bridge the cultural divide. Bonus points if you somehow manage to weave in the fact that you weren't consulted for 377A, but those religious people were.

He'll naturally give some non-answer like "we must tread carefully and not let our pace be dictated by cultural developments in the US." Extra points if he mentions the right/left divide in the US and Europe, or the Russia/Ukraine war.

So basically a no. He isn't going to share any information with you, nor will he involve you in the decision-making process.

Then you keep driving the message (is there a roadmap?) home any opportunity you get. Sustained pressure. Do this during the election and it will trend. Don't rely on Marine Parade GRC. A vote against the ruling party is a vote against Edwin Tong. Will the landscape turn blue overnight? Nay. But if they lose enough votes, they WILL do something about it.

Now, I don't have ten years of activist experience behind me. In fact, I have zero. All I've done is been to a couple of events and dreamed up a few scenarios in my head. Maybe this is all bollocks. Maybe you'll tell me, it's harder than you think. Oh, look at this smartarse telling us what to do, idiot knows nothing. But I don't profess to be anything other than an outsider looking in. And by sharing this, I was hoping to gain the benefit of your experience. Maybe you could tell me if anything I said made sense, or even better, is actionable upon. And if it isn't, I am willing to change my view.

And no, that LKY quote is not as wholesome as you think. It just means that your sexual orientation or gender has nothing to do with your value as an economic unit. Which means you should just keep your head down, work hard, respect your elders, and contribute to the GDP of the nation. That is all.

Side topic for discussion - if a famous author or playwright or creative sort comes down and attends an event (*ahem* SWF), is that a tacit approval of the stance adopted by our government?

IPPT through rose-tinted lenses

 Went for IPPT yesterday. Here’s what happens – 

The government sends you a SMS. You fret and start to realize the importance of regular exercise. You seek a channel for your new found devotion to keeping fit and staying healthy. The gym across your house looks nice. It’s run by SSC, and full of last minute losers like you. 

You pop up on a Wednesday evening. Girls are doing the treadmill/exercise bike and watching K-drama on their phones (the treadmills/exercise bikes have integrated phone holders). Guys are a mixed bag – some are clearly semi-regular muscle builders dropping by after work to maintain their gains. A few lost souls (not unlike you) have wandered in, maybe propelled by some primordial desire to bulk up in a last ditch attempt to attract the opposite sex (either that or they have fallen prey to sublimal government programming). A few older men look like they’re just there to while away the hours before bedtime. Or death.

Everyone does their thing. This gym isn’t judging – no one cares what it is you do. The home bros rotate between stations, clearing sets and reps as they go (or whatever it is they clear, you never understood the importance of a proper workout regime anyway, even after watching all those YouTube videos – why else are you here now?), debating the virtues of various protein shakes. The old men sit around chatting. The losers (like you) focus on upper body workout, because girls dig big biceps, and because you can barely scrap 10 pushups together to get a single point from IPPT.

Class 95 blares in the background. The TV plays CNA. No one cares.

Then you run out of gas after an hour and leave with a spring in your step. You took action! You did a thing! There’s hope for you yet!

Then you return to the gym a few more times over the coming weeks and lose interest.

Two months before your IPPT, you look at the calendar and go shit, just two months before my IPPT! The impetus strikes you again. You decide to start jogging after work. The government has built a running track near your house to cater to busy working professionals like you, professionals who love to work hard and play hard. It’s crowded, but what can you do? There are a lot of you.

You start jogging. This isn’t too bad, you think. It’s open air, and you can look at birds.

The next day your calf muscles hurt like hell (mostly because you were an idiot and did not consider the importance of a proper stretching routine).

You jog a few more times, with diminishing returns in happiness.

Then the day comes. You show up at camp on time, surrounded by the same gym bros and losers from the gym. You take a deep breath and somehow manage to eke out the requisite number of push up and sit ups (a dubious talent you always knew you had but were loath to admit). You’re completely winded after that. Not sure if there is any fuel left in the tank for 2400 metres of track.

Meanwhile you sit about catching a breather and watching some gym bro smash another of his personal push-up records.

You start the run. By Round 3 your lack of determination is really getting to you and you are tempted to start walking, but you keep running because you don’t know any better (your brain is too starved of oxygen to make any rational judgment). Like some sort of zombie you lurch step by step towards the finish line.

It’s the final 50 metres and you break out into full sprint. Some stranglers are inspired by you and try to match your pace. Your timing – 13 minutes and 36 seconds. Good enough to pass, not good enough for Silver. You collapse. Then you look around and notice that the fitness freaks are about as fast as you are (mas o menos 30 seconds). Turns out they all skipped leg day. Who knew?

You join in the new warm-down session mandated by SAF (because the higher-ups have run out of ways to add value to existing processes), collect your piece of paper, and leave. Another year!

Kampong of the Spirits

Part of the reason the so-called Kampong Spirit has died is because many of the functions originally fulfilled by a Kampong have been co-opted by the Government. For example, communal childcare, cooking, dispute resolution, etc. Activities are now organized by the PA on a neighbourhood level rather than block level, and childcare is now Sparkletots. Some of these functions have been co-opted for a good reason. Others, maybe not so much.

Returning these functions to the residents would require the government to relinquish some control. What? Relinquish control? And deprive hundreds of highly-talented scholar-bureaucrats who graduated top of their classes in the LKY School of Public Policy and thousands of uptight control freaks turned PA volunteers a sense of purpose?

Perhaps some loose community structure adhering to some basic guidelines (don’t feed the children too much caffeine after 8pm and the like) with occasional audits could be set up and overseen by the wisest elders in your block. What? Wisest? Have you seen the state of old people these days? Sharing racist memes on WeChat and liking every Facebook post they see?

Or perhaps neighbourhoods could be adorned to reflect their street names. Why aren’t there more prawn drainage covers in Jalan Rajah Udang? Why aren’t there more durian motifs on the flats in Lor Lew Lian? Why aren’t all the building names at Spooner Road Spoonerisms? The scholar-bureaucrats once had this idea, but they never took it far enough, before they went in search of the next big vanity project to adorn their impressive portfolios. Or worse, living in such a place might instill the residents with a sense of local identity! Can’t have “identity politics” here, no sirree! Identity has to remain the homogenous featureless nationalistic blob that it currently is.

But ‘tis fine – these things are meant to die. Peoples’ lifestyles have changed, and they never care as much as they claim to do. Mostly virtue-signaling, is all.

So what has replaced the “Kampong Spirit”? BTO Whatsapp groups set up by private developers (and sometimes residents themselves). Chat groups surrounding the care of communal cats (which the government is trying to regulate, because they can't help themselves). Groups that have sprung up organically or capitalistically with no encouragement from the government. But our scholar-bureaucrats hate this! They either attempt to co-opt these movements into some government initiative (Exhibit A would be all the neighbourhood Telegram chat groups set up by the RCs that serve no purpose other than to spam residents with PSAs), or demand regulation, or both! Because the progenitor of this “Kampong Spirit” must be nobody, nobody but them! Can't relinquish control, no sirree!

Meanwhile the government has to keep up the facade because well, it's what they do. Cue the neverending series of ST editorials “questioning” where our “Kampong Spirit” is. Oh wait, it’s alive in random acts of kindness. Some guy going around helping the elders in his neighbourhood. Some girl helping to water the plants even though no one asked her to.

That’s not a COMMUNITY, for chrissakes. That’s one person being good-hearted. 

Communities have symbols. For example, a third division football team representing the working-class roots of the locals with generational support despite their lack of success. A small town where the townsfolk decided to paint potatoes all over the buildings because a) it's funny and b) it attracts tourists. Rural folk put aside their petty differences and unite under the banner of a common gene pool to defeat big evil American corporation from taking over their land and driving moms and pops out of business. So - what are the symbols here?

And please don't parade out the same tired explanations (Singapore is a small multiracial, multicultural country, blah blah blah). You know full well what I am talking about.

Be intellectually honest, just for once in your life.

My first post

 This is my first post