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.

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.

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.

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