***
What's wrong with our Government?

Ooh funnies.

Sometime back I watched a little short film at Velvet Underground by an anti-PAP film maker. I really can't remember what the film's title was, or even what it's about. Most Singaporean film makers are so terribly ineffective and unamusing. Pity huh.

I've only ever watched three commercial local film productions: Homerun, Fifteen and Tiger's Whip. They were all pretty good I suppose. Nothing like Bowling for Columbine or Super-Sized me, oh nothing epic like that, but entertaining at least. All other local films welre simply spastic. Oh I forgot Talking Cock. That was really retarded. Singapore's Premier Satirical Humour Website? I think not.

Something like Mr. Brown would be more in order if you want an alternative local voice.

Anyway, I'm digressing.

So I was at Underground and I started talking to the film maker of the mediocre film on the Singapore-Malaysia Water issue (allright. I remember what it was about now. Not exactly though; just know that it's supposed to be anti-PAP and their policies) and he suggested that I left my number with his friend -I recited a couple a poems that night and got a spa voucher for it. He liked my voice- This friend of his never ceased to continually hound me thereafter. It's been oh, 9 months since I gave him my number and I've never met him since and only talked to him a couple of times; conversations which I did not enjoy, and he still calls me.

The acting forreign minister came to the college the other day to hold some sort of forum with the students. I wasn't there -last year's forum proved to be wholly retarded. I got a little too excited and stopped bothering to go up to the mike to speak and ended up yelling across the auditorium. It was about *surprisesurprise* Censorship in Singapore. The baseline for my argument was, by restircting movies non-discriminatorily, they weere infact leaving teenagers with two options, either no idea of the concept of sex (highly unlikely) or the impressions gleaned off slutpost.
His reply, "Does anyone else have anything to say?"
And you know what, someone actually did. He said this "Erotic artistry should be view within the marital bed, so I suggest, to that girl (me) to get a husband if she so wishes to view such materials." Well, you have my pity.

So that was why I didn't go this year -aslo the fact that I was stuck in theatre :P- but the stalker dude had to call me up, oh 6 times the night before -I didn't pick up the calls- and then messaging me to tell me that he'd be at the forum. Ugh. I don't care for what you have to say against the PAP.

You can't bite the hand that feeds you. And people seriously should stop fussing over how governments are elected and start paying more attention to how well they are functioning. And so what if the Lee family monopolizes Singapore's biggest corporations. People need incentives to run a country well. The American export of Democracy is not everyone's answer, and dude, I really don't feel like listening to you whine about the PAP anymore. It's just boring.

He keeps on whining about culture and propaganda and how (he's a teacher) he's forced to teach things he doesn't believe in. Well, if you hate your job so much, they pay up the bond and do something else. Sure, Singapore's wrecked with propaganda, and exggerated optimism for her future in the local paper, but it Runs.

And what about culture? This country doesn't know how to have fun and lacks diversity? Oh My God. Who are you kidding.
Sure we've lost all sense of identity for our ethinicity; I'm the perfect example, but that doesn't mean we don't have an identity. It's just a different identity now.
We were once compartmentalized by traditional asian values, now we're calssified into the different ways we express our individualism; the causes we believe in (pro-choice, pro-life, green, Liberal or New-Age?)The food we eat (McDonalds or Brown Organic rice produced by ex head-hunters from the jungles of Borneo) Whatever.
Singapore is as integrated into the globalized new world as much as a country can possibly be, and we are all influenced by these western thought and ideals, and we are really all bananas (yellow skin, white thought). But so what? It's just a different culture, that's all, not no culture.
It is not as if we have lost our soul and turned into the prototype of an asian society that's been fully overrun by white values and the prototye 'white culture'. I cannot believe that is possible. Every city has its own unique spirit, you can feel it when you step into one, and I know Singapore is different from all the other big cities I've visited.

So should we lament the loss of tradition in the face of progress? I don't know, and guess what. I don't care either.