A Singaporean In Australia

Why would a grown man be fascinated with the sight of flowers? Most wouldn't. I wouldn't normally turn a head to pretty (real) flowers on the streets but those simply stood out a little more.  Even during shitty Summer days, it pays to walk out sometimes, unless you are anthophobic or hate life in general. If anything, my suaku level had a part in that. I wouldn't see anything like that in Singapore even in Hort Park or big nurseries at Pasir Panjang or Thomson Road. There might be something like that in the Gardens by the Bay. They don't spend a billion bucks to build a garden for nothing, do they?

Do they?

I rather walk into a surprise like that any day than to pay entry fees to look at flowers in an air-conditioned green house. If you know what real value is, you'll think the same way as me. Think about why people pay a premium for a faraway wild safari trip to watch animals running around free range than to look at animals at the zoo. Can one be so sick of a tightly regulated environment such that a cluttered one can offer an uncanny sense of comfort?

I was so sheltered growing up in Singapore that I thought dainty flowers must grow neatly on elegant stalks. Except for thorny roses perhaps. The closest we could get a glimpse was the local florists where we bought little offerings to impress the girl that caught our eye. How would I imagine that Sun Flower could grow taller than a hedge ... or a house! Well, I heard little children in Singapore these days thought chicken grow on trees in their cleaned and plucked supermarket form. Things could be worse. But who cares how tall can sugarcane grow or bamboo has higher tensile strength than steel? Who cares how to convert maize into flour? Who cares how to cook a meal? To survive in Singapore, we need to get good grades and a good job and everything irons out nicely. The only problem is that the quest to be the tallest poppy requires some kind of unreachable self actualisation goal in tandem. If the others could attain it, then it's not good enough.

While we strive for meaningless materialism, it is easy to forget that a human being only need to grow food, make food, eat food, sleep under a shelter and repeat until we die. If there is an easy mode to life, that would be choosing that option to live way below our means and laugh at the world. Instead, most of us choose the hard mode to be more than what we are, oblivious of the world laughing at us.