My friend Amy said Singaporeans are ungrateful, especially overseas Singaporeans who have nothing good to say about Singapore. Her reasoning was simple. If we were born in a third world country instead of Singapore, we would not have the chance to be nourished and thus the chance of us getting where we are is low.
Her point is sound. Say if I am born in Somalia, my chances of robbing a merchant ship in the Indian Ocean as my profession is probably much higher than what I am doing now. So I must start singing praises of the sunny island. We are a clean country, just look at the slums in other country. There are no slums in Singapore. Except for Hougang and Aljunied of course. That will be fixed soon though and they will be whiter than white in future. So don't worry about this and we can erase this off the record for now.
Yeah. Singapore is a clean country. It is really bad in Perth. I dropped one coke bottle on the verge near my previous company once. To my dismay, the coke bottle remained there for a full month. It was an eyesore to me for each time I drove towards that parking area, I was reminded of my littering act. That was the only litter along the entire road. I picked up my own litter after guilt finally penetrated into my evil heart. In Singapore, it was different. Litter mysteriously disappeared from the streets as if you had never thrown them before. It was magic. When I grow up, I learnt that magic has a monetary cost. Yeah Singapore is clean. Brilliant.
Singapore is a safe country. We don't hear about crimes very often in mainstream media. That probably means low crime isn't it? When we talk crime on television, it will be a display efficient the police are. They even had fun enacting crimes and how lousy criminals were caught. There are even repeat telecast for bored aunties in the afternoon the week after. Yeah Singapore is safe. We have 33 police posts, 1 airport police and 6 divisional hq. That is 1 police entity per 18 km2. One of their slogan used to be 'Keeping the streets safe while you sleep'. Along that line. Neighbourhood police posts now close after office hours. Because bad folks have agreed to commit crimes only during office hours. It is so safe in Singapore now that you can slog your night out at work while the police sleep. Yep, Singapore is a safe country.
Singapore is an orderly country. We respect the law at all times. We queue up all the time. No jostling, no fighting. Unless that uncle stops by in his shiny Mercedes to grab cheap sales against us, we are normally orderly. We litter only when no one is looking. Now that NEA has installed surveillance cameras that can pick up our acts of throwing a cigarette butt we chuck out of your HDB flat after making love, we don't litter anymore. I tell you, we respect the law. We even got PRCs to do a labour strike on our behalf. That's what foreigners are here for, to perform magic on our streets, to clean our babies' shit, to protest. Put it simply, to do the dirty work. Without a doubt, Singapore is an orderly country.
I praise Singapore to no end, I get lambasted by people here.
"So good, why the fuck you left?"
Lesson learnt. We can't live to please everyone. As the saying goes, an opinion is like an asshole, everyone has one. That's right. No matter how the other assholes stink, you only need to smell your own. So unless you are interested in smelling my asshole, leave my opinion alone.
good one there
ReplyDeleteClean, Safe, Orderly country. Yes. More than enough to live here peacefully.
ReplyDeleteWhat else is needed to retire in a safe country apart from looking at our virtual money.
I particularly liked your paragraph:
ReplyDeleteSingapore is a safe country. We don't hear about crimes very often in mainstream media. That probably means low crime isn't it? When we talk crime on television, it will be a display efficient the police are. They even had fun enacting crimes and how lousy criminals were caught. There are even repeat telecast for bored aunties in the afternoon the week after. Yeah Singapore is safe. We have 33 police posts, 1 airport police and 6 divisional hq. That is 1 police entity per 18 km2. One of their slogan used to be 'Keeping the streets safe while you sleep'. Along that line. Neighbourhood police posts now close after office hours. Because bad folks have agreed to commit crimes only during office hours. It is so safe in Singapore now that you can slog your night out at work while the police sleep. Yep, Singapore is a safe country.
Everytime I watch CrimeWatch on TV (I stopped now cos it's getting more and more incredulous and stupid), I will laugh and wonder how many unsolved cases are there in ratio to the one that the police successfully solved in 1 month with the efficiency and cooperation among all the other departments.
Few years ago, you mentioned you were going to stop writing here, and so I stopped following. You are still writing! Bluff me! Still enjoy your writing and humour. :) BTW my hubby and I have been considering pulling the same stunt like you for years... but we still cannot decide which countries to "choose" from. May visit Perth soon. Do keep writing!
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