A Singaporean In Australia

Fortunately they announced it on the news website on the 2nd of April so the people wouldn't mistaken it for an April Fool's joke. Still, it was a good laugh reading how Grace Fu thought giving newborns from 2015, termed Golden Jubilee Babies, a sarong with a motif of the Singapore flag was something of "great significance". 

Fair play to them for aiming to present a gift which does not involved money. I sure hope the company awarded the contract to manufacture these sarongs with the Singapore flag motif on is not linked to the government in any way. If so, I hope we'll never come to know how Singaporeans paid the most expensive sarong in the world with their tax. Well, on the bright side, spending an additional cost to add the Singapore flag on the sarong seems to be a brilliant idea. At least it should deter even the most hardcore anti-government citizens not to dump the sarong straight into the bin. That will a ugly sight if it appears on STOMP. 

On the brighter side, Grace Fu's dim idea would be likely shadowed by another suggestion from the "public." If you think you have a better idea than Grace Fu, you can submit your suggestion here. Be sure to be as creative as you can. For eg, a baby underwear with a motif of the Singapore flag on it. That's certainly cheaper and more popular than a sarong that much lesser young couples these days don't use. Just be careful to keep the motif out of the strategic zones. You don't want your Golden Jubilee Baby to soil our state flag by mistake, not that a sarong is completely immune by it, really. Don't let that discourage you from submitting your inferior ideas though, you may just beat this one by luck. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we will not end up spending $0.5 million dollars for this National Brainstorm, like we did renaming Marina Bay, Marina Bay.

I like the term Golden Jubilee Babies. It seems like Singapore is ready for a fresh new start. I wondered what they called my generation 3 decades back. Our new name must be "The failed generation," since our leaders are telling us that foreigners are better than us on every opportunities. Hopefully our failed social experiments gave the Government enough lessons to learn from mistakes and create a golden wealth-generating generation and give the Government more reasons for their jubilees.

There are parents who feel giving money or its equivalence is more practical than sending cheesy gifts. Maybe it's true since milk powder does not rain from the sky. However a portion of the masses are insatiable and will ask for the sky even if they receive periodic money showers, so I don't think giving a gift from a past generation to the next that involves no money isn't a bad thing. Having said that, a gift of great significance should involve thinking, a bit more deeper than sarongs with flag motifs, which you may expect more from a supposedly greater mind.


What does a parent really want to give to his or her child? One of them should be hope. The assurances to our next generation that bringing them up in this country is not a mistake, that they will be included and accepted in society regardless or who and what they are in a sustainable manner. From the ridiculous amount of emails I've been receiving about migration (mainly from parents, as pointed out by a friend), and conversations with parents who actually moved here, I cannot help but feel more parents are seeing only despair on the horizon for the futures of their children. From the way the trend is bending towards, it appears we can only hope for hope for the Golden Jubilee Babies. Perhaps a sarong with a motif of a flag may provide them comfort during the darker nights after all.