A beautiful mind

Monday, December 1, 2008

We're all great pretenders

"HAppy AIds day!" (sounds weird)

Caught 'Life transformer' earlier on before 'Little Nyonya'.
'Life transformer' is a show on channel 8, every monday, 8pm. It's a show on how the Hosts, Christopher Lee and Quan yifeng, with a group of volunteers going around Singapore, saving the soul, transforming the lives of people living in poverty.
They'd rearrange their apartments which looked like slumps before that, before painting them.

The town council would then arrange jobs, schools or technical skill learning for them. Despite its attempt to show that Singaporeans are caring, full of love and stuff. The show practically reflects how people are living in slumps, despite the advanced and well-off society we're in these days.
It's unbelivable how these things are happening around us, yet we don't realised. How pathetic. People living in misery, pondering when is the money for their next meal coming while youngsters party their lives away. And What's amazing is how they go unnoticed in such a small land overflowing with 4.48million population .

This is not the first time I'm watching the show. For the second time, I felt disgusted after the show. Not by the poor conditions of their HDB units, not by the amount of cockroaches eggs in their house or how dirty their toilets are. But by people . The grassroot leaders, district MP, GRC seriously need to be more proactive in their approach in running their estates/areas. As such, I've run a search on the missions of Town council.

'Each town council has the duty to explain to its residents how it invests its funds, what is its philosophy, what are the risks it takes ' (as quoted from Minister Mah)

Does your town council explain this to you?

I encountered people from town council or self proclaimed HDB representatives/contractors a few times annually. Not to collect feedbacks, or to have meetings on how we can improve neighbourhood watch, crime prevention in the vicinity. But, to remove my flower pots along the corridor. Thats what they do. Beautify the environment. Repaint HDB over and over again. Plantations along highway to make Singapore look presentable.The clean and green image to improve our eyesights and to promote/market our motherland. As such, they probably forgot all about Human relations. Living in HDB has already reduced our interactions with our neighbours compared to living in kampong. Thus we have been reduced to gardening, talking to our plants. And now, they wan to remove my plants, claiming they're in the way.

Thats how unfeeling the society is nowadays for we have all been trained like robots, with productivity, efficiency, rationality our only goals. After all, it was the goal set by MM Lee years ago after realising human resource is our only resource. Human Talents is our source of wealth. Mass labour resource attracts foreign investment. And hence, campaigns like 'speak good english' came pouring.

Today, We've positioned ourselves in a pole position in terms of services, business taxes compared to neighbouring countries, convenience of foreign investments to pour in, friendliness in setting up business in terms of 'red tapes' and not to mention our world class airline industry.
Sometimes, It makes me wonder if we've become a factory. A global factory production, producing human talents, services and innovative ideas. Attracting foreign talents, grooming them and then return them back to their countries to help their own motherland. We've been trained like robots, clones, pursuing wealth, productivity, academic and recognition. We do not know how to enjoy/reward ourselves other than weekend movies, occasional pools, shopping around town and of cos the boy gal relationship to keep our mind preoccupied. We do not slow down, to look at the environment around us, or to appreciate the people around us.

The 'kiasu' culture instilled in us is so strong, that we have no choice to follow it since we can't change it. We bury ourselves in piles of books/work til the day we die. I wondered if we could alter this behaviour of our nation and focus more on emphasizing the well-being of our people.
Of course, that is not for me to say.

BAck to the show.

I was complaining about how not proactive the leaders of our districts are. Do we really need to depend on shows to dig out people who are drowning in poverty before we can lend them a hand, give them a job? The poor people were fined due to late payment of PUB bills. The concerned authorities ever concerned why are they not paying up? Or are they jus busy processing the paperwork for late payments? How unfeeling is that? We are not machines afterall. Do we really need to apply for needy funds as indicatior of low income beings? Do the elderly know the procedures about doing so? And mind you, despite the baby bonus, increaded maternity leaves and all sort of incentives to help increase the country populations, producing new youth of tomorrow, we're still a nation with substantial ageing population.

During today's show, the sympathetic crew gave the poor family a gift in an envelope. Allowance(I believe). It seems really nice. But how much are they making out of the show? What about the commercials aired? Is the production going out to charity? Of all the money they're making, how much are they really donating to the family in need? This bring us to the labour theory of value. Abstrating the surplus out of the proletariat simply because they do not know the value of their labour.

As usual, I have to say that I am critical and sceptical. After being sceptical about the show. I have to be critical. About myself. I can sit here, and type and bitch til the cow comes home but nothing will change unless I start with myself. Rather than sitting here,typing, buming around, watchin TV, I need to get out there and do something meaningful. A volunteer or something. I want to make an impact on this society. I dowanna die as an insignificant being.
The society/world need to know I once existed before the day comes.