9th november 2007 sketches and ideas of daily singapore life...

just some sketches and ideas.
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Today I went down to the coffeshop to buy dinner and saw the cooksgoing about their work. Maybe we've watched too many dramas aboutcooking and chefs - all the lofty ideals and philosophizing and allthe painstaking details of food that leave us all drooling in themouths after an episode... But then you look at how these coffeeshopcooks go about their business and you begin to throw away all thosenotions. You look at their perspiration, their strong tough forearmsforged by the heat and steam, and from the countless hours wieldingthat do-all ladle, all the stiring, and you begin to get a different perspective about their lives. They work in cramp quarters - to the front is the stove and the cooking, to their back, the ingredients andcondiments. Here, there is hardly any thought about the taste of foodor any of the so called higher ideals'. Here, probably the onlythought is if the food is 'alright' and looks decent enough to beserved. And in their cramp kitchen they work long hours, standing fromend to end, hardly taking any breaks. No, this is definitely not theelite type of foodstalls where the queue spills out of the coffeeshop,this is the average cook trying to earn a living.

Here is survival, here is living the everyday, without us intellectsand our lofty ideals...
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This evening I watched a wonderful documentary about a saintly mothernurturing her angels. About how she nurtures her children in anenvironment of altruism and charity. And her youngest daughter -awww... so adorable, giving sweets and dumplings to the people aroundher! Obviously, not many families do this in Singapore - sure, we tryto inculcate the usual family values about giving and sharing, but Idon't think parents would push this far as to do all these.Inevitably, comparisons surface, and I'm led to wonder about theparenting in Singapore, and how it has created and reinforced thesocial fabric - in whatever state it is now. It causes me to question,like why Singapore is the way it is, where levels of volunteerismcould definitely be higher, and why we don't have a socially activecitizenry. Is this due to our parenting? And if so, I wonder about thesocial environment that created the pattern of parenting today as usedby the baby-boomers - and how it has led to our society today.

(bearing in mind that parenting is the imprinting of ideas and valueson the young and very moldable mind)
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Maids are now an integral part of our lives and society. But just howinterested are we in their welfare and their lives? I suppose fewactually listen to their stories back home in the Philippines orIndonesia or wherever else they might come from - and how they havemade the tremendous adjustment to living here, or how they even gothere in the first place. And how they are working to pay off any debtsor obligations back home, and how they are living here. About how theywork everyday, interacting with their families and how they mitigatehomesickness, finding friends, or even the seedier activities they getthemselves involved in. And how they spend their free times hangingaround Orchard Road, setting up their urban picnics...
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The clans-associations of olden Chinese immigrants of ourgreat-grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers are really just dinosaursawaiting their eventual demise. Because these things are beingreplaced by our new forms of social networks - Facebook, MySpace andFriendster, along with Google and Yahoo. The rituals of these oldsocial networks are being replaced by ours - the banquet whereeveryone sees each other isn't exactly required when we can all seeeach other via web conferences. Moreover, we, the young, educated andhighly mobile now have something else to fall back on - the alumnus,something actually tradition in itself but constantly being rejuvenated by the web and all.

Eventually, these clans-associations of the previous generation willwither away, and few will mourn its passing. Perhaps in time, theywill morph into something else, into elderly-support communitiesperhaps.

Many of the traditions in the Chinese communities will also graduallywither away, as subsequent generations gradually move on into thegreater world outside beyond the boundaries of old mindsets...