Ok, I guess the headline is a bit too harsh and I really don't mean all Singaporeans. In fact, I can safely say that most Singaporeans are pretentious people at 90% at least. The rest of the 10% are probably mentally ill. When the news came about the Four Million Smiles Campaign, I was like, Arghh!! Finally!! Although I did saw strangers smiling at me but that was because they were on the phone with their smiley pals I guess. And now they're forcing Singaporeans to smile. The reason I used the word ’forcing’ was because the brutal truth is, Singaporeans are living in fear because we're in a psychological warfare for the past 40 years and I would rather risk my life fighting in a physical war than fighting this mind games. At least fighting in a real war, you can express yourself and vent your anger even though involving someone else’s life without being in fear of the consequences because even by religion, you're doing your duty. What psychological war you say? It’s the war against fear that we're having but since we're pretentious, we denied that it’s actually happening. Don't believe me? Here’s what Singaporeans feared of:-

• fear of offending the government.
• fear of getting sued and condemned or made a scapegoat.
• fear of losing our jobs and livelihood.
• fear of crafty and profit-oriented retrenchments.
• fear of being replaced by foreign talents, who are actually sub-standards.
• fear of prices of goods and services being kept to rise at
• a very fast pace in order to ensure that we remain poor.
• fear of making mistakes and failures in almost every endeavor we take.
• fear of getting fined for violation of the limitless rules and regulations, which are added without qualms everyday.
• fear of the strong arm of the Police, the ISA and ISD.
• fear of losing our directions and our soul

To sum it up, we are forced to smile simply means, 'The government said we should smile. So I smile lor’. Hurhur… fear of offending the government. Hey hey!! Guess what is the Smiles campaign for?

These are the Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group, together with the 300 other smaller meetings and events taking place at that time. We call this mega happening Singapore 2006 (or S2006).

Yeah… this is nothing to be guessed about. This is something that I believe every Singaporeans knows. It’s mostly about MONEY!! (I have to watch what I say here, 'mostly’ but not 'all'). So put it in a lying down man (Too sleepy to know everything) term, Singaporeans are robots, sold their souls to whoever masterminds the 'fear idea’ for the sake of comfort, convenience and wealth (wealth? Read on to know about it). Money won't make you happy!! Hello!! Who the hell thinks you'll be happy as long as you're rich? If you think so, then I can safely say that you're dependant on wealth to make your life seems fulfilled. Take away your wealth and you'll be visiting IMH taking anti-depressants for life.

A recent survey evidently showed that Singaporeans are the most unhappy lot in Asia. You should know if you read the papers, watch the news or listen to the radio. Woah!! I haven't come to the part where Singaporeans are among the most un-courteous bunch among 30 cities.
I believe the reasons for our unhappiness are because we're too concerned with making money to afford the luxuries of life which is none other than to lounge and dine; putting out children through the best schools and making sure our children become the best, so we sign them up to enrichment classes, tuitions and other development classes; we're too concerned on accumulating enough assets so we can have a comfortable retirement.

Sadly enough, through all that efforts, Singaporeans became unhappy because by the time we make enough money, we already have a family to take care of and therefore not enough for the family (Being the conservative Asians, people will pester you to get married as you gets older). Then our children get into the best schools but due to the huge amount of time they consumed for studies, they don't really have much childhood. The parents however are busy making money for the family ended up not spending enough time with their kids. They think by supporting the child financially is fulfilling enough. Then when the children grow up and the parents retire, they try to catch up on lost time but… too bad. It’s already lost!!

Hehe… the lost souls of Singapore. We think we're lucky living in the most convenient city in the world but ignoring the fact that we're living in fear, greed, anger and unhappiness. Which I guess the happy times are only a partial part of your life. Therefore, 'Singaporeans are pretentious people’. Enough said.
Disclaimer
Whatever I wrote is my opinion and some of them are inspired by other articles I read but it does not suggest that I am perfect. Note that I use 'we’ instead of 'them’ and I am putting myself in the situation too because I'm a Singaporean myself and although I'm unhappy, I'm proud to be one. Also, I am putting myself in fear by writing this. Again, not wanting to offend the government. My girlfriend’s father was the Senior Parliamentary Secretary and definitely I won't want to offend him. Else I'm gonna have to kidnap my her and migrate to other country.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 1:29 am and is filed under Rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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