The Saturday Night Gang

It is yet another Saturday night
At the corner coffeeshop,
A few streets from my house.

All eyes glued to the stylo-mylo LCD TV
Broadcasting images of stick men
Chasing a round thing
On a field of green;
We are the Saturday Night Gang.

Over bottles of Tiger Beer and Carlsberg,
Mugs of Kopi-0 Kosong and Teh Peng,
Lazy twirls of cigarette smoke curl
With hopes, rising a-stir.

We are all punters on a flutter,
Clutching our betting slips nervously
And swigging our alcohol or caffeine
With wild abandon,
Eyeballs entranced by the shiny LCD TV.

Cheers and jeers go hand-in-hand,
Compliments and invective fly about;
The action in the LCD TV holds us allured.

90 minutes come and go,
Clinking bottles toasting triumph...
Or torn betting slips.
Big beaming smiles...
Or shredded hopes.
Which describes you,
The Saturday Night Gang?

The footy match ends,
And so, with many of our coffeeshop pipedreams.
Amidst abandoned bottles and littered butts,
Lie the carcasses of our valiant bets.

It is yet another Saturday night,
Where we nursed a small flickering hope
Of making a killing...
Except we ended up being killed by
The vagary of a leather ball.

Friday afternoon

The sky frothy with rain clouds
Has finally broken with a deluge.

Time's heavy head takes
A surreptitious nod
In the drowse of this Friday afternoon.

Clammy fingers of cold
Worm through the walls
Of an office thick in slumber.

Nestling in the cradle
Of Friday afternoon,
Such wondrous delight
To be oh so languid.

You

I see faces everywhere
In this melting pot
That I call my home,
My Singapore.
Also your Singapore.

I have nothing against you
After all, we are all migrants
In some way or other.
Pastures greener we flock to
So I understand.
Such's globalisation.

My forbears were migrants too
I am the children of the children
Of the children of migrants.
So many tiers removed, so many permutations.

So I have nothing against you
As a new migrant, ephemeral or permanent.

Yet, I do have something against you
When you start telling me
A citizen borne of the soil
What to do.

You are just my guest
You don't supersede the host
And tell him how to man his backyard.

So if you are here
To partake of your host's tea and provender
Spare a thought and
Be sensitive.
Don't attempt to overthrow your host
From his own abode.

You wouldn't want to be
Known as foreign trash
Do you?

The tissue-selling aunty

She stands alone
In her plain white top and baggy black pants
That have seen better days.

Clutching a bag spilleth with tissue packets,
Plaintive eyes yearning for a helping hand.
Three packets of tissue for one dollar please,
Pittance for us, gold to her.

The blur of human motions obscures
The old lady standing sadly and helplessly.
A mote in the morass
A speck in the sea

Just one among many
Of our fellow citizens fallen on hard times.
A fleeting glance we throw her
As we hasten to our abodes for a warm meal
And snug bed.

Old lady with her bag of tissue packs
Standing among the peak hour's commuters.
When I think back, try to recall her face,
Alas!
She is just another footnote
In yesterday's page of memories.

Bus ride

Sweeps me along, through congested lanes and narrow alleys,
My bus ride takes me everywhere.
Air-conditioned comfort, TV mobile, plush seats,
What more can I ask for?

Vistas of verdure,
Hives of high-rise,
Concentrations of construction activity,
The hubbub and buzz of a strange world resides
Outside my bus windows.

44 years of metamorphosis,
And yet rootedness has taken flight from my soul.
What do I see out of the bus windows,
But the unfeeling mortar and mechanisation
Of a nation spreading its wings far and wide.

Leaving me and countless others in the slipstream,
Ours, a bus ride destined to lag behind
The va-va-vroom of purblind progress.

Spin

You pick up the morning broadsheet,
That cornucopia of information
You rely on to get a hang of this world,
This dot called Singapore too.
The parade of words
Cramped close in column inches.
Words with insidious meanings
Words designed to obfuscate
Words that hypnotise you into complacency
Such pliant reader are you
That beside the smudges of ink on your lil fingers,
That Nebula of your mind too
Is smudged and clouded by Spin.
Planting falsehoods
Feeding misinformation
Perpetuating evasions
Evading truths
It is just Spin.
All in a morning's work
for our revered broadsheet.

They are coming

You see them everywhere.

They could be your computer programmer colleague from Bangalore, India. They could be the electrical engineer contact from Dalian, China whom you liaised with in your job. They could be the Malaysian cook at the economy rice stall you always patronise for lunch. They could be the Bangladeshi worker who sweeps the corridor outside your HDB cell. They could be one of the hordes of Indian workers on bus service 960 heading towards Kranji on a Sunday night. They could be the pretty Vietnamese girl sitting six seats away from you in your Electrical Engineering class in NUS. They could be your Canadian boss in the public relations agency where you slog 8am to 8pm, five days a week. They could be the German researcher who fancies an Oktoberfest swig away from his day job at A-STAR. The list can go on and it is not exhaustive since globalisation and an increasingly ‘open doors’ policy adopted by our government have resulted in people of various nationalities streaming onto our shores.

Decades ago, our forbears arrived forth on our small undeveloped island, disgorging from barges, catamarans and sampans and what-have-you from places like China and India. Today, we are witnessing an influx of another sort –from all corners of this planet, all hoping to get a slice of the rich pie called Singapore.

Our forbears came, laid down their roots and built up the Singapore of today with their blood, tears and sweat. In the process, they became citizens, natives of the very soil they slogged on – they became Singaporeans. It is as if by some form of osmosis, their blood, sweat and tears had seeped into the ochre soil and naturalised them.

Today’s foreigner is either one who is here to take up a lowly-skilled job no self-respecting Singaporeans want to do, or one with a reasonable level of talent which the government ‘welcomes’ – all of them a means to an end in helping to drive Singapore’s economic growth and driving us true-blue Singaporeans mad and heading for the exit’s door.

A Permanent Residency or citizenship used to be the Holy Grail for most new immigrants, but in this new world order (uniquely Singapore’s own, I would say), getting a PR or citizenship now is as easy as reciting the 26 letters of the Alphabet in world-record time.

As we welcome this foreign pantheon to be our 'brethren' - and share the crowded SMRT trains, join the queue for HDB cells, jostle one another at the I-Phone 3G launch and compete for priority for our children’s education in primary school – what is the meaning of being a Singaporean? A Singaporean born and bred in and, if war comes, may need to bleed for his country?

Misery in the park

If you were at Hong Lim Park on Saturday, did you hear the piping of the birds?

If you were at Hong Lim Park on Saturday, did you see the beautiful blue skies?

You were sinking, trying desperately to thread water in this relentless financial whirlpool, and clutching at straws.

You saw a hero in Mr Tan Kin Lian. This is a time when you need a symbol. You need a tourniquet to seal the life and optimism bleeding away.

Is he the hero who can save you, from this ineluctable fate of watching your hard-earned hundreds of thousands spinning through the epicentre of arguably the greatest financial meltdown of the century?

If you were at Hong Lim Park on Saturday, what was the colour of your heart?

If you were at Hong Lim Park on Saturday, did you see an oasis in the desert of your hopelessness?

If you were at Hong Lim Park on Saturday, did you see yourself as part of a fellowship, like abandoned animals on a Noah's Ark of misery?

And finally, if you were at Hong Lim Park on Saturday, did you think Tan Kin Lian was the knight in shining armour who would cleave a path through this thick shrubbery of despair and bring you light?



If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
Graham Greene

A letter to dear PM

Your Majesty,

I am taking this opportunity to write and profess my admiration for Your Highness.

The recent F1 Singapore Grand Prix took my breath away with its grandeur...and I was asphyxiated (Mr Tharman will be proud that I can use a word like 'asphyxiated' and I am a neighbourhood school kid :) ). While grasping for oxgen, I crawled my way to the nearest restructured hospital and was amazed that I could pay for my oxygen tank with the copious moolah (sorry for the slang, but moolah has a nice ring over 'cash', does it not?) in my Medisave. I felt so rich...and I went oohing and aahing into cloud nine.

While my euphoria took me to atmospheric, and some might say, stratospheric heights (I saw Mr Lim Swee Say while he was ascending/levitating in the richness of his life, by the way), I realised that I could breathe so much easier despite the heavy atmospheric pressure, and the fact that my oxygen tank (which was apportioned a certain quantity based on my means-testing result) was depleting fast. An epiphany (I hope you are Christian, Your Majesty) struck me. The good air I could breathe (!) was due to the new creation of the ERP gantries which had led to lesser vehicles on the road and more people using public transport.

Your Majesty, please ignore those people griping about overcrowded MRT trains and buses that do not arrive on time. They are just a complaining bunch who do not realise that crowded and anomalous (another cheem word which Mr Tharman will love!) public transport is a harbinger of cleaner air. This means we have better cardio health and that we are more pre-disposed to dying from doing chin-ups and 5BX than breathing in bad, polluted air!

Your Majesty, you are a ruler with great soul, heart and unwonted intelligence. I can't get enough fix of your wisdom. I am emulating you these days in cultivating an acquired palate of mee siam with cockles. It takes a bit of getting used to, but then again, we mortals also take a while to get used to the PAP government, and now we love you all!

Your Majesty, you strike me as a sensitive soul who tears easily when people disparage you. I can't stand people like that Cheek Soon Juan who keeps getting your goat. He and his bunch of agricultural peasants understand nuts about government, and I can't believe that they are implying our highly-esteemed judges are eaters of cute marsupials! We, a nation of civilised and humane people, eating kangaroo meat! What a joke, Mr Cheek! Shame on you, Mr Cheek!

Your Majesty, you are right in giving Cheek Soon Juan a smack on his white buttocks. The current financial turmoil is spinning the world into a tizzy and Singapore is not spared. How can you, a mere mortal, inspite of your divine birth right and heavenly air, devote attention to fixing the economy when people like Cheek Soon Juan keeps pulling your ear? And yet, you are humane. You gave him a chance to repent, by not throwing him in jail. You were MASsively kind not to extend a Selamat Datang tribute to Cheek notwithstanding his persistent nonsense. For that, you win my admiration.

Your Majesty, you can count on me. I am a true-blue Singaporean who is all talk and no action, like your highly-paid Ministers. Your pantheon does not need to exert any undue perspiration because we serfs are there to 'action' for you.

For your great leadership, you win my admiration and my taxpayer's dollars which go to fund your salary.

I hope it's not too maudlin here, but I love you, Your Majesty.

Can I call you dear Hsien Loong?



Besottedly yours,

Your loyal subject

Call to arms

Life's thread is pretty attenuate, isn't it?

Despite being pulverised by more law suits than what you can find in a dry cleaner's, Mr Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, the closest man we have to a Mandela, had finally succumbed to a physical ailment.

You could have thought his spirit must have been broken by the vicissitudes that life (and a certain political party) had thrown at him.

You could have thought he would have dug a hole and hid himself from the menacing gleam of a sharpened metaphorical hatchet.

You could have thought he would be suffocated and buried under an avalanche of neverending debts.

But that man refused to bow. Refused to go down on bended knees. Refused to be intimidated.

I saw him before selling his books. I was touched with the gravitas and dignity he possessed then. I marvelled at his unflinching conviction to make it right, for the country that he loved.

Sadly, his was a clarion cry that was not heeded or taken note of in a hypnotic propagandistic cadence spun by the white shirts.

Our lives are getting harder. Every single dollar is painstakingly eked out amidst the wobbling foundations of our jobs. You think twice before you spend. Bills are criss-crossed in red, and your billfold is emptying faster than Mas Selamat on steroids.

The only thing of value we have these days is our dignity. And that vote, we have in our hands.

I can't make things right on my own, and I am helpless - a mangy (under)dog with a whimper of a bark.

But many people can make it right - if only we stop for a while and think.

Many men have died for their country before, and Mr JBJ too passed away fighting for a Singapore he loved.

Life's thread is attenuate and all tyrannies will fall - there has to be a chink. That chink is possible; medical care may be advanced but it cannot fend away the hatchet of The Grim Reaper.

When the card falls, the house of cards will collapse - and for that to happen, you, with the valuable vote, will have to play a part.

A saunter in the Southern Ridges, not!

On the day the country celebrated its 44th year of independence, we decided to haul our fat butts off our cosy beds and attempted our second Southern Ridges hike at the height of the noon sun and amidst a smoky shroud of haze.

We started off at Marang Trail – a daunting flights of steps cutting through the jungle and leading to the cable car station at Jewel Box. With the sun baking our backs, we heaved and puffed our way through some 800 m of steps which cover an elevation of 70 m or the equivalent of a 24-storey building. I could feel my cholesterol-clogged arteries about to burst, as each agonising step led us nearer to the Jewel Box, the recreational enclave atop Mount Faber.

Outside Jewel Box, we snapped some photos of the breathtaking view of the sea and the Southern Islands. Too bad, the haze had obscured much of the brilliant scenery and it was with a tinge of regret that we packed our cameras away and continued on our hike. Trudging onto Faber Trail, we saw trees, foliage and more foliage – it was like NS all over again for us, sans helmet, SBO and rifle.

Henderson Waves, the bridge with its rib-like curves was next. The highest pedestrian bridge in Singapore, Henderson Waves towers 36 m above Henderson Road and connects Mount Faber and Telok Blangah hills. We rested under one of its curved ‘ribs’ cum shelters to have a quick lunch of potato crisps and bread. Artist-wannabes (or vandals) had scrawled graffiti on the balau wood used to construct the shelter. Perhaps it was the spirit of National Day resulting in a surge of patriotism through my veins, but I felt indignant that a civil engineering wonder like Henderson Waves should become the canvas of vandals.

Stomachs sated, we moved on to the Forest Walk where more marvels of civil engineering awaited us. The steel bridge we were on hanged over the forest canopy providing us a bird’s eye view of the thick jungle. We were looking out for macaques and other creatures of the wild, but were disappointed not to see any.

Crossing from Forest Walk, we reached Alexandra Arch, the bridge with its unique curved deck and tilted arch. Below us, the rumble of traffic along Alexandra Road continued unabated as we took photos galore. Alexandra Arch links to HortPark, a 23-hectare flora hub. Science students would surely have a field day traipsing through the Park, and learning about the names of flowers and plants of all shapes, sizes and colours.

The HortPark is connected via Canopy Walk to Kent Ridge Park, our final destination. Walking through groves of Tembusu trees, we ended up at the ‘Reflections at Bukit Chandu’ Museum. It seemed odd to bash through thickets of green and had a quaint-looking building materialise in front of you. With the afternoon sun hanging at its highest point, some air-conditioning was what we needed, so we fled into the museum. As it was National Day, the museum offered free entry.

Bukit Chandu or Opium Hill was the scene of one of the greatest battles ever waged in the prelude to the Japanese invasion of Singapore. On 14 Feb 1942, the Malay Regiment fought valiantly albeit fruitlessly to safeguard the hill from falling to the Japanese. The valour of the Malay soldiers was commemorated through a short theatrette screening, glass-plated encomiums, and artefacts. ‘Reflections at Bukit Chandu’ was an educational pitstop in our Southern Ridges hike and all of us came away feeling a renewed sense of patriotism.

After more than 9 km and four and a half hours later, we finally reached Kent Ridge Park, our final destination. Hot, sweaty and feeling like a dried raisin, all that was on my mind then was Coke on the rocks and a scrumptious dinner.


Sidebar: Some pointers before attempting the full 9 km of the Southern Ridges

• Wear a good pair of sneakers or hiking boots. Slippers and Crocs flip-flops are more suitable for the beach, as the writer found out.

• Slather on plenty of sun block if you are foolhardy enough to try the hike at 12pm.

• Bring water bottles. A couple of water coolers are available on the trail for refill.

• Bring insect repellent if you must, although the writer and friends were not bitten. Mozzies on National Day hols?

• Get along some light snacks to nibble on during the hike.

8.22pm that night

8.22pm that night was a charade that was never seen before.

You look at the idiot box and you see those people clad in pristine and unbesmirched white pressing their clenched left fists against their hearts.

Their mouths move, as the innumerable pixels and dots of the idiot box congregate into an image. An image of unbridled hypocrisy.

Mouths moving and jaws manoeuvring, and somewhere an Eton-educated tongue rolling to pronounce 'pr' as in 'pr..osperity'...What would you give to smash the idiot box to smithereens and condemn that execrable image of men and women in white reciting falsehoods?

Long ago, we were told to recite the Pledge.

We were kids in shorts and mugging for PSLE. We were adolescents in secondary school experiencing the nascent pricking of a first crush. We were just a couple of years shy of 21, either in polytechnic, ITE or a junior college, wondering what 21 would bring us. We all recited the Pledge then. With gusto, with boredom, with fervour, with languidity.

Today, I've all but forgotten the words of the pledge. There is no capitalisation for the pledge because somewhere the essence of it has diminished. The words, if you do remember, ring hollow or leave you with a bitter taste. You would sooner tell a white lie to assuage your miffed love, than to recite a falsehood, a phalanx of oxymorons, an exercise in sophistry.

8.22 has come and passed. Under the whirring air-conditioning of the public bus that I am on, nobody has moved the slightest finger much less clenched his or her fist to regurgitate the words to the pledge.

There was no idiot box aka TV Mobile on the bus for me to witness hypocrisy in motion.

And for that, I thank God.