It is unfair to label me as one of the easily disgruntled, rebellious and ungrateful younger-generation Singaporeans. True, I did not live through the turbulent days that followed our painful separation from Malaysia. True, I did not experience the traumatising period that was the Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation of Singapore.
I grew up in a cossetted and comfortable environment. I grew up in a time of peace and stability. But today, at the age of 31, there is seriously something wrong with my country and it is not the air.
The flags adorned on HDB blocks, fluttering in the gentle breeze - they scream patriotism in loud capital letters. Corrinne May goes on TV exhorting me to sing a song for Singapore together with her. The preparations are afoot for another NDP extravaganza.
Scrape away at the facade of this treacly display of patriotism and nationalism, and you find nothing. Just a hollowness that is carved and burnt into my psyche.
To paraphrase Marcellus in Shakespeare's Hamlet, something's rotten in the state of Singapore, and no, that putrefaction does not stem from the murky ochre flood waters submerging Orchard Road now.
The rot lies deeper. The rot is the festering sore of apathy that is our (uniquely) Singaporean psyche of taking things for granted and living in the comfort zone.
Change, we must, as a people - before it's too late.
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