Never retire

So the Minister Mentor has spoken.

With those words 'Never retire', he has consigned whatever hope I have of enjoying my retirement in bliss to the rubbish bin. And mind you, my retirement is about 36 years away if you base it on the impending retirement age being raised to 67 by legislation in 2012.

MM has plumbed the depths of his (dark) conscience and articulated what he genuinely believes and feels - that Singaporeans are just digits. Singaporeans are just the donkeys pulling the cart towards the final destination that is bright, shiny GDP numbers. So as digits, donkeys and what-have-you, we proles will have to slog, slave and shed (sweat, blood and tears) just to continue building the monolith that is Singapore Inc and supporting the pantheon of the intellectual class ruling over us.

In fact MM doesn't even need to utilise the platform of the sycophantic national broadsheet to give us his hi-falutin two cents' worth. If he deigns to look around, he would have seen his elderly fellow Singaporeans picking cardboard, scavenging used drink cans, and cleaning up after him in the foodcourt. He could have seen old uncle or aunty if he could deign to see him/her when he steps into the toilet at your neighbourhood market on one of his many shake-the-hands-with-the-hoi-polloi sessions.

But for some people sequestered in the comfort of their ivory tower, getting down from the moral (or socio-economic) high horse can be tough, even for an 86-year-old in yellowing dotage drawing a fat pay cheque of S$3 million per annum. With his rheumy and weakening eyesight, I doubt MM can register the sight of his fellow hoary counterparts working their asses off for a pittance as (pick one) cardboard collector/scavenger/cleaner/insert some other lowly, underpaid job fit for a senior citizen. Hang on, I don't even think MM has eaten in a foodcourt or stepped into a neighbourhood market's toilet once in his life.

No wonder MM didn't know about the plight of the poor elderly Singaporeans scrounging a living in metronomic Singapore Inc. The old, lowly-educated, the proles, the true-blue Singaporeans, the hoi polloi - we work our asses off to grease the machinery of Singapore Inc so it runs like clockwork as we tick into the sunset of bright shiny GDP figures.

So, as you come to the twilight of your working life, and start to contemplate retirement, remember MM's words - never retire.

Retirement is not an option for proles like you.

The unbearable idleness of being

Ok, Milan Kundera, I am sorry to vandalise/besmirch/desecrate your opus of a similar-sounding name by ripping it off (almost) and using it as a heading for this blog entry. Blame my lack of creativity, or a surfeit of campiness that gets worse with advancing age.

So it's August. A few more days to come, and Singapore turns a grand old 45, and I will mark two years in this GLC I am working at. How time flies. I could still remember that frisson of excitement when I stepped into this almost swanky building for my first day of work. I thought of new vistas opening up on the career landscape, imbibing new knowledge and finally achieving something.

Alas, the verdure of youthful (deluded?) passion and (misplaced?) optimism is destined to weather into a wasteland of dead hopes and dashed dreams. So two years of disappointments have accrued with each passing day that's somewhere between Dante's different levels of Hell.

I suppose when you are scrapping rock bottom, the only way is to go up. And hopefully, I will get my wings when I get that piece of paper called a degree and worth a handy $14K come the next August.

Until then, leave me alone as I stagnate/sink/simmer in this unbearable idleness of being a nondescript, underachieving and brain-dead office worker.