The Business Times Weekend, April 16-17, 2005
A little bit of heaven - but not quite enough
This place, Singapore, has a lot going for it. Pity Singaporeans, by and large, don't seem to be able to appreciate that
By RODERICK CLYNE
THE Rev Sydney Smith, the 18th century English Whig divine, was once asked what heaven would be like. He said that for him it would be like eating pate de foie gras to the sound of trumpets. This would not suit your average Singaporean.
First, the trumpets. They are very noisy and definitely not to everyone's taste. Trumpets at full blast morning, noon and night would bring justifiable complaints about noisy neighbours, and doubtless before long there would be complaints to the authorities, a court case and goodness knows what unpleasant results.
Then, there is the foie gras. Some do-gooding animal lover would be bound to complain that just to provide you with a beautiful and luxurious melt-in-the mouth taste sensation, some French duck was being held in a cage with a funnel down its neck and being force-fed to enlarge its liver. If you carried on - and remember, heaven is for ever - you might be named and shamed on vegetarian websites, with animal rights activists around the world urged to target you with hate mail.
And there's the terrible permanence of the thing. Pate de foie gras, even trumpets, might be quite pleasant enough for a while, but not for ever. For the first few minutes, Sydney Smith's heaven would be truly out-of-this-world. After a day or two, you would get used to it, and after a week it would be really boring. Carried on for all eternity, it might be difficult to distinguish from hell. This is where the Singapore bit comes in. Not content with living in one of the world's most attractive, pleasant, beautiful, safe, stable, efficient, clean, healthy, affluent, successful, fine-tasting and green environments, Singaporeans always find something to complain about. Heaven, it would seem, is just not good enough for them.
Held up for more than a moment at the lights, drivers on Singapore's free-flowing roads will complain about the traffic. Just the other day, another newspaper had a front-page photograph and story concerning 'a traffic jam involving about 50 vehicles'. Elsewhere, a road with a mere 50 vehicles would be regarded as almost deserted.
In a nation with a remarkably low crime rate, householders here still feel the need for steel gratings on all their doors. Whereas in parts of Myanmar you can expect electricity for little more than three hours a day - unless you can afford a private generator and the black-market fuel to run it - in Singapore people talk in shocked tones about some power outages a year ago.
Then they go on to find some other complaint. The problem, they say, with these food courts with such a huge variety of menus on offer is that it makes it so difficult to choose.
And then there's the climate. So hot, lah. Well, I can tell you, there are far worse places as far as climate goes.
Bangkok, for one, where you often can't see the sky for the car-exhaust pollution and the humidity is such that you can't cross the road without your clothes becoming wet through - although you can't cross the road anyway because of the traffic. Or in the Canada Singaporeans dream of so much - where in winter it gets colder than you can imagine and in summer you daren't go out because of the swarms of biting insects. Not to mention the perpetual cold drizzly rain of Ireland and much of the UK. (A relative of mine did die of heat stroke on the beach at Aberdeen, a city even the Scots describe as 'the northern freezer unit', but I have to admit that it was unusual.)
Taxes too are a source of complaint here, even though they are noticeably lower than in many comparable countries - not, of course, that there are any truly comparable countries, in terms of taxes or anything else.
Almost anything anyone can think of becomes an item of complaint for someone here. Newspaper letters pages would struggle to fill if they banned people from whingeing. On the day I write this, there is one printed letter-to-the editor which has 13 separate complaints in only 11 sentences. Each of the complaints is, of course, about daily life in Singapore.
In another paper, a letter writer complained about security delays at the Woodlands checkpoint, saying that the length of time it had taken to address the issue 'makes me ashamed to be a Singaporean'. Where's his sense of proportion?
With people from around the world clamouring to get to Singapore, legally or illegally, Singaporeans waste a lot of time dreaming of leaving it, whether on a weekend trip across the Causeway to revel temporarily in the luxury of imperfection, or emigration to some imagined paradise like Australia, or even freezing, featureless Canada.
Of course, a touch of scepticism is healthy, although out-and-out cynicism is not to be encouraged. I would not like people here to turn into dumb, gun-toting, stay-at-home zombies, perpetually wrapping themselves in the flag and chanting: 'Singapore: love it or leave it!' Neither would I like them to travel the world together in bunches, with national symbols sewn on their backpacks, telling the locals of whichever country they happen to be in how dire the place is and how Singapore is far better in every respect, mate.
And, of course, it is good that people still care enough to moan. Heaven can wait.
The author is a journalist who has lived in Singapore for less than a month. He admits his views are likely to change on longer exposure.
