Quitting and Staying

It's always never good when leading a discussion with a group of GP students about Quitters and Stayers causes one to think about his own reasons for staying or leaving the country of his birth.

It sparked a moment of self-evaluation. What would my reason to stay here be?

The good education system so my kids will grow up smart and well-rounded? Hah! Sorry, that's the conditioned response of an ex-teacher. I don't consider book-smarts anything to crow about, and there are certainly more important things to living than being good at Math or Science; and our policies mean that our kids here are about as well-rounded as a cube.

Safety? We're no safer than being in any other major urban setting. Not any more.

Family and friends? They can always visit. Or email. And we can always make new friends.

Job security? Employment opportunities? Sure, if you're a scholar or sycophant. The Asian bubble has burst and our people don't seem resilient enough or even prepared enough to handle job loss -- I attribute this back to the education system.

Now, I hear Changi Prison will be torn down for a newer, swankier prison to be built on the site. Crime pays after all. People, we are talking about CHANGI PRISON, with all its historical significance; it being where WWII POWs were housed throughout the Japanese Occupation and all. It would probably match the keen disappointment I felt when I realised that the half of Hanoi Hilton (a.k.a. Hoa Lo Prison, or Maison Centrale, where American POWs were held during the Vietnam War) had been torn down in favour of the multi-storey monstrosity known as the Hanoi Towers -- built by a certain Singaporean developer, by the way, unsurprisingly.

There might be time for a rethink for Changi Prison, but the end is nigh for the National Library, whose doors will be closed permanently to the public come April and reopened as one of the campuses of the SMU (Singapore Management University). They are conducting the final tours of the place next weekend. My wife and I are planning to be there. I had many good memories of the place; of the corners where I had buried my head in books I could not yet afford on my allowance as a student.

Will there be anything left from my childhood and youth in, say, five years? Anything at all that holds a special place in my memory and make me want to stay in Singapore?

Yes, yes, yes, we all have to look to the future (party line), but it's the past that determines a people's identity. What's our identity? What's the identity of a people whose cars can only run on the roads for ten years (or less, otherwise we pay taxes to keep them like nobody's business); whose landmarks are either becoming tourists traps (badly planned and run ones at that) or demolished to make way for soulless new buildings of glass and steel, aesthetic nightmares of their once stately predecessors; whose memories of things and places that were good and pleasing to one's pscyhe are cheapened or considered unimportant in favour of the almighty buck? What's that make us? A throwaway society with tacky/cheesy/kitschy landmarks/tourist attractions/"buildings of historical importance" (ooh, the irony) who can't fend for ourselves?

Why am I leaving?

The National Theatre, the Van Cleef Aquarium, Haw Par Villa when it was free, the Red House Bakery at Katong, Tay Ban Guan (and its amusement centre) at Katong, the National Library and its aforementioned corners, Changi Prison, the Cathay Building and the kacang puteh, Siglap Market, Changi Village, Pulau Ubin without the paved roads, Wonderland, Alkaff Mansion, Biddadari Cemetery, Satay Club on the Esplanade, the original Esplanade itself, the Capitol, Beach Road Camp and the SAF NCO's Club where I learnt swimming as a boy, Sentosa without the NE messages, Big Splash, Mitsukoshi Gardens where I had my first sunburn, the Odeon cinema where I watched The Ten Commandments and various war movies, various fields throughout Singapore where I used to play soccer, the little grove of casuarina trees along Nicoll Highway that always looked lushly mysterious but inviting -- now brown and rotting, the trees that used to line Airport Road, the People's Association Building and field, the old (original!) Maxwell Market, the Marine Parade Library, the dozens of old cinemas now converted into churches, the Kallang Gasworks, the kick-ass char kway teow stall along Sims Ave which had to go because of the MRT line, Dawood's at Frankel Avenue, camping at the beaches along Changi Coast Road, Suicide Block along Upper Pickering Road, the Mount Vernon army Camp, the pair of swastika-shaped benches where I did some studying at the former site of Dunman High, the old Collyer Quay where I'd catch the ferry after I'd been awoken at 5 in the morning so that I could accompany my late grandmother on her annual pilgrimage to Kusu Island, and the kampong where I played my childhood away with friends I no longer keep in touch with.

Are these enough?