Then we found out that the CEO was using the money to install gold taps, German-designed toilet bowls and all sorts of opulent crap in his office. He stepped down and spent all of three months in jail and wasn’t fined. I’m not saying the NKF is a sham—I do believe that they are doing good, but it’s just the jackasses that ruin reputations for everyone, and these are hardly isolated cases.

Take, for example, Bono’s ONE movement. They’ve raised £9.6m, but only £118,000 was given to good causes. I’m pretty sure a nonprofit awareness organisation can survive on a budget of £3m, but what do I know—I’ve never run a nonprofit before. Being an awareness movement and not a ground support group is all well and good until you realise that they’re sitting on a ton of money and not really doing anything with it.

The next time you think you’re doing good by buying a (RED) product—remember that chances are that companies are doing this to market themselves as being involved in Corporate Social Responsibility. Your (RED) iPod sends £5 to charity. It’s small, but admit it—you could do better. Wouldn’t it be great if you could give your money to charities that put boots on the ground too?

However—in the interest of the practice of “hedging” (see all the amazing things we learn in school?), there is nothing wrong with purchasing a (RED) product. You’ll still spend the same amount of money. My point is like I said—you could do better than just being a consumer.

I’d like to highlight two: Firstly, charity:water, who put 100% of your money straight to use, building wells where they’re needed most. Secondly Wine to Water is a 501(c)(3)—and therefore audited—organisation that, similarly, brings water to where it’s needed most. THINK: A 500ml bottle of water in my school cafeteria costs £1.20—10 of those bottles cost ~US$20, which can give one person clean water for 20 years. To put it into context, the Internet started to explode in 1995—15 years ago.

I’ve given US$40 to charity:water, and another S$40 to Wine to Water. These projects show you where your money went; the metrics speak for themselves: charity:water has brought water to 1,439,600 people, and financials are available there for anyone to look at. Wine to Water has a blog and a projects page that tell you how they’re active where help is needed most. Darfur, Uganda, Ethiopia, Haiti, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Bangladesh, Cote D’Ivorie (The Ivory Coast), Kenya—the list goes on.

No, I’m not saying you shouldn’t give money to Singaporean charities; I’m just saying that this is just a small part of a much larger picture that the world at large overlooks because they think that someone else will handle things. It’s like that story about Somebody, Anybody, Everybody and Nobody.

I’m not bragging about my attempts at philanthropy; I’m a broke-ass student, but if you have the means, S$90 isn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. You spend more than twice that on a bottle of Martell at clubs. No offense, Sofie and Ritz & Bobby—you know I still love you guys, and I will be back in the summer!

You have to understand that I’m just pissed that people can’t be bothered to spare less than the cost of two beers to help other people that are fighting every day to survive. Which brings me to my final point and humble request:

Two of my amazing friends back in Singapore, Paul Seow and Cheryl Neo are organising a fundraiser for Wine to Water this Friday, the 17th of December, with the good people at Stagger Inn (geddit?), one of—if not the—friendliest bars I’ve ever been to.

A S$20 donation at the door gets you a ridiculous amount of food to stuff your face with: home-made Devil’s Curry to die for, as well as the best ever Chilli Padi Corned Beef Toasties which may or may not be on the menu—but just ask, because Mike and June who run the place are top people. You’ll also get two complimentary drinks, and if you’ve finished those, the offers on the beers are some of the best I’ve come across (save for the coffee shop down the road). Watch football on a projector screen if you want. Whatever. S$20 isn’t much, and is quite frankly a fair bit less than the cost of the food if you ordered it à la carte.

Again, final links in case you haven’t been overloaded by the staggering (ha!) amount of links I’ve already put in the post:

DETAILS: Charity Event at Stagger Inn
CHARITY 1: Wine to Water
CHARITY 2: charity:water

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading this, and I sincerely hope you’ll pitch in to help the people that need it more than you do.

This CNNGo article by Alexis Ong seems to place the burden of the relationship on the man, because, well, we can’t talk, and we carry our girlfriend’s handbags (I do neither). We also try to look good (I try to do that sometimes). Allow me to offer another perspective: Singaporean dating is screwed. Alternatively, maybe your social circles just don’t converse.

Our men can’t do manual labour, our women can’t cook; cleaning the house is below them, and for all their harping about gender equality, they still expect you to pick up the tab because it’s part of the dating game. We never learned how to talk because the only real talking we did was in ELDDS. Our Design & Technology and Home Economics classes have failed to inculcate domestic values. This maid culture has rendered us helpless and useless when it comes to the basics of (wo)manhood. Someone I know here who doesn’t cook gave food poisoning to another friend when she tried to make dinner. QED. No, Cassie, it’s not you.

I don’t know about you, but I only started to learn how to cook when I left Singapore. How many men know about Loctite, and how many women know how to make a good Prawn Linguine Agio Olio? And believe you me when I say that I see as many men with fake tans out there as women. The men, like you write, are the preening type, and the women… well. Let’s just go back to watching Jersey Shore. GTL, baby.

I don’t think any of my 20-something-year-old female friends in Singapore in my current social circle can cook, or want to clean the house. Cheryl and Eileen, you’re both 30ish (and Eileen’s married), so you don’t count. But somehow I don’t believe that means we think any less of them.

Generally speaking, if you’ll (hypothetically and figuratively) cook for me, I’ll (hypothetically and figuratively) deal with your little spunk—which, unfortunately, means semen here in Britain—, give you good conversation, and I’ll fix your broken chair. Because I don’t think the problem is with Singaporean men—I think the problem is Singaporeans, both men and women, who don’t try for a different experience.

P.S. Men, buy this book. Thank you—you know who you are.

—
Joshua studies in London, can debate about music, and is comfortable in a hardware shop. He doesn’t have the 5Cs, but will try at some point to get there. He does, however, have a measure of cultural capital, as well as more fashion savvy than most. He is happily attached to a Singaporean who can neither cook nor clean the house.

This is purely opinion, but—I’m not sure if you’ve actually gotten into the minds of the kids doing these surveys. I might have been out of the system for the past eight years, but I’m pretty sure their attitude toward these surveys remains the same, and have remained the same since time immemorial.

When I was doing NE surveys back in school, we’d pick the answer that seemed the most “correct”—yes, I love Singapore; yes, I will stand and fight for my country; yes, racial harmony is important; &c. These are my actual viewpoints, to be fair, but back when I was doing the survey, we picked them because we thought we were supposed to, not out of burning nationalism or some outstanding sense of patriotic duty.

We were (and are) young, and the system taught (and teaches us) that these were the right things to say. Also, perhaps because if we picked the wrong answer, we delusionally thought that we might have to lim kopi with a friendly member of the Internal Security Department. The detractors will pick up on this, but you are right: “Singapore’s system has worked”. Interesting fact, though: When you take government involvement out of the survey (and go a bit older—tertiary students are more mature, I imagine), the values change significantly.

I’m not saying that underneath it all, Singaporean youth are a bunch of unpatriotic bastards, but I do think that more than 5% of my friends would GTFO of Singapore if war seemed likely. Again—this is all my own opinion, and I am most definitely not unpatriotic. I’m just an ordinary citizen with (an albeit cynical and ironic) view from the ground, but it is a view from the ground, nonetheless. I’d take these statistics with a pinch of salt.

—
Joshua

It’s pretty simple, actually. A lot of the press interviews I had tended to focus on the political aspect of the story. They would ask me how I got involved in the film, how it was working with Junfeng, and then it would degenerate (or evolve, rather) into a dialogue on the state of politics, censorship and the official version of history in Singapore versus “what actually happened,” &c. I really don’t think the film was meant to be interpreted in such a political manner. Perhaps Junfeng might disagree on this—I don’t know—but these are my views on it.

Yes, it is a plot device—the conversation in the club with my best friend discussing what happened to the Communists back then, my character asking my mother about my father’s involvement in the Chinese school riots, and my grandfather telling me about my father’s history—but at the very heart of it, the film is a story about a boy’s coming of age and the people around him. Junfeng is a very subtle person, and I believe the movie represents that very well—if the intent was to bring events of the past that weren’t shown in our history textbooks to the forefront of our collective consciousness, I think the ending would have been very different.

So absorb the political content, put it at the back of your mind to digest, and move on to look at the bigger picture.

“We wanted [the press] to ask the questions we want to answer, so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.”

—Sharron Angle

On 1 August 2010, Sharron Angle made a major media gaffe during an interview with Fox News’s Carl Cameron—she spoke her mind; perhaps a little too candidly. A flurry of press coverage followed, with The Huffington Post running a story that spread throughout the political blogosphere like wildfire. Nevertheless, the point is that like it or not, her statement was spot on when it came to politics and the media, be it in Singapore, the US, or anywhere else in the world. Politicians like being asked questions they have perfect answers to, so that they can position themselves in the best light. It’s only natural. Case in point: A friend of mine sent a series of questions to Lee Kuan Yew, but the PMO (or MMO, rather) declined to respond to his email. But I digress, so I’ll offer my next quote:

“Upon leaving our school, each of you will face the ever-changing design landscape. Your belief, dedication and passion will be your travel buddies to [help you] navigate throughout the journey. Remember to push on when the situation demands, remember to be responsible, remember to rest when necessary, remember to celebrate when arriving; and of course—do remember to come home.”

—Hon Soo Tien, Senior Lecturer, Temasek Design School
Visual Communication Graduation Book of 2006

Four years ago, we barely paid attention to what our lecturers wrote in our graduation book (for those who don’t know, most batches of Visual Communications graduates produce a book to showcase their work). Randy revisited this quote during a recent MSN conversation with me. He said “at 24 years old … it makes a whole lot more sense.” And it does—I think the quote speaks for itself, so I’ll refrain from attempting to explain it, or my views on it, any further. I will, however, explain my point of writing all this.

It’s quite simple, really: My hope is that when I graduate in 2013, I will be able to look back on this post—these quotes—and say that I have understood; have taken to heart; have used the next (or rather, past) three years of my life to the fullest, be it in terms of academic and/or creative output. My hope is that I will, like Hon said, push on when the situation demands; be responsible; rest when necessary; celebrate my arrival; and perhaps most importantly, come home—wherever that may be.

And yes, that was me in the 2010 National Day Parade video.