Of swines and maggots

Yahoo! Personals - It's time to give fate a nudge. Create your profile or search for free.

Grace Makes Beauty Out Of Ugly Things - Friday, February 15, 2008 at 10:42 AM

It's been hard to find anything to write about recently. Having already established my stand on blogging about my personal life (which is a nono, and i wun bother to explain the utter supidity of doing so), i took cue from the millions of blogs out there and flipped open the trusty, topic-loaded straits times for "inspiration".

It seems these days, the graceful society our government has so longed for us to become since a decade ago, has been the topic of dis"grace" for us locals, pardon the pun. We've all heard it before, be it the common "pretend-to-be-sleeping-so-that-you-don't-have-to-give-up-your-seat-to-the-pregnant-woman" routine, or the rare, but not surprising, case of the foreigner who got scratched and beaten by a supermarket auntie and her daughter, for accidentally bumping into her. The proverbial "oi, diao simi diao. buay song ah?" ah beng story we hear all the time, for the less initiated.

Anyway, many non-Singaporeans have written in to complain, for nothing but personal vengeance upon the ugly Singaporean society. That might sound unfair, but think about it. They write such a long letter to the papers, with their flowery words, which can be generally summed up in 2 words: We(Singaporeans) suck. Yes, that's their intent compressed in a 1000 word essay written in the context of our politically correct era we're living in today.

First off, the explanation of the life-long question on why GENERALLY (not all, mind you) Singaporeans are so rude. If you've ever been to a certain country, self proclaimed to be in "the middle of the world", you'll be experiencing people bumping into you in narrow walkways, intentionally and rather viciously. And no, you don't get a "sorry", or "excuse me". And i'm saying this from experience, given that i'm studying in an environment where majority of the students are from the country that apparently sits in the middle of the world. Self acclaimed, i re-emphasise.

Initially, you can say i was heck-pissed with that sort of attitude, but i've have recently come to realised that it's just part of their culture. In fact, this "rudeness" is probably in their DNA already. So in a sense, we can't really impose our social rules on them, 'cos they just can't help it. Just like if you're a short person, born like that, wat to do?

As for Singaporeans, we can easily give the excuse that we're mostly decendants of people from this central country. Now that would be a cheap excuse. But i'm going to use it anyway. Not to be anti-climatic, i'll also add in the fact that if you look at it from the overall perspective, no country is perfect. We all have our flaws, and ours happen to be in the graciousness category. See, China have their brashness, Singapore their disregard to social graces, and America... well.. the guy who started a certain war in eye-rack. So lanlan, give and take, that's wat i say.

Of course, back to the topic of people actually complaining of our lack of social graces. I have no idea how you're gonna improve on that. No amount of courtesy campaigns, no matter how cute the mascot is, or "hao gong ming" lessons in primary school is going to help the situation, as proven over the past decade. What to do? As for me, I'll just do my part to be nice, and leave the whiners be.

And i also find it appropriate when our PM says "Singaporeans need grace".

'Cos seriously, grace is not, in any direct manner, about smiling to everyone you meet on the streets, or helping the old lady cross the road. The answer to a more "graceful" society we want to achieve, which will eventually seem such a minute matter in the scheme of things, lies in a higher grace than all these things. Grace that can be summed up by one word: love.

Living in the shadows that bind
Wherever we run
Why do we choose to hide from the sunshine
From the ever-present, ever-shining sun

0 Comments: