Shocked!

I woke up Sunday morning late, rushed to throw clothes/shoes into bag and ran downstairs to where coach was waiting.  Usual gang running 16km of Macritchie - my first foray back to Macritchie after last year's MR25 ultra.

It was only mid-run that I really woke up, when Simon told me the PAP has lost to WP in the by-elections at Ponggol East.  What?!  Unbelievable.  His exact words were, 他们不懂得人民的心, translated, the PAP is too aloof to understand the average Singaporean.

Singaporeans engage in group think too much.  We talk and suddenly everyone is anti-government.  Stop and rationalize for a bit.  Or perhaps cos I have lived overseas, I appreciate what we do have.  Look around us, compared to all our Asian neighbours, we have a system that is efficient and relatively incorrupt.  As for rising costs, there is a global situation all our neighbours are facing and trying to fix, look at HK's housing prices!

So the PAP is not perfect, I like it that they are quick to rectify and tweak a system to make it work for all, because Singapore is run like a huge conglomerate : Singapore Inc.

My only grouse is foreigners.  Enough already.  If we continue to dilute our identity as Singaporeans, we lose the social fabric of what makes us Singaporeans.  I work with and am close friends with many non-Singaporeans.  They have options, the option to go back to their country of birth.  I don't.  This is it.  This is home.  So I want everyone to love & respect Singapore for what this land stands for.  How do you tell someone to queue up, and that pushing/shoving is not acceptable in Singapore when we are no longer the majority?  How do you enforce society norms like not stealing my mobile phone off my lunch table or throwing thrash to the floor when they did not go through the same campaigns we grew up to : no littering, honesty is the best policy.... Sigh.  I am on the verge of bursting out into singing Chan Mali Chan.  But of cos, 50% of the people of Singapore have no clue what that even means.

To the PAP, may I suggest that maybe we don't need to have such high standards, that perhaps it is ok to accept a lower GDP, and we figure out the way forward together.  What is the point of having high GDP growth in terms of statistical numbers, but this prosperity is not evenly spread amongst Singaporeans.  Yes, I am still a PAP supporter but even more so, I am Singaporean and proudly so.