Liberté et Vérité

Airplanes taking off punctually, screens displaying accurately boarding gates, sophisticated non-shouting travellers, impeccable airline meals and constant flow of taxis once exiting the airport.

This was not the situation yesterday. Ran around like headless chicken around the airport trying to get my airticket change for another airline to make it for the 11am flight at 10.32am. Then having a battle of the wills with taxi drivers who magically pop up like magic mushrooms coincidentally when late night fare sets in.

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On my way back, Taxi uncle in Beijing waxes lyrical about China not being a democracy. Everything is being decided by the central government and improvements/ developments made were normally at the expense of citizens. Protests are almost non-existent and dissenting views are criticisms at the government are unaccepted and claimed partisan. Sounds perversely familiar. Singapore and China are two extremes in terms of size of land and population, yet both have governments which wave their wand of control in the name of development. Difference? China makes no effort to hide that it does, contrary to Singapore.

Beijing taxi uncle shared with me a juicy tidbit. They held their own protest 1 July 2006 against the petrol hike and operator was not aiding the least bit. While he called it a failed protest, I was silently marveling at the organized and clever manner of their protest. A failed protest, only because they did not manage to make the impact that they intended - which was to bring airport and train transport to exploding chaos by not ferrying passengers out. They didn't get punished? How can? Almighty central government leh! Well, they made use of a loophole that operators overlooked when they denied taxi drivers national holidays. With dramatic finesse of outplaying a conartist, taxi drivers concidentally decided to take a 'rest' on the same day.

Onboard a flight back, I also read about recent Happiness Index that researchers regularly attempt to measure and tell us how money can not make us well, happy. This was measured upon environmental impact as opposed to Ingelhart's World Value Survey on Subjective Well Being which takes into account satisfaction on top of how happy they feel (which intuitively the latter makes more sense to me). This whole talk of it will be for another time. My point is, most Singaporeans are a bunch of complainers. The prices are rising, queue is so long, wah so bad service etc. It is no wonder we rank 130th or 131st? These are such hygiene issues, though I suspect the answers lie below these superficialities. Is there a nagging feeling that we are lacking something, something meaningful in our little island of everything-aso-have?

These little random drops of news and first-hand accounts all converge strangely while I'm reading Alan Moore's V for Vendetta (now major motion picture, of which I've deliberately avoided) and been pondering it for some time, especially since recent whatever the what ongoings in Singapore. When has freedom to exercise the right to say right and wrong become such a unacceptable act? They have got it right though (pun not intended). Polemic it is (and bloody verbose they have to be) - a controversy, especially over a belief or dogma. It seems like a dogma set by one political party who does not differentiate itself from the goverment.

"He [John Locke] came to understand that the only reliable thing that can be said about human knowledge is that it is, and can be, only partial. This simple truth has enormous consequences, because it means that any form of authoritarianism, whether intellectual or political, is based on the false premise that one person or system has all the answers." - Susan Ford Wiltshire

When will they believe that dissent is not for dissent's sake nor for disloyalty; but for want to live up to some ideal, to reach out for something worth fighting for. For what, we're still seeking as a young nation. Amongst it all, there is only one thing to hope for, not some mutant, distorted form of it upgraded and air-conditioned. Freedom and Truth Prevails.