Uniquely Singapore

My home country wants to be everything else, but itself. It wants to be bustling like London, diverse like New York, culturally vibrant like Paris and socially graceful like Japan. How to be uniquely Singapore, except as a jigsaw puzzle made up of pieces which others have developed over hundreds of years? We already have Chinatown, Little India, Katong and Kampong Glam. Do we need Little London, Little NY, Little Paris and Little Japan as well? It is a little scary, but learning from the virtues of others is the defining trait of Singapore - the combination of kiasu and kiasi.

Sometimes I wish we are a little more self-confident. There is nothing wrong with being Singaporean, and not British, American, French or Japanese. We have Singlish, a lot of Singaporean food, maybe even a culture of self-deprecation. We have our homegrown talents, our own playwrights, dancers, musicians, acting talents, film-makers. All of them are quite capable of making it onto the global stage, if only we would give them the support that we give to foreign artistes. There must be a reason why they often strike it out in Taiwan and Hong Kong before coming back.

People laugh at our ban on chewing gum. It is true that it sounds stupid. But wait, and look at that patch of gum still stuck in my room's carpet, from someone who might even have graduated. We need people to tell us to stand behind the yellow line in 4 languages, but they do that too in the London tube stations - just that London does not have 4 languages. For all that our laws are a laughing stock of the world with Singapore even taking pride in being a "fine city", we do not fine people for crossing the road while talking on their mobiles. Neither do we legislate to make seat belts compulsory on buses. And the newest proposed legislation in Kentucky, US: Make cigarettes self-extinguishing, because people keep burning down their houses while smoking. Yes, we don't allow demonstrations and we are still in the process of figuring out gay rights, but maybe we should appreciate the little freedoms that we do enjoy.

We can be some country somewhere, not quite any country anywhere, but certainly not every country everywhere. We cannot have everything, something has to give. Bustling can mean being on the brink of overcrowding, and culturally vibrant and efficiency do not quite go together. While we learn from others who are culturally so much older than ourselves, the challenge is to achieve that delicate balance, and not become nothing more than an incomprehensible, even contradictory, mish-mash of global cultures.

Go out, open our eyes, get impressed. For that matter, I am still waiting to jet off to Paris, New York and Japan to experience the difference and I still love the baguette, burger and sashimi. But while we keep thinking the grass is greener on the other side, please try to remember the colour of the grass at home.