romancing Singapore

(amaGAD clareclareclareclareCLARE kill me now!! boohoo i wanna crY. no actually it's more like rawR gaBISHgaRRRRRR. !!!)

my comp just farted. seriously it was like a pzooot sound out of nowehre.

this reminds me of the time max sean d and i were walking to the ri astroturf for inter-hse hockey. so as we were crossing the carpark...

car engine: *revs up* ch-ch-ch-ch-vroom
me: the car just farted
sean d: gosh denise i'm so proud of you!
me: ... huh? (pause) why?
sean d: you're the first girl who's ever said she just farted
me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA i saaaaaaid the CAR just farted and i can't believe you'd be proud of me for saying i farted. !!!

>>>>>>>okay anyway i actually wanted to livejournalDOTcomSLASHupdate tonight bcos i need to exclaim:

SINGAPORE IS A MACHINE!

that's right, a MACHINE. ok so i was taking 165 home today and at the front of the bus facing all the passsengers was this H-UUUGGE red&black sticker that said:
"Alert the driver if you see an unattended bag" (smth like that. my memory fails me)
and at the bottom there was the whole CIVIL DEFENCE thing going on with the totaldefencesign like a hand (5 arrows what..) pledging to Defend Singapore At All Times. !!!

are there Professional Sticker Makers (PSMs) working for MINDEF or what! and if there really are such PSMs they must be really bored or smth to be able to come up with tagline+design and get the stickerS (assuming many other buses have to wear The Latest Sticker too) printed in like 2days. The Stranded Bag Incident (SBI) was on friday and it's sunday evening and you have stickers up already telling people to Suspect All Owner-less Bags!

THIS, after the whole let's put the X in Xingapore! (see: 'X and the city', The Straits Times, Saturday 10 September 2005) issue?!

okay
1) after the SBI wouldn't singaporeans be extra suspicious of any unattended bags? so much for intellectual capital :(
2) how can everything be so impeccably efficient!? it's PERFECT, it's ARTIFICIAL. we didn't even have to lift a finger!

i think singapore lacks romance.

it would be so much cooler to have people in your community tell you to look out for stranded bags or to watch out for people-that-might-want-you-in-their-stranded-bag, than have a sticker courtesy of papaPAP doing that.

we need little (often, priceless) things that don't scream EFFICIENCY, HA! because that's not what endears us to a place. colin goh wrote in the sunday times today that upon arrival in NY, his new yorker colleagues who had worked with him in singapore missed our prata, our kueh tutu and our kopi in a plastic bag. there's something so romantic about sipping kopi out of a plastic bag (or, out of a tin can with a plastic bag handle :]:]:]) because it's as if you don't have the luxury of having it in a cup but it'll do in a plastic bag bcos what matters is the KOPI,  (i say, if the kopi were a person it would feel truly appreciated) and the fact that you're willing to endure the hassle of sipping it out of a plastic bag (!prone to spilling)(!incredibly unglam) because you love it soooooo much.

it's the tiny struggles that you go through that enable you to show your l-o-v-e (see what i mean by romance!) for something/someplace that add meaning to that thing/place.

like if the people around you DID tell you to watch out for unattended bags or for potential-'i'll kill you and put you in a bag'-murderers, that would be a way of showing their love for you.

but what we have is papaPAP doing that in such an impersonal way (sticker on a bus!?), it's so disappointing!

i think we have such a capacity for romance!
rickshaw pullers (no car but it's okay, we love the open air)
hawker centres (dirty floor and tables but it's okay, we love the food)
mama shops (no Cold Storage nearby but it's okay, these little shops are so quaint and if we're lucky the owner might use a calculator instead of a ka-ching! cashier to total our purchases. that's so retro!)
neighbourhood bakeries that sell "choclate waffle" and "bluberry waffle" for a little over a dollar, it's like they're saying "we're not american lah, but we do want you to have waffles" -because they don't want to exploit you with their fancy brand and an overpriced price, it's like they earnestly want you to have a waffle.

this should be the real Romancing Singapore!
(because machines aren't capable of romance.)

*denise feels a surge in her academic ability -cross fingers-* hahah :p

ps. i just realised how my acronym-izing some terms was so incredibly Singaporean omg.