Why

"If you care too much about Singapore, first it'll break your spirit, and finally it will break your heart." --- Alfian Sa'at

I'm long overdue in writing about the latest citizen heartbreak (translation: government decision to push ahead with the development of two casinos integrated resorts) --- so overdue that a couple of nights ago, even the husband had to asked what specifically upset me about the announcement, since he didn't have a clue either.

To clarify:

I have no contention with the plans --- recently set in motion, ostensibly theoretical before that --- to build a casino in Singapore. Never did, either. Even if they permitted all and sundry to enter and blackjack their lives away, I don't think it will lead to the disintegration of our society as we know it. And hell, if it does, it just goes to show we weren't much of a society to begin with, in which case good riddance to us.

What roils my constitution here --- and I'm not talking about any lingering effects of durian consumption --- is that the government took this country through a blatant and massive public relations exercise for about six months, only to announce what seems to the layperson in me to have been a foregone conclusion anyway. I've said this to many people before, and I'll put it in writing here: I don't disrespect all the decisions this government makes, but I wish they'd come right out and say what they want to say, instead of leading us on a merry dance of consultation that twirls us right back to the starting position, from which they weren't going to budge in the first place. Be bold, be blatant, be unapologetic. Have some balls about it, for goodness's sake. Don't dick around with the faux courtship --- small talk, plastic corsages --- only to turn alpha male once the dance is up.

In particular, what cuts me to the quick is a profound sense of my own gullibility. There I am, day after day reminding the young people around me that, hey, the government wants to listen to you --- coaxing myself to believe it, even if they don't, because there must be hope springing eternal, lurking round the corner, lighting the end of the tunnel, a stormcloud on the horizon of a forty-year drought. I dared allow myself to hope, and now I feel all the more a fool for it. I thought I'd hit rock-bottom before --- when I first moved back after graduation, maybe, or when working in the system itself began to dull my sensitivities to outrage and inconsistency --- but now I've found a whole new place deep below it.

I'm done. Been drinking for days, and the bitter stab of disappointment still burns. Turn off, tune out, and drop ---