Musings

Some stuff I dug up from my hard drive.

The sigh of the times

Ng Zhao Yang 1SO3E

As I prepared to write this article, I was wondering, what topics really pertain to us JC students anyway? In terms of wants and needs, we are more or less fulfilled, our parents provide us with everything, food, clothes, money etc. Compared with the people in poorer countries, we are far more well-off and comfortable. As a result, the desperation of poverty and living in squalid conditions do not strike a chord with us pampered youths. Therefore I struck out writing about poverty and suffering.
Moving on, I resolved to write about politics and comment on the current affairs. However, I realised that these too do not really seem to be something JC students are preoccupied with. They are more interested about why appeasement failed and why Hitler committed military hari-kiri when he delayed Operation Barbarossa, rather than in the dull rhetorical and jingoistic speeches of George W. Bush pushing for war. Make no mistake about it, we students seem to be more interested in what is coming out for the next test than bother about the world. Even if something were to interest us, it would have to be college gossip, about who is going out with whom and who was just dumped by the guy in 1SO7Z. As a result, I drew a big fat line and went down my list again.
I thought about writing about the failing Singapore economy, but decided not to. Despite the economic slowdown, with war cries resounding everywhere by the government to tighten our belts and roll up our socks, we youths seem to be immune to such buffeting winds of change. A deluge of RJC students fills Holland Village every night, each spending a small fortune on food and drinks. Not that I condemn such acts, but their lavishness almost disguises the fact that Singapore is in a recession. We are either totally oblivious, or downright ignorant. The intricacies of penny-pinching and saving for a rainy day have been washed out.
With politics and the economy struck out, I moved on to the social aspect of life. There seemed to be a deluge of topics for me to write about, but I stopped short of doing so. Does anyone of us care about parents placing children in 24-hour care centres? What about whether the Sengkang LRT will function smoothly? These topics are as dry as firewood, and we view them as the other people’s problems, or worse, potential GP questions. Only then they will grudgingly force some points of futile argument in their heads just in case their GP teachers scold them for not keeping up with the current affairs.
By now, my list was down to its bare bones and filled with unsightly red cancel marks. The remaining topics were fashion, sports, music, entertainment etc. To my dismay, I found out that these topics were covered widely in commercial teen magazines, such as Teenage or Seventeen, which is far more value for money than my magazine. Faced with such great competition, and knowing that it was a hopeless battle as I knew nuts about how to choosing the right shirt to go with this pants, I crushed the piece of paper in my possession into a ball of paper.
Essay undone, my faith shakened, I walked to the living room to read the papers. Amid all the tabloids, the gossip, the looming clouds of war, a lone article stood out. A student, our age, was now somewhere in Cambodia, helping needy children in a village to build a school.
Sometimes the process is more important then the end result.