Saturday, August 21, 2004
Dreamkiller?
A certain Brigadier General recently ascended to his seat at the Right Hand of... err sorry. I mean recently assumed the mantle of supreme leader of the nation of Singapore with this inaugral speech.
In it he raised the issue of meritocracy, which several intrepid individuals have seen fit to debate online, on a singapore government feedback website.
I'm certainly not brave enough to discuss the pros and cons of meritocracy with respect to the future of an entire nation, and my apolitical brain has difficulty grasping concepts like GDPs and national budgets, so I'll stick to the layman's perception of the issue by asking a question :
Is meritocracy killing our dreams?
We all have a dream. It's the great Singapore Dream, as espoused by our esteemed government - in as much as taking to task a singularly unique reporter who dared suggest that the economic slump might indicate that it was time that we changed the focus of our dreams from the five Cs - cash, credit card, condominium, car, country club membership to something more humane, which involved appreciating the simple things in life - can be interpreted as espousing a dream.
I never shared this dream. Perhaps it comes with being born with a silver spoon up my nose, as xena puts it. :)
Or perhaps I'm just a different type of person. I don't honestly know.
I do know that my career and lifestyle as a single doctor mean a stable income that frees me from the mundane worries of making ends meet. (although, truth be told as a poorly paid casualty doctor working for the NHS - that changed the picture dramatically. damn bills.) And that's all I really want insofar as the five Cs go. I just want enough to scrape by. Because there's so much more to life than obsessing over the material.
My dream was always to become a doctor. I don't know why - discussing it with T last night over too much wine and too little food (french!) I figured that perhaps it was because I was born a product of the system. EVERYONE wanted to be either a doctor, or a lawyer - maybe I was socially conditioned before I even knew the meaning of the words. (which would have been, ah, seven. I was a strange kid left to entertain himself in a library of books, since television and radio were nonexistent in my house - or at least, inaccessible to little old me unless I chanced to discover where my mum's latest hiding-place for The Key.)
Or perhaps it was a consequence of watching my dad go about his humble life, doctoring industriously and thanklessly to the ceaseless tide of patients.
Who knows? I've never really stopped to ask other doctors why they chose to join the ranks of an increasingly unappreciated group who're fast being stripped of the things that make them more than mere technicians - compassion, empathy and clinical intuition. Morale is low in the NHS which is fast becoming a safe haven for professional migrants from The Subcontinent. I suspect the same is true across the world - that morale is gradually waning. Latest reports have the attrition of nurses within the NHS at an all time low.
Moving swiftly back to our conversation last night over my rabbit saussage (singular) and pea. or was it a leaf of cabbage - T and I wondered a little more at Dido's tenacity - fooled her way through college, tried to make good by attending secretarial school, and doing a correspondence course in law at night, then abandoning all that for her true love - music. And as she puts it - it's the right life for her.
One of Ts friends recently abandoned doctoring for his true love - piloting. It's the right life for him, and he's happy now.
Sitting back and trying to put all the pieces together, I have to wonder if perhaps our push for an economically "vibrant", technologically advanced mini-metropolis is snuffing out the dreams of our children - to become firemen. And singers. And poets. And all the other careers we as stereotypes of Good Singaporeans sideline.
As with all stereotypes - this doesn't hold true all the time. I'm sure there are people out there back home who always dreamed of being firemen, and policemen, and are happy where they are now. I'm sure their parents encouraged and supported them through it all, and I'm sure they make up a substantial part of the country. I was born into the strata of society kindly defined by Goh Chok Tong as the non-heartlanders, and I suspect I'll receive all manner and lengths of stick about this someday from my heartlander compatriats. To be honest, I've always felt the divide is an artificial one - but unfortunately it's one that the nation has wholeheartedly subscribed to, and is therefore now a very real one.
My point being that the people I grew up with, and watched as they grew up - probably represent the minority. I certainly remember the "medical faculty" of my college with a small degree of derision. I remember our biology lecturer telling us all that we had to become doctors or be nothing at all. Simply because these kids had an interest in all three sciences. Apparently that was career-defining.
Where are the Didos and Eric Claptons in Singapore, one wonders.
I mean, heck even australia produces talent (Nicole Kidman, Kylie Minogue) and they're a stone's throw away. And they're not particularly fussed about it either way.
The closest we come are the big names back home like Tanya Chua and Kit Chan. Hmm and maybe Gurmit Singh. laughs.
And I have to admit, they're good - better than the layman could hope to be, anyhow.
But when will they ever produce a hit that sweeps the world - have we ever even had a one-hit-wonder for that matter?
What about our national ambition for Olympic Glory in football?
Or any other sport for that matter?
Seems an Indonesian import nearly won us a medal at Athens recently. And of course I won't pretend that he's not Singaporean. Our table-tennis stars are a team of mainly Chinese imports - they've followed their dreams insofar as nationality goes, and committed themselves to a new citizenship. I applaud them for that, and for their talent.
But there seems to be a dearth of home-grown talent in anything other than engineering, and doctoring, and lawyering. Fields of "merit".
I remember training with our national fencers once upon a very long time ago.
What I remember was that we were all kids. Even the "grown ups".
And we were all part-time kids. Who paid for our own equipment, and had the luxury of training for free under a coach imported from mainland China.
The "adults" had their own cushy little businesses somewhere out there, and doubtlessly trained once or twice a week. And when the occasion demanded, assumed the mantle and tracksuit of national representation, went out there, and got slaughtered. Sometimes they'd win the odd SEA games medal and get put on a pedestal for a while, until their next defeat - then the media'd crucify them, after putting them on an impossible pedestal.
But they were part-timers. None of them dared, or had the passion - or support - to commit their lives to fencing.
I certainly wouldn't have. I could at the time - my life was in limbo while waiting for my national liabilty to expire, and for my dream of doctorhood to finally turn from faintly distant aspiration to real and present reality.
Of the three of us, only one I suspect had real Talent. Our best fencer had guts and determination, and trained obsessively to the point that he was extremely good.
I was out of my element, wielding a weapon that wasn't true to my personality. (Damn foil.) And the last was a bit of a lazy bum, but he had that flair, and sparkle that any fool could see that if he'd committed his life to the art, he'd have been up there.
But he didn't. I suppose it wouldn't have made sense.
Perhaps it's time we abandoned our national obsession with meritocracy and stopped to smell the roses. Perhaps it's time we stopped making fun of the Three Ms of the Malays (mina, moto, marlboro) and realise that there's room enough for that in our lives as well... that career-mindedness has it's place, but isn't the be-all and end-all of life. Perhaps it's time we gave our children the chance to dream again.
Or perhaps not.
In order to even begin to consider these nebulous concepts, we have to first learn how to think.
Still, one baby step at a time, eh?
In it he raised the issue of meritocracy, which several intrepid individuals have seen fit to debate online, on a singapore government feedback website.
I'm certainly not brave enough to discuss the pros and cons of meritocracy with respect to the future of an entire nation, and my apolitical brain has difficulty grasping concepts like GDPs and national budgets, so I'll stick to the layman's perception of the issue by asking a question :
Is meritocracy killing our dreams?
We all have a dream. It's the great Singapore Dream, as espoused by our esteemed government - in as much as taking to task a singularly unique reporter who dared suggest that the economic slump might indicate that it was time that we changed the focus of our dreams from the five Cs - cash, credit card, condominium, car, country club membership to something more humane, which involved appreciating the simple things in life - can be interpreted as espousing a dream.
I never shared this dream. Perhaps it comes with being born with a silver spoon up my nose, as xena puts it. :)
Or perhaps I'm just a different type of person. I don't honestly know.
I do know that my career and lifestyle as a single doctor mean a stable income that frees me from the mundane worries of making ends meet. (although, truth be told as a poorly paid casualty doctor working for the NHS - that changed the picture dramatically. damn bills.) And that's all I really want insofar as the five Cs go. I just want enough to scrape by. Because there's so much more to life than obsessing over the material.
My dream was always to become a doctor. I don't know why - discussing it with T last night over too much wine and too little food (french!) I figured that perhaps it was because I was born a product of the system. EVERYONE wanted to be either a doctor, or a lawyer - maybe I was socially conditioned before I even knew the meaning of the words. (which would have been, ah, seven. I was a strange kid left to entertain himself in a library of books, since television and radio were nonexistent in my house - or at least, inaccessible to little old me unless I chanced to discover where my mum's latest hiding-place for The Key.)
Or perhaps it was a consequence of watching my dad go about his humble life, doctoring industriously and thanklessly to the ceaseless tide of patients.
Who knows? I've never really stopped to ask other doctors why they chose to join the ranks of an increasingly unappreciated group who're fast being stripped of the things that make them more than mere technicians - compassion, empathy and clinical intuition. Morale is low in the NHS which is fast becoming a safe haven for professional migrants from The Subcontinent. I suspect the same is true across the world - that morale is gradually waning. Latest reports have the attrition of nurses within the NHS at an all time low.
Moving swiftly back to our conversation last night over my rabbit saussage (singular) and pea. or was it a leaf of cabbage - T and I wondered a little more at Dido's tenacity - fooled her way through college, tried to make good by attending secretarial school, and doing a correspondence course in law at night, then abandoning all that for her true love - music. And as she puts it - it's the right life for her.
One of Ts friends recently abandoned doctoring for his true love - piloting. It's the right life for him, and he's happy now.
Sitting back and trying to put all the pieces together, I have to wonder if perhaps our push for an economically "vibrant", technologically advanced mini-metropolis is snuffing out the dreams of our children - to become firemen. And singers. And poets. And all the other careers we as stereotypes of Good Singaporeans sideline.
As with all stereotypes - this doesn't hold true all the time. I'm sure there are people out there back home who always dreamed of being firemen, and policemen, and are happy where they are now. I'm sure their parents encouraged and supported them through it all, and I'm sure they make up a substantial part of the country. I was born into the strata of society kindly defined by Goh Chok Tong as the non-heartlanders, and I suspect I'll receive all manner and lengths of stick about this someday from my heartlander compatriats. To be honest, I've always felt the divide is an artificial one - but unfortunately it's one that the nation has wholeheartedly subscribed to, and is therefore now a very real one.
My point being that the people I grew up with, and watched as they grew up - probably represent the minority. I certainly remember the "medical faculty" of my college with a small degree of derision. I remember our biology lecturer telling us all that we had to become doctors or be nothing at all. Simply because these kids had an interest in all three sciences. Apparently that was career-defining.
Where are the Didos and Eric Claptons in Singapore, one wonders.
I mean, heck even australia produces talent (Nicole Kidman, Kylie Minogue) and they're a stone's throw away. And they're not particularly fussed about it either way.
The closest we come are the big names back home like Tanya Chua and Kit Chan. Hmm and maybe Gurmit Singh. laughs.
And I have to admit, they're good - better than the layman could hope to be, anyhow.
But when will they ever produce a hit that sweeps the world - have we ever even had a one-hit-wonder for that matter?
What about our national ambition for Olympic Glory in football?
Or any other sport for that matter?
Seems an Indonesian import nearly won us a medal at Athens recently. And of course I won't pretend that he's not Singaporean. Our table-tennis stars are a team of mainly Chinese imports - they've followed their dreams insofar as nationality goes, and committed themselves to a new citizenship. I applaud them for that, and for their talent.
But there seems to be a dearth of home-grown talent in anything other than engineering, and doctoring, and lawyering. Fields of "merit".
I remember training with our national fencers once upon a very long time ago.
What I remember was that we were all kids. Even the "grown ups".
And we were all part-time kids. Who paid for our own equipment, and had the luxury of training for free under a coach imported from mainland China.
The "adults" had their own cushy little businesses somewhere out there, and doubtlessly trained once or twice a week. And when the occasion demanded, assumed the mantle and tracksuit of national representation, went out there, and got slaughtered. Sometimes they'd win the odd SEA games medal and get put on a pedestal for a while, until their next defeat - then the media'd crucify them, after putting them on an impossible pedestal.
But they were part-timers. None of them dared, or had the passion - or support - to commit their lives to fencing.
I certainly wouldn't have. I could at the time - my life was in limbo while waiting for my national liabilty to expire, and for my dream of doctorhood to finally turn from faintly distant aspiration to real and present reality.
Of the three of us, only one I suspect had real Talent. Our best fencer had guts and determination, and trained obsessively to the point that he was extremely good.
I was out of my element, wielding a weapon that wasn't true to my personality. (Damn foil.) And the last was a bit of a lazy bum, but he had that flair, and sparkle that any fool could see that if he'd committed his life to the art, he'd have been up there.
But he didn't. I suppose it wouldn't have made sense.
Perhaps it's time we abandoned our national obsession with meritocracy and stopped to smell the roses. Perhaps it's time we stopped making fun of the Three Ms of the Malays (mina, moto, marlboro) and realise that there's room enough for that in our lives as well... that career-mindedness has it's place, but isn't the be-all and end-all of life. Perhaps it's time we gave our children the chance to dream again.
Or perhaps not.
In order to even begin to consider these nebulous concepts, we have to first learn how to think.
Still, one baby step at a time, eh?
