please, get out of my elite uncaring face

for posterity - especially since i share the same alma mater as a certain ms wee, aka, ms "please, get out of my elite uncaring face".

and singapore asks me why i stopped loving her.

there was once, a long time ago, when i took pappies' words for real. time in the raffles schools do insulate one from the harsher climates outside (though there was, and still is, no lack of schoolmates trying to show the rest of us the follies of our ways - in retrospect i note the sheer sedetiousness and alternative-ness of many of drama feste plays). guess i just didn't open my eyes wide enough then.

i never thought that i was "elite", and would abhor from using the word to describe myself, even obliquely, or as a joke, though i was from a even more "privileged" subset in school. seeing classmates who do supremely well in exams after assumed months of play does wonders in deflating your ego. i guess my family background helped too, since i was not born into singapore royalty, but am "merely" the son of a blue-collared worker.

i had favoured the pappies then - all the way until the ripe old age of twenty. i remember siding with pappie during an "argument" against a now-famous blogger after dinner at pierside (this was when i was just about to be out of the army?), though the actual arguments are now hazy. this was before i found out that he got royally screwed by our lovely, uncaring bureaucracy, during one of the worst times for anyone to go through such anguish.

perhaps it was him who sowed the seeds of discontent in my head? i can't remember for sure now. truth be told, i can't even pinpoint any particular event, or series of events, that led me to this jaded view that i currently hold of our dear pappies.

perhaps it is their continuous denial of a large part of myself, a part that sees the light of day mostly when i escape from this sunny island inhabited by four million smiles, that slowly fed my bitterness.

or perhaps when one grows up, and starts seeing nuances of grey, does one see the chilling similarities between vote-buying and lift-upgrading.

or perhaps when scholar friends bitch about their bonds does my respect for the civil service die.

or perhaps when our 140th masturbates itself into illusionment even as it sinks further to the 146th.

and now this. dear father of ms wee, you truly deserve the sticks up your rear. for even if your daughter does not, you, of all people, should know better. we do not give you money to wantonly defecate in our backyard. and ms wee, do grow up - you are, after all, smart enough to have made it into the humanities programme; surely you should be able to fathom the power of the pen.

i take pride now in my growing conviction to be a "quitter", to quote a term by someone who has overstayed his welcome in the parliament. sure, other countries may be just as nonsensical, but perhaps they don't slowly kill their citizens with empty rhetoric and whitewashed facades.

i do not need a parent whose love is conditional.