Explaining Home

So I’ve just cheated. I’m posting this writeup here that’s also the same as in my personal website. Which is here, if you’re interested. 🙂

But as I was writing it, I felt that it was appropriate to post this, and hopefully gain insights from you as well. So feel free to share. These are just my 5 cents worth. 

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You always explain who you are, where you’re from. And if you come from a tiny little island called Singapore, people often get very curious. When you’ve been away from home for 6 years, it’s rather hard to convey what it means to me since it’s changed. Changed rather dramatically in fact. How do you do it? How do you explain home when the home is ever changing and even you don’t recognize it anymore. 

It’s hard to feel proud about the brand new avante-garde architecture and landscapes our government has so carefully crafted. Don’t get me wrong. They are beautiful. But there is no relationship that we’ve built. There is no common ground from the old to the new. It’s just like a big gap between the traditional culture and way of life to the new and fashionably known places of today. 

Which made me rethink about many things. How do I view Singapore? And how should I portray Singapore? On one hand, it’s extremely exciting, isn’t it? We are young country and we can literally carve our own history the way we want to. We can start building our own culture and let it lead the world into new ideas. Who knows, we could do it, right? On the other hand, it’s also extremely confusing because everyone has their own idea of what they want Singapore to be. Even the government. So who’s right? Who should we follow? 

Will we just end up being a complete pot of mixed cultures, songs, costumes and languages? Thus making Singapore as literally, the platform that allows differences to come together? It’s a place to not make an American dream come true but literally YOUR dreams come true. 

It’s a constant vomit of questions. Sorry that must be a bad image to have. But yes, a constant stampede of questions that just won’t stop. 

So perhaps it’s time to just do something. Yes, to just do it. 

We’ll build our own culture and we’ll build our own way of life. And we’ll be proud of it. Proud to call ourselves Singaporeans and proud to explain to everyone what our Singapore homeland means to us.