It's almost 5 AM, and the only sounds are the ones the cars make as they intermittently streak past outside. Once the hum gets too loud I know that the day has arrived.
One of the more incongruous things about living in Singapore is that even the time is fake (normatively compared to how we would normally expect it to be) - we're really an hour ahead of our true timezone (to be parity to the HK/China markets). So light comes an hour or two behind what I would normally expect in Manila.
Life here is incredibly consumerist, which can be sad. You are defined by what you can afford, what your job is, and what you do in your spare time. Consumption is a means of defining your identity, and for some, the only means of defining their identity. There is not much critical thought, as can be seen by reviewing what the media has to offer. Life is segmented into discrete blocks of time lasting 30 minutes to an hour, unlike in Manila where time is fluid. Hence for a time I needed to compartmentalize my day into these discrete blocks - "now, i will spend 1 hour watching TV", "now, I will spend 30 minutes preparing my dinner", "now, i will spend 2 hours doing my ironing" - unlike in Manila where time would flow past in a continuous stream of activities that led naturally from one to another without much planning or thought. Yet things would still get done.
I also increasingly find myself caught up in the "trap of the mundane" while also steadily appropriating the values that I have always associated as defining my parents (and had you suggested this to me three years ago I would have taken the piss at you). These I will list down:
- My brain is now wired to think in action-oriented bullet points. Unbeknownst to me, as I toiled away in corporate sweatshops, I have gradually lost my ability to think in lyrical, inspired paragraphs, and struggle to write. I am uncomfortable unless what I have written is adequately "laddered", e.g. allowing time-poor people to scan through my headings and read further if they need to, offering visual breaks and shortcuts so they can select the 'çontent' they wish to read further on as they browse. What comes naturally to mind now as I write reminds me of a Bloomberg newsblip - not much soul, just boring soundbites. I remember that I used to read business publications and think how uneducated and bland these writers must be - just from reading through their writing, and lo and behold: after three years as a 'corporate' - I've turned into them. (*minor scream*)
- I find myself being sucked in and defined by the consumer culture that my job requires me to perpetuate. This has pervaded the way I relate with people, spend time, and think. For instance, when I log on to wikipedia, I'll think to myself: "Yeah! I'm a part of the dot.com generation of under-35's, and feel gratified that I'm 'plugged in' to the information superhighway". Trite. Or I find myself shopping for white linen trousers and think to myself, "Yes, now I am a member of the WASPy, yacht-sailing, oxford loafer wearing set", even though I am Asian, Catholic, would never in my life wear oxford loafers, and get horribly seasick. So much of what I do, and what most people do here is image-driven, which leads me to constantly second-guess myself - how much of what I do is based on an intrinsic, genuine desire, versus one that is artificially constructed by marketing, PR, and the advertising industries? Brands are everywhere. They increasingly define my identity - from the authors I read, the websites I visit, the gym I frequent, even the country I live in. Can they be escaped? And if they can't be, it seems as though if you are not careful they truly can be insidious in supplanting what is likely your real personality. The only way out it seems for escaping this spiral of being taken over (zombiefied if you will) by the brand culture is to either (i) take an early and active role defining it, or (ii) live as a hermit, or worse, a terribly uncool person/geek. So it seems that unless I want to live without modern conveniences, the only way to retain one's identity is to be part of the elusive early adopters/"trend setters" who are ahead of the pack, but still in this case, the incremental Identity is still marginal, by virtue of defining what others are doing, yet still being co-opted within the segment of "early adopters" while constantly being required to go after the next best thing or losing one's identity. Can it ever be escaped? Not even contrarians - people who I would define as wanting to deliberately go against what everyone else is doing in order to stand out, are free - they are a segment in themselves too. It can't be escaped. Hence, the third way I believe to escape being co-opted is to (iii) immerse oneself in religion (believe it or not). Religion (at least Catholicism) has constantly been criticized as backward, archaic, left behind, uncool, as not understanding or truly leveraging the age of information. How refreshingly so! And precisely because everyone thinks it is uncool, supplanted by relativistic bricolagic ethics, lies its appeal. And I think I want it to stay that way - bland, unairconditioned and dusty. Alas as I write this it seems as though that in itself is imagery too - branding if you will. It can't be escaped as people will naturally associate images and stories with concrete objects, places, people, intangible concepts, and the list goes on. The assignation of value is arbitrary, with needs driven primarily by emotions, rather than function. Marketers truly study and play on the emotions of people to get them to buy products. I used to work for skincare and played on women's insecurities and fears about aging. I now work for a milk and cheese company and prey on the need for mums to feel that they're doing right by their families and giving the best for their children. And we carefully construct the images to ensure that our products are seen to be providing the benefit of alleviating these fears, satisfying these hopes, and fulfilling what they think they want. If only we can be truly critical of what we think, and to do it in a genuine way can we be free from the consumerist trap - the trap of the mundane.
I now have to go off to the gym to train for triathlon (hopefully the ankle I've sprained last week is better), and go to yoga class...
