The death of the hawking industry would be a huge loss for Singapore. The thought of an overworked population not having access to good cheap food is a scary one, but the loss of hawker food would be a death blow to the already tenuous shroud that is our Singaporean identity.

So when the government announced, after months of gathering industry and public feedback, that it wanted to make the hawking profession “attractive and honourable”, it was expected, but I baulked a little at the choice of words. We’ve always been relatively good at making things “attractive”, but “honourable”, to be frank, is out of the government’s league.

I do not mean it derisively, but honour is not easily bestowed by measures or means. You can fake it, much like the ornate robes worn by university professors at graduation ceremonies to instill a sense of pomp for the day, but real honour is bestowed by the people.

I’ll be blunt and honest here. We are really, really stingy when it comes to according honour. Whether we got to this point because of massive doses of competition, the effects of globalisation, or remnants of a survivor mentality that is still embedded in us, I’ll leave that discussion for keener minds. I think we can all agree that we aren’t a very generous people, particularly when it comes to our own. I’m guilty as charged.

Economically it makes sense to “move up the value chain”, but it is naive to look at value in purely economic terms. People do not climb the next rung of the economy ladder for a myriad of reasons, some by choice and others by circumstance. Dignity and honour should be found at all levels, and in all jobs. Professor Lim Chong Yah’s proposal to address income inequality and Ho Kwon Ping’s call to complete the wage reform in neglected sectors, based on my very, very rudimentary grasp of economics and through the lens of the state media, may come across as radical or extreme, but the spirit of their message is one we need in our stage of societal evolution. I think citizens need to understand that there are associated costs that come with caring. We can expect the cost of consumables to go up as we make livelihoods for lower-income jobs more equitable and sustainable. We need to decide, as a society, if we are willing to pay the cost to realise our ideals. There is no magic bullet, no grandfather who’ll pay for our moral high ground. Eventually we’ll need to pay for it, because we believe we cannot go on exploiting the downtrodden just so we can reap the benefits of a good life at a low price.

But I digress. The wage structure is but part of honour, and has been debated vigourously as of late.

How do we accord honour? How do we bring dignity to jobs that at the lower rungs of this man-made ladder to which we all seem enslaved?

Be nice. That’s a helluva good start.

Smile, and say your thank-you’s. To the cleaners, to the hawkers, to the construction workers. To all the ones whom we pass by; the ones we’ve taken for granted; the ones we’ve derided by telling our children they’ll end up there if they don’t study hard, be nice. Recognise their contributions to our lives, and express a little gratitude.

It’ll go farther than any government programme to instill honour and dignity.

Daniel Goh, this post is for you. I don’t drink alcohol, but for inspirational stories like yours, I just might have to pop by Good Beer and raise a glass. Erm. Mug. Yes I’m new at this.

I’m barely able to hold myself together at this point, my heart shattering in a thousand pieces, crying out in anguished prayer for the suffering to be taken away from him. My faith flickers in the wind, believing that God knows what He’s doing, even though I do not.

These moments are real. Real in that they strip away the games we play; the facades we navigate as adults in a world we constructed. It is these moments we are left with nothing except a stark, pure, unadulterated look at life and its meaning, where thoughts find their utterance in prayer. Life in its raw form.

This is the real reason why we need children in our lives. Forget the economic argument or talk of lineage and continuance. There is nothing on earth more worthy of our protection, our most unselfish hopes and our self-sacrificial love than our children. In our very hearts it matters not if the children are mine or yours; they are ours, and the deeply engrained need to protect them from harm and nurture them to fullness is a universal one that unites us.

We live in a society steeped in the culture of competition, and its poison is seen all around us. It has tainted the value of hard work, and it has introduced many cracks in our society. Hierarchies such as social status, income levels have clouded our judgement; discrimination and xenophobia have become commonplace behaviours.

20 minutes ago as I curled up behind my boy, holding his hands and feet to keep them warm, nothing else mattered. As I left the room to catch some sleep he waved his little hand and managed a “bye bye”, his voice still trembling.

I had meant to write this a few days ago, but erased the draft I had because I couldn’t quite find the right words to describe what I felt watching the two of you sleep, hours after your birthdays.

We’re all in a different phase of life now. The two of you are no longer babies.

My beautiful Anne, my daughter. I know that it is not easy going to school. I feel a pang reach into my deepest of hearts when you sometimes weep at night, not wanting to face the cold hard reality of school the next day. You say there are too many rules, and that you fear unintentionally breaking any one of them. I wish I could tell you to disregard them, because life isn’t made up of silly rules; and more importantly, life shouldn’t be lived in fear. School, above all, should be the one place you ought to be able to make mistakes safely, and experiment with solutions bound only by your imagination.

I sound like those parents I used to loathe when I was working at the Ministry of Education: the ones who thought they knew better than the system. Like them, I believe I do. Because you are mine, and the world has never seen anyone like you. I know good parenting is learning how to let go, and I pray I’ll have the wisdom to do so when the time comes.

For now, your hand grasps mine while you sleep. You tell me that it helps you fall asleep, but you won’t mind if I need my hand to type this post. I clasp your hand in mine. Times like these are too precious.

My wonderful Caleb, my son. You refuse to be thought of as more little than your sister, and your little legs propel you so quickly forward, out of toddlerhood and now you’re a boy. There’s a certain sweetness about you - the way you tilt your head back and forth, the goofy grin and how you trundle about. I know it won’t be long before your male pride prohibits me from kissing you, but till then, your mother and I cannot resist planting our lips on your face, our hearts holding on to the last vestiges of baby that slips through the sieve of time and memory.

My children, it is customary to pass you some words of wisdom on your birthdays, but any honest parent would confess that we learn more from our children than they’ll ever learn from us. Living with the two of you, watching you grow from infants to the amazing kids you now are, I’ve learned a great deal about life.

As you grow in your consciousness and become more aware of the flaws of your parents, the lesson for me is this: it is imperative that I live an example; the best gift I can give you is that my life be proof of the things I implore to be true, because anything less is hypocrisy. And you, my dear children, deserve the best parents we can be. Even if we fear you may end up hating us for it.

If we believe that life is more than the acquisition of material things, we ought to live it. If we believe that God will supply our needs, we ought not to worry so much, not to safeguard so much, we ought to trust more. We might have less, but we will have more.

You deserve parents that love God with all their hearts, and prove that He reigns over us all, and that there is peace and joy in unconditional submission unto Him.

Your mother and I want so much to be those parents for you. It frightens us, and has been the source of tears. We’ll be brave for you.

My wife was the music teacher, and as she relates her account to me, we realise it is in these small moments where we can grasp the precious essence that is the multiculturalism we have here in Singapore.

Many years ago, while I was serving as a vehicle technician during my National Service in the army, we had a Chinese New Year celebratory dinner for all the trainee technicians. There was a sizeable number of Muslims among the trainees, so the organisers handed out forms to record our dietary preferences. A group of us decided we would opt for the halal menu, just so we could hang out with the Muslim trainees through the dinner.

That night, about 20 tables were spread out on the workshop floor, all covered in pink disposable plastic tablecloths. We sat with at one of the tables designated for those who had opted for the halal menu. There was a pregnant pause in the air. The Malay trainees were probably wondering if we had sat at the wrong table, and we felt a little uncomfortable; unsure if we had crossed some imaginary territorial lines by being there.

When they began to serve the food, one of the Malay trainees asked me why we weren’t with the other Chinese trainees. I told them that the few of us thought the celebrations would have been more meaningful if we could all be together. I remember the next moment very profoundly: he looked right into me and said, “You are very good guys to have done this.”

I remember this very moment so vividly because it was just a few minutes before that when the caterers brought out suckling pigs for the Chinese tables, and the Muslim food hadn’t arrived at our table. The juxtaposition of my Malay friend’s approval and my very base thought of “OMG did we just miss out on SUCKLING PIG?!?!” elicited a very strong emotional response from within me. I was instantly ashamed to have allowed my appetite to dictate my immediate thoughts. We had a really great time that night, and something significant emerged from our small decision to sign up for the halal menu. There was a brotherhood that looked beyond our differences in culture and united us because we had chosen to let it be so. We had chosen not to let our differences get in the way of our similarities, and to be intrigued and in awe of our diversity, rather than be afraid of it.

It has been many years since that night, but today we still face these same decisions. Singapore stands for a great many things: some noble, others maybe less so. But few things are as precious as our openness to people of different races and backgrounds.

We need to work hard to defend that, especially at the torrid pace globalisation is descending upon all of Asia. This openness to cultural diversity is a part of Singapore we should preserve, a most beautiful part we can proudly hand down to our children.

He paused, thought for a moment, and replied, “To be honest, this is the place I feel least foreign.” He went on to talk about the places he had lived in, and how no matter how close he was with his friends there, a certain element of alienation existed. He added, “at some point in my life I made a choice. I chose that Singapore would be the place; that I could make a difference here, however large or small.”

That moment of clarity rang true for me. So many of us wander through life looking for the perfect home, the perfect partner, the perfect life — without realising that perfection is a quest in motion, not an end state. And that the quest begins only when we commit ourselves to it.

Today marks the 12 year of this blog. I remember the date because 12 years ago, on February 13th, Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I had the fever of my life coupled with back spasms and thought I was going to die. It was then I decided to crawl to my desk and on to my chair, learn HTML and started this blog. Everyone in the dormitory had gone home for the holiday, and the blog was a means to reach out to my family many, many miles away. It was meant to add a trace of permanence should the fever claim my life that day.

I lived. And continued writing. And now, reading my old posts, I realise that many things have changed since, and I am thankful to have chronicled them. Starting a family with the most beautiful girl in the world; the birth of our two amazing children; the death of a close friend; many wonderful people I have had the privilege of knowing when the online community was small, only to have the years pull them into the stampeding crowd of Facebook profiles.

I am thankful to have written. I am thankful to still be writing. It was a choice I made, lying at what I thought was death’s door, though now looking back in retrospect I do not know whether to laugh at my adolescent penchant for over-dramatising everything, or the fact I turned to HTML for Dummies in my time of need.

My post for this Valentine’s Day has to do with choices. Not so much about debating which choice is right, but that at some point in our lives, we need to stop running away, stop hedging our bets, and commit.

Make the moments count.

“Between optimist and pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist the hole!”

There’s that, and the old cliché of half-filled or half-emptied glasses. The whole idea revolves around the power of changing one’s perspective.

Friends who’ve been following the photos of my commute to and from work have always commented that I live a pretty amazing life. In typical Singaporean fashion I’m quick to discount how wonderful it is, but I realise my mistake: rather than showing them how similarly empty my glass is when compared to theirs, I ought to be pointing out to the jug of water on the table, and how we have the power to fill those darn glasses.

Leaving home for work an hour earlier means I get the chance to put in a little bit of a detour from the daily commute. Sometimes I’d get off the train a couple of stations early and walk the rest of the way; other days I’d hop on my bike and ride in to work. And to be really frank, these moments see me through some of the tougher days.

Discovering an entire field of morning glory really helped me during a low patch.

And making up my mind to leave work on time, and riding home the long way round after a downpour:

I guess I’ve never really been consciously thankful for the many folks who’ve worked hard on providing such beautiful surroundings, slogging away at the Ministry of National Development, Urban Redevelopment Authority, or National Parks. It’s taken many years of planning and execution to get to this point.

I’ve placed all the photos I’ve taken while going to and from work under a Creative Commons license, which essentially means anyone can use it for non-commercial purposes so long they leave proper attribution. That’s my small contribution to helping all of you out there realise what we have here. It’s the very least I could do.

There’s a chronology of sorts: the photos of the carefree student at the turn of the millennium; the portfolio work of a starting professional photographer; photos of our new home, then unfurnished and unrenovated; the births of our two children; and the many, many weddings of friends over the years.

Youth doesn’t seem that long ago, but my Sunday School students remind me that time has flown silently past. They joke about how old I am. They’ve grown up in a world that always had mobile phones, while I reminisce about pagers and the alpha-numeric acrobatics we had to perform to send messages. 07734…stuff like that.

During my carefree student days when I first got serious about photography, I chased after every storm because I was madly in love with the dramatic contrast they provided. Tucson skies were mostly clear and cloudless, so storm clouds added much needed texture to the wide open sky.

Now more than a decade removed, I found myself sitting in my study this afternoon, finally getting some alone time after having spent the earlier part of the day taking care of the kids. The thunderstorm outside was just subsiding and the evening sun shone bright - perfect conditions for a rainbow.

Sure enough, my Facebook feed started filling up with rainbow sightings (quite a number of double rainbow photos too). The photographer in me stirred, so I did my duty and looked outside the various windows in the house and realised our house was facing the wrong direction. So I headed back to my study to chill. I left those days of chasing storms and sunsets behind me.

I feel old.

Faith comes into the study all excited about the possibility of seeing the same rainbow, and to be honest, her suggestion that I go downstairs to take a photo of it felt a lot like an extra chore, but I grabbed my camera and put on my sandals. Then I held her hand and we stepped outside.

It felt like an adventure.

When we ran to the bend in the road and spotted the rainbow we literally squealed with delight. She whipped out her phone, but I kept running to the vantage point I knew I’d get more sky. And as I ran, those steps felt so familiar, and a decade melted away. The golden setting sun, the dark clouds, the slight drizzle, and the beautiful arc of a rainbow that hung so gloriously in the sky.

I stood there, young and carefree again.

The rainbow eventually lost its glow and faded, and I crossed the street back to my wife who was waiting for me. As I crossed the street the years came back: the whole stream of photographs of all the memories we’ve collected along the way. I held her hand, so very thankful that she shook me out of lethargy for a trip back in time.

It was nice to know that Faith brings out the original person in me. The person I was when we first got together two decades ago. The writer, the photographer, the dreamer.

My best partner, my friend and my love. I could ask for no better companion. I could not have asked for a better journey thus far.

My wife, caught off-guard, gave what I thought was a decent answer. “Daddy is a good man who loves God very much. He’s a good leader of the family.”

Anne: “…but I thought you were the leader of the family.”

-_-‘

When Anne used our bathroom two nights ago, she used the last scrap of toilet paper on a used roll, when the rest of us adults had already moved on to a brand new roll. When she was done, she picked up the toilet roll core and laughed aloud with glee — she now had another to add to her huge collection of handmade toys.

Her table is strewn with them: used toilet rolls fashioned into binoculars and telescopes; old Yakult bottles carefully painted over and decorated, each holding a different prize she placed in them; used pieces of cardboard formed into a treasure chest, complete with sticky tape hinges and a rounded cover. She lives in this bohemian paradise created by her own two hands, a pair of scissors and her unlimited imagination.

This very moment of reflection has me a little embarrassed to find myself struggling with a depleted sense of self-worth. I find myself wanting things I don’t need, whether it is a condominium so the kids can go swimming whenever they like, or a car that’ll open up new places and adventures for us. The fact that I can’t quite afford these things gets to me a little, and I sometimes wonder if all this “serving the people” kool-aid that I’ve been feeding myself to a life spent in public service will eventually leave me bitter.

It is also in these moments God speaks to me through my children, reminding me that joy is not found in possessing things, but in creating things. Creating things that make others happy, creating things that communicate beauty and goodness. Creating things, whether words or music, photographs or living memories that fill the moment with such abundance brings true happiness. Coming back to where it all begins — to the Creator — and being thankful not just for the things we have, but for the things we can share.

To see her tears flow down her cheeks as she sobbed, recounting in mortal fear how the Primary One level manager told the kids that they had to learn the National Anthem at home or they wouldn’t be allowed to join in the flag lowering ceremony at the end of the school day, or how the same manager threatened the children with detention after school if they didn’t keep quiet, opened old wounds for me.

Like many of my very closest peers, the Singapore education system was a bad fit for me. I spent years — a whole decade, now when I come to think of it — dreading school. There were only a half a handful of teachers who understood that I never did homework not because I was lazy, but because handwriting was painful and extremely tedious for me. The production of homework into written form seriously impeded the speed of my learning.

Anne, at the young age of 6, has had to face so many new mental constructs the past few days. Where at home Faith and I try our best to ensure she is given real reasons behind our decisions, it is unlikely she’ll have that luxury in an education system designed for mass-production of compliant students. For example, at a very young age, Anne was given a lollipop. She came to us asking for permission to eat it. We gave her our permission but told her that lollipops weren’t very good for the body. Much as she wanted it, she walked over to the trash-bin and threw it away.

Now in school, she will be told to do many things, without reasons explicitly communicated because it is not expedient to do so when catering to hundreds at a time. She will be told to obey, “because it is the way it is”, or “because I said so”, and I secretly hope she won’t until she gets a good reason. We will need to teach her how to derive good reasons through observation, and not expect it to always be spoon-fed to her. There is so much we will need to teach her as parents, but we also need to keep an eye on the school system and what it teaches, and whether those things build her up, or tear her down.

Whether it is the stuff we face as individuals: mid-life crises, trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance, a prioritisation of the material and the intangible; or the issues we face as nations: a shift in population demographics towards an increasingly ageing population, the rising cost of healthcare on national coffers, corporate greed; there is a certain puzzling characteristic about these “#firstworldproblems”.

They feel so inane at times, especially when compared to the challenges faced by developing countries. Challenges such as famine, war or poverty, which have plagued us since the dawn of creation. First-world problems seem unique to our time, yet are similar to third-world problems in that they are fundamentally driven by the same primeval forces of self-interest and greed.

What makes most first-world problems feel unique is the adjustment we have had to make because of a significant shift in our perception of time.

One of the key changes that has contributed to the uniqueness of our situation is the dramatic increase in life expectancy. We have never had so many people live such long lives. Traditional career spans may no longer yield sufficient savings to tide one through an extended retirement period, and then there’s the issue of healthcare…

The undeniable fact is that we now have more time.

On the converse side, we are increasing the speed at which we live our lives. We demand faster promotions as we climb the corporate ladder. We have an endless barrage of information and data fed to us through multiple channels and devices. We want to get to the good life earlier in our lifetimes than the generations that have preceded us.

So on one hand, better healthcare has given us more time, and on the other hand, the demands of city life have compressed time, enabling us to reach desired standards of living earlier, achieving more in a shorter time when compared to our predecessors.

What have we done with all that extra time saved?

Do we pursue ever-increasing standards of living, filling our lives with more material things, only to feel enslaved to work longer in order to fuel the demands of a high-maintenance life, fearing that life itself will stretch beyond our means?

Or do we live more frugal lives, investing the excess time in charity, or solving the problems of developing nations?

There have been recent discussions about how privileged first-world inhabitants should not arrogantly portray ourselves as saviours of those living in the third-world. I was initially a little apprehensive at condoning a slowdown in efforts to tackle issues faced by millions who live in developing countries, but a little introspection revealed to me where those authors were hinting at.

Maybe the developing countries aren’t the only ones in need.

Maybe we are the impoverished. Maybe we are the ones who are starving. Maybe, just maybe, we are the ones in need of saving, for surely we have, in our quest to evade physical death, lost our grasp on the value of life. We have forgotten the joys of parenthood and the warmth of family. In the first-world, we speak more often about “the cost of raising a child” than the intrinsic rightness of having children. We no longer revere our aged as wise and deserving of respect, but bemoan the fact they are no longer economically productive and are a “burden”.

We have gained the most precious thing in all the world: time, and we have absolutely no idea what to do with it except complain.

The battle, enshrined in Kennedy’s famous words, “against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself” is a rallying cry for us to help our brethren in need. But we enter the fray not because we are saviours heaven-sent, but because it is in this same battle we put to action our convictions; where we stave off a first-world amnesia and rediscover the important things in life, restoring the sanctity of time with a life well-lived.

Like many others of my generation, we were brought up by English-speaking parents. Learning the Chinese language was a daily travail that plagued our educational journey. Looking back at how I struggled to pass the language year after year in school, it would only be logical to assume that I’d grow to hate my mother-tongue. It was only after spending many years in a bilingual church that I’ve come to fear the Chinese language less.

But this night would give me pause. As I stood alone in the crowd, conversations streamed about me in extremely fluent Mandarin. I found a seat in a corner, sat myself down and pretended to have an engaging conversation with my mobile phone.

It might have been the fengshui of that particular corner in the auditorium - a group of English-speaking folks sat around me. Paul Rozario from the Arts House introduced himself and sat beside me.

The event began. Speaker after speaker went on stage, delivering their speeches in Mandarin. They recounted their relationships with Claire, the person she was, and the amazing life she led.

What was fascinating was that I found myself translating the speeches to Paul. It just came so naturally. I wasn’t about to let someone sit through an entire event without enjoying these testimonies of Claire’s younger days, or the accounts of Claire’s children. As I translated I found myself enthralled by the beauty of the Chinese language when wielded fluently. Trying to retain that beauty while translating, while no mean feat, was a challenge I intellectually relished.

Paul’s appreciation of the intricate Chinese expressions (however callously mutilated by my substandard translating) touched my heart — this is the Singapore I want my children to inherit. A place where we can be proud of our ethnic identities, express them openly and share them freely with others. A place where we can have access to the richness of other cultures and be made better through the appreciation of the unique and the realisation of the common.

As I walked home after the event, it dawned on me that while I was translating cross-culturally, Claire’s speech and her book was an effort to communicate the values of her generation to mine; showing us that attributes like truth, virtue and beauty are timeless, and that more of us ought to be protecting these treasures against an increasingly mercenary and selfish mindset.

Petulance.

Some weeks ago I headed down to the basketball courts for a decent evening’s workout, but found the community centre transformed beyond recognition. Though these two basketball courts were well frequented by teenagers who lived in the east, I wasn’t prepared to see a whole carnival of around 50 Filipino men playing full-court basketball on both courts.

A wave of heated emotion ran over me, and I let my temper simmer within me.

“Our community centre got overrun”, I thought to myself. Many other ugly thoughts clouded my mind, most of them revolving around having a country which I paid for in time (national service) and taxes forcibly taken away from me by a swarm of locusts who were using my home as a stepping stone to a better life…yadda yadda yadda.

I felt like gatecrashing - just standing at the rim and shooting my basketball without caring about whether these Filipinos were in the middle of their game. Heck, I’m a true-blooded Singaporean; surely I deserved that right.

I sulked for quite a while, before a few of the Filipino men called out to me and asked me to play with them on the next team. I accepted the invitation, bitter taste still lingering in my mouth.

It only took a few minutes before we were passing the ball around, engaged in the pretty universal dance that basketball is. We were laughing at each other’s misses and high-fiving when a good play was executed well. And I began to remember how different we are, compared to them.

It’s an odd thing, because you’d assume that when I was done sulking, I’d have this whole revelation about how we’re all one, kumbayah sorta thing. But when you’re really in the zone, you realise that harmony is not achieved through enforcing uniformity, but through the celebration of diversity. Through the course of our game, I learned how warm the Filipinos are as a people; how seriously they take their basketball, but also how they prize the playing of the game over its outcome.

I learned that I have much to learn from them.

It would be a mistake to expect the different cultures within Singapore to assimilate into one singular identity and erase the diversity that has made us strong. We ought to forge a home where we can accept others for who they are, and expect the same kindness and freedom to be reciprocated unto us.