Dinner Music for People Who Aren't Very Hungry

I once heard in church the term Sunday Christians, used to refer to people who were religious only a day a week. On May 6th 2006, I started Holland Village Voice, wanting to help make sure that after the excitement surrounding the elections, online debate about the future of Singapore would continue, to make sure we are not Election Day Singaporeans.

The first format of the blog was novel-esque, a tribute to Kundera's writings about communist Prague. Perhaps it was too unfriendly a format for thinking about Singapore issues, but if you have the time to spare, please read the post below, and you will be able to pick up several issues I later wrote as opinion pieces, on media freedom, on how we approach the income disparity, on Thai-Singapore relations etc.

As always, thanks for reading, and comments are very welcome.

"Unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous"
"In a free-for-all Internet environment, where there are no rules, political debates could easily degenerate into an unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse flushed with rumours and distortions to mislead and confuse the public."
The Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts (Dr Balaji Sadasivan)

Reference: Singapore Parliament Report on GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNS (Change of laws and regulations on use of Internet and podcasts)

Dinner Music for People Who Aren't Very Hungry
[Fiction]
In May 2006, the Singaporean journalist Tina flipped over the front page of the States Times to face the article she had written. She silently read through it, pursing her lips, trying to read between the parts of the story she didn’t want to write. She despaired whenever her eyes ran over the views she didn’t endorse, but were tacked below her name, her byline.

Thousands of readers judged her over breakfast. Some were disappointed at her because they thought her Ivy League education would have given her an insistence on journalistic integrity. Other sympathized with her, or rather the State, – they understood the need for public order.

Thousands more debated with her in their minds after work. They knew that news was best consumed fresh, but the MRT ride home was the only time they could spare. Some were young, but clearly not apathetic. They had a $1.20 nasi lemak for breakfast, and ate lunch at the desk, but weren’t very hungry for dinner. They weren’t hungry for million-dollar political handouts either. Jazz music oozed from their iPod buds. Those dangerous syncopations and unreliable beats that they loved as nourishment, unlike the unhealthy dose of controlled news.

One of them, Ian, crushed the newspaper in anger. He didn’t need anyone to tell him how to think. Not another arrogant politician. He likes Thailand, and has many Thai friends who misinterpret his country as snobbish. Wedging his hand into his slim briefcase, he fished out Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. In the background, a woman in her late thirties was boasting how stealthy she was in taping all her fingers to mask her fingerprints. Now no one would know she had voted for the opposition. He smirked – each vote was identifiable by the voter by details printed on the envelope.

He returned to reading, and took a sharp breath reading Kundera’s line “The constitution did indeed guarantee freedom of speech, but the laws punished anything that could be considered an attack on state security.” His blog had been previously quoted a local tabloid article dealing with a sensitive political issue. He looked up as the MRT pulled into Aljunied station. On the platform he saw an old ah ma struggling with a makeshift trolley bursting with collected cardboard, and in the glass he saw his disheveled self. He sighed and wished Tina fought for the ah ma.