Basket.

Ever finish an entire novel in one day? Well, I did, yesterday. That's the trouble with specialised occupations sometimes.

In any case, I've become an office drone, a cubicle-dweller of the sort mocked in Dilbert. With a stupid green uniform and without the instant coffee. Excellent preparation for a corporate career I am totally disinterested in, because I do literally sit in a cubicle with a desk, a computer and a real live filing cabinet, which my much neater predecessor left behind in a fantastic state but which I am beginning to stamp my disorganised mark upon.

I do wonder how the administrative arm (though I think "tentacles" is a more apt description) of the SAF rates for efficiency. Imagine trying to run a company where all your junior employees are in it against their will, are disinterested in the motivations and aims of the organisation and are being paid a fraction of a pittance for their labours to boot. Let's not even go talking about profit; it can't be easy to get a lot out of these people. It makes one wonder what, exactly, are the motivations of people like us - is it fear of punishment, sheer boredom, a sense of duty and responsibility or simply because we enjoy it?

But I guess that when you have billions in taxpayer money, all this doesn't much matter.

Maybe that's what's so soulless about Singapore; we don't often care much about why exactly we are doing something - we do it because someone said we had to. We don't try to understand how something might be beneficial or harmful, or why exactly it must be done; we just have a go at it and either ask questions later or don't at all. Sometimes, if we do ask, answers are not forthcoming (to put it lightly). "But this makes zero sense..." "Well, you know what, fuck it, we have to do it." That little exchange can describe our whole system, from education to National Service to beyond. There are just too many things we cannot comprehend the justification for but we do anyway (Project Work readily coming to mind).

I think it breeds a fatalistic, resigned attitude among a lot of us. The idea that one's own fate is completely out of one's hands. Because we do things we find silly simply because it is required of us, and if the effects turn out to be detrimental, there is not a lot we can do about it but live with it.

Apathy may also be another side effect; that famous Singaporean apathy towards current affairs and pertinent issues. We have no control anyway, right? Actually, I do think it's right. We can't make a difference, the claptrap that the Feedback Unit wants to feed us notwithstanding.

Take, for instance, the news that Singapore was ranked 140 out of 167 countries for freedom of the press, below Sudan and Russia (but still above such bastions of liberty as China, Iraq and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea). No one from the public cared, or so it seems. I certainly saw no letters about it in the ST Forum. But that may not be people not caring, because the ST Forum is rather... discerning about which letters it chooses to publish.

This can illustrate several points: a) The Singapore public really does not care, because as usual this is not something we can affect, or b) People cared, but the Straits Times, living fully up to the ranking, declined to publish their writings, or c) This really isn't a pertinent issue, and those Western imperialists can go screw themselves.

So we can choose between apathy, dictatorship or xenophobia. Great, isn't it.

Not that a population that will keep their heads bowed and put up with everything that comes their way isn't a good thing. It makes for remarkable efficiency and hardiness. But then they want us to be creative as well. I think that's a little too much to ask.