Basket.

Monday, May 1st

The MRT train glided along the rails towards its inevitable destination, me a passenger heading to serve out another week of my mandatory conscription term. Harsh white light bore down upon me and my fellow commuters, headed to various inscrutable locations.

If there is something I have noticed about the light from fluorescent tubes, it is that it makes everybody look pale, malnourished and just plain weary.

The Mass Rapid Transit system. Fast, clean, safe and convenient. Much-trumpeted symbol of state efficiency. The answer to absolutely all your problems. And yet no one ever looks genuiely happy riding it. Maybe it's the lighting. Maybe it is the sterile green polished seats. Maybe because it takes them where they do not want to go.

Wait a minute... sterile, fast, clean, safe? Weary too? What a perfect symbol for the state. Clean but lifeless. Fast but too quick to leave behind the slow. Safe in a steel grip. Efficient but weary. "Something is rotten in..."

I look through the rain-streaked windows. Wet streets glisten and drenched election posters hang limply from lampposts. The pavements, shrouded in shadow, show no signs of life. It is a blustery night after all, Shakespeare's "most pleasing night for honest men", and most of the populace would rather curl up in front of their television sets with hot drink in hand. With Polling Day a mere five days away, they will be doubtlessly swallowing the propaganda all the various parties deign to feed them. Not that regular programming is much better.

It is May Day, supposedly a day for the workers. It is a public holiday - unfortunately, it is not much else. With the idea of a welfare state decisively vetoed by a young government, there is little to ensure that the needy, the out-of-work and the simply desperate get what they require just to survive. We cannot have the people develop a "crutch mentality", can we? It would be absolutely unacceptable. As such, there is no minimum wage, there are no unemployment benefits and the cost of public transport, upon which millions depend daily, is set to rise annually. The government declares May Day a public holiday and celebrates with pomp the achievements and contributions of the workers, yet stabs them in the back even as it smiles. Well, I suppose that if you want to rule with an iron fist, make sure to conceal it within a glove of velvet.

The train reaches my station. It is time to get off. As I step out into the night, a smiling Prime Minister waves at me from a poster. "Staying Together/Moving Ahead", the poster proudly declares. You know what they say about politicians and lies.

I start off for camp, bareheaded in the rain.