I can't take it. I've been so angry these days, and there's no outlet. There never has been. I suppose writing helps a bit, but not much. I always think that down the road, I'll become a psychonut - like Jim Carrey's character in Me, Myself and Irene. All my bottled anger will manifest in a split personality, and I'll end up murdering people. Sometimes I can't stand myself; blow up already!
I was walking around Orchard today, and I got so irrationally angry, I scared myself. I can't stand looking at all the Americanised, consumer-deceiving shops and ultra-slim models who probably just eat salad everyday and have never tasted chocolate since they were ten. I can't stand the atrocious prices of coffee and cakes and clothes. I can't stand brand-conscious maniacs. I can't stand people who overdress - do they think Wisma Atria is a catwalk?
I can't stand walking around Orchard itself. It's like the history of this whole place - my home -has been erased completely. To think this is supposed to be tanah melayu. Now, everywhere, it's just swarming with foreign people - those ang mohs and too many Chinese. And hardly a single mark left to show the true heritage of this land. They will keep rebuilding Geylang. The istana has been seized. The old rulers of this land gone. Who's to blame but the people themselves. Nobody fights; absolutely nobody. Everything's just, 'Okay, okay. canlah' right from the time of Raffles. That's the problem, nobody cares; not really. Even me - as soon as I pen all these frustrations down, I'll go back to conforming, to pretending it's all okay.
That it's okay that foreigners keep thinking Singapore is some island off the mainland of China. That it's okay, when I click Singapore as my country in Livejournal, all my font turns to Chinese. That it's okay when you say you're Singaporean in foreign land, they immediately converse in Chinese. That it's okay youngsters are not told the national language of this country is in fact, Malay, and they all wonder why our national anthem is so. Yes, I will go on pretending, that it's okay. That it doesn't make me mad, insulted, violated, made second class. We just keep on pretending and smile. And sooner or later, the true heritage will be gone. And future generations will smile in ignorance.
Let me just say first, for fear that the reader jumps to conclusions and I am labeled a racist, a prejudiced scumbug and all other associated phrases: I am not a Chinese hater. In fact, one could call me a turncoat of sorts, for I have few friends of my kind and numerous best friends who are Chinese. People are people, and I, of all people, detest any sort of discrimination.
Truly, I simply feel wronged. That there should be so little left that once belonged to this country, and that no one is salvaging anything, not really. And that history is slowly but certainly being overwritten. I am not asking for more than just a little respect for the origins of this place; that any misunderstandings of those sort are corrected and the truth not piled over with ignorance and neglect. So that those of us with ancestral roots from this very soil do not feel like a stranger in our own home.
One of the many things that just make me mad.
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