In Continuum.

And they marched down the stairs in their white shirts and their white pants, and the black belts almost made itself look like a stain across the fabric. They were the only group of people who could pull off an all-white wardrobe at a public event, and who would have guessed that they are also some of the oldest people living in the country. They looked oh-so-clean, as if their clothes were washed a hundred times and then bleached a dozen times over. But that is how they appear in the public, and that has been the case ever since the very beginning. They show up in a group usually, in public events when all the gazes and the cameras would be focused upon them. Those white shirts and pants would seem almost glaring under the lights, but they'd only beam brighter with their smiles. To assure the masses that they are on the good side of things, to reassure their the confidence of the people in their powers. You know, their ability to lead, their ability to make decisions, their ability to run this country in the best way they know. They appear in that wardrobe once every year during the same public event, and it is reinforced annually as to who is really in charge of this country. Yes, the Big Brother is still in charge after all these years, and not a single black stain is going to change any of that. 

The week has come to an end, with the assignments completed and the work through and through. I am all ready for the weekend to come, and it's great that the end of the week came in the form of a big colorful splash of vibrant colors. It was a beautiful Friday out with the significant other, which must have contributed somehow to the jolly mood I had when I climbed into the backseat of a cab. I don't usually voluntarily engage in conversations with the cab driver, and that is certainly the case when I am seated at the back of a cab. But today was a little different, as the both of us cruised down the streets of Singapore and discussed about the country, about his job, and about politics. You know how cab drivers are usually, they don't have that many topics to talk about, but they always have so many opinions in regards to everything. The beauty of it all is that they can repeat the same thing ten times a day, and nobody would find it repetitive at all. But he was working a night shift, going for twelve hours without a break, and finding a passenger at night is certainly a very difficult thing to do. Which was why I decided to put away my iPod Touch to have a chat with him on the way home. This cab driver, then, proved to be the inspiration to this entry that you are reading right now. 

This man isn't a cab driver because he is not smart enough to do anything else. He began as a marine engineer who worked on oil rigs all around the world. He had a high paying job and three son to put into college one after the other. He is in the job right now because a freak accident at work caused one of his fingers to be chopped off. So he retreated into the cab driving business, and you can tell in his words that he is in no way a stupid man (save for the fact that he made up a word call "farrest", like furthest). I'm not sure how we started talking about the subject, but I remember myself bringing up the topic of foreign "talents", and he replied with a kind of scoff in his voice in regards to that. He said that it was just a fancy name for the foreign workers, and that even they themselves don't see themselves as being particularly talented. We started speaking about the current employing environment in Singapore, and how the government has been "importing" workers from China to work in low-paying jobs that ordinary Singaporeans could easily be doing. I told him that it was something that I did not understand, and he went on with a theory that got me thinking about just how dark politics could be, if what he said was indeed true. 

You kinda see them everywhere now, don't you. Chinese migrant workers working in every type of jobs, jobs that are usually taken up by Singaporeans. You know, like those jobs in restaurants that used to belong to secondary or junior college students who wanted a quick buck. Or those bus drivers who used to know to direct you to the right bus stop or bus, at least in one common language with the general population of Singapore. Those were the jobs that used to be taken up by Singaporeans, but that isn't the case any longer. Just make a trip down to Choa Chu Kang and you are going to find their malls to be choked with these migrant workers. It all began with just a handful of them settling down here though, the majority of them being brought in because of their cheap labor and stuff, which made sense. I mean, no Singaporeans really wanted to be pushing carts of concrete and bricks all day long under the sun, which is why hiring these people to work at our construction sites made a lot of sense. Then the government started coming up with ideas like "employing foreign talents", to aid our own businesses in our growth. When they mentioned "talents", we all thought that it was referring to high paying executive jobs, and these people were supposed to really help us get through the tougher times with their "talents". 

It doesn't seem to be the case though, and Singaporeans seem to be getting their jobs taken away by these Chinese workers. All the crimes put aside, these Chinese workers - or just foreign workers - are truly causing a lot of problems in Singapore's society. Here we have companies crashing, employees being retrenched, and people losing their jobs despite the fact that they have to raise four children and a wife who doesn't have a job at all. It's strange to think that just recently, SBS employed about two thousand Chinese workers to act as their bus drivers. Think about it, that means two thousand Singaporeans not being able to find a job at all, that is a horrific number considering the relatively small population in Singapore, not to mention the size of the workforce itself. But that is just the buses in Singapore though, and we aren't even going into the service industry yet. Half of every restaurant in Singapore seems to be dominated by Chinese workers, especially the shops in hawker centers and food courts. A bunch of them would be trying to serve you when they cannot speak a single word of English, which really should be the most basic of things when you are in the service industry. Are we asking too much as customers, or is it just basic to have your employees know the most foundational form of communication? 

I used to think that perhaps it is because they are just cheaper to hire, and that is the case for the most part. These Chinese workers are really easy to satisfy, especially with the fact that Singapore does not have a minimum wage law. You know, a law that states that a state has to have a lowest possible pay for all the employees across all professions. Singapore does not have that, which kinda means that foreign workers could be paid at a dirt cheap rate, just as long as it translates to enough money back in their homelands. That is the case for local workers, and it has worked out fine so far. However, the cab driver brought up a very good point when we got off CTE and onto the main streets - what about their offsprings? You know, their children, when they mate and they give birth to little Chinese migrant babies. There isn't anything wrong with that, since we are slowly moving towards a global village, type thing. But considering the number of Chinese workers in Singapore right now, thinking about their offsprings would be rather petrifying to say the least. It isn't about prejudices or discriminations, but the sheer thought of all these migrants taking over the jobs of the locals is just terrifying to behold, in the long term, in my opinion. 

A lot of these migrant workers are getting permanent resident permits, and their children are probably going to be citizens swiftly after. The cab drivers believe that this is just another way the government is keeping themselves in control. You know, the same guys that dress in white all the time when they appear in public events, all smiles and kissing babies. They want to remain in control, and they know that the public is waking up little by little, seeing how things have been deeply controlled and stifled. I mean, we have one single broadcasting company, one single publishing firm where the press needs to be licensed and registered (unheard of in other countries, mind you), and one single party. OK, there is the opposition party, but the disparity between those minority and the majority is so great that they need not be considered. It is like those toothpaste advertisements whereby they tell you that it is able to remove 99.99% of all the germs in your mouth. There is still that 0.01% of germs, but it is so small that people don't usually bother with those numbers - same thing. We have elections with just one candidate, and elections that can be postponed just because "the time isn't right with the economy in a down turn". That just doesn't make any sense to me. 

People are starting to wake up, people are starting to know how it is like. The older generation of Singaporeans know how things have changed, and how the government has been trying to keep themselves in power in the past. The cab driver mentioned about how gatherings in coffee shops at night were illegal, even if you were just talking about soccer with some friends. They didn't want people to come together and come up with a plan to overthrow the government, they wanted total and absolute control. So they pull out the grass by the roots, they stifle any voices and any thoughts of changing things. So they control the press, the media, the education, and everything there is to control in this small small country. But people here knew, they knew, and they learned about the ways of the government over the years. They passed it to their children, and their children passed it to their children, so on and so forth. People only become more awake, people only wake up much faster, and that is where the foreign "talents" come in - fresh blood. It's like a blood transfusion, you know, when you get the bad blood out of your system and you pump in fresh new blood from a different source. Everything is brand new again, and you just love the feeling of brand new, don't you? 

This is what the cab driver said, and it does make some sort of sense. The government doesn't want people to wake up, they want people to remain in a state of semi-comatose. That is, awake enough to go about their everyday lives, but sleepy enough to not go beyond what they are supposed to do. You know, their duties. After all, as Tony Benn has said before about governing, you want your citizens to be as stupid as possible, because a country full of smart people is difficult to govern. But you can't stop people from waking up, because they will eventually. So you bring in these new blood from other countries, people that never really knew about the inner-workings of this country, how everything works on the inside. They get brought into the country, they get working permits and have a steady job for a while. They get granted permanent citizenships, and their offsprings start to sprout from between the legs of mothers all across the country. This is the new blood, people, a whole new generation of people that will not question, that will have complete obedience, a new generation of fresh robots ready to serve, ready to do work. No questions asked, no more waking up, because they are all obliged now, they are all in debt. 

Isn't that the scariest thought in a while for you? At least it is for me, perhaps it is because of the helplessness you can't help but feel, you know, in regards to everything. With all of these running without control, and you are merely a part of this puppet show, being manipulated by the powers at be. Suddenly, it is more than just about employing cheap labor, but another way of the government keeping themselves in power - how brilliant. You select your son to be the prime minister, then you have him in charge of all the money in the country by appointing him the minister of finance. You appoint yourself as the mentor of the minister, so that you keep a watchful eye on whatever that your son is doing. You run a country with just one party, and the same party has been in a monopoly for a long long time, with elections that are better off as being an excuse to waste a lot of paper. He is a very brilliant man, he really is, and this plan must have been set in motion a long long time ago. As successful as this country is, there are things going on up there that we do not fully comprehend. When everything happens only within the family high up, you know that it will never truly be for the good of the people, really. 

"They are all stories", the cab driver continued. "You are better off going to the library than reading newspapers." Everything is filtered, manipulated, censored, edited, corrected, modified, refined, steered, exploited, twisted, examined, re-examined, and then re-edited before you are able to read it in the papers. What you read is what they want you to read, and what they want you to know. This is how they are keeping you suppressed, this is how they are controlling you. They are doing a good job with everything out there, you cannot deny that at all. They have been brilliant, almost too brilliant, and they are good at being brilliant. Yet, you can't help but wonder the day when everything implodes upon itself, when the system no longer works for the masses. But with this plan in place, you know, it doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon. It is a grand plan, a brilliant plan, one that has been planned for a long time, and isn't going to fail anytime soon. It's the way politics work, and you can't blame the nature of it all. But no matter how pure, or how bright everything may seem to be, it all ends up being like the quote underneath the picture that I came up with. The brighter the sun, the darker the shadows, and you know that is the case even in a country like our own. I do hope that I am wrong, but you never know now do you? You just never know, especially when everything seems to be in a dark shade than it used to be.