THE CITIZEN

I wake up with the remains of a horrible dream lingering in my head. Flashes of curry puffs, PAP officials dancing awkwardly to Jay Chou, domestic helpers wielding samurai swords, slicing their way across Geylang, the Marina Bay Sands Towers overrun with the pink vines of communism, distributing aphrodisiac seeds across the bay, into the water supply, into the HDB flats of the people, government enforced procreation in bloom. The females conceiving without sex, the males thrusting forward into fluorescent limelight, leaning into a dystopia of productivity. And all of us, citizens in isolation -- crowded in lifts, lobbies, paper bags, our breath and stink and smoke infusing into each other’s lungs, but none of us emotionally nor physically closer except for a collective vision of a grey future; a cold, artificial, machine-led mind-meld crawling its way South from the mongolian plains.

And walking on the edge of the horizon, sunset silhouetting their corporeal forms, the gang of four led by a mysterious cigarette smoking man, that distinctive green glow pulsing at the end of a cigarette holder, smoke rising to join storm clouds that swiftly obliterate the remaining light. 

Whoever takes over the government must have the grit to fight against this future, I think to myself as I switch on the kettle. I retrieve the half-finished can of condensed milk from the fridge and, with the other hand, unhook a damp coffee sock from above the kitchen sink, which I place inside a metal pot sitting on the counter. The Singapore dawn, blue hues creeping into the kitchen and a cool humidity sticking to my skin. In my younger days, this would have warranted a cigarette. Today, I fill the void with kopi, facilitated by the gift of an authentic kopitiam sock gifted by an aunt -- whom has since stopped speaking to me out of disappointment. Little did she know of my legacy-to-come... if the government’s cronies don’t reach me first.

I pour the boiling water into the sock and pull the coffee out repeatedly as the fragrance permeates across the flat. Satisfied, I use a teaspoon to pick out a dollop of condensed milk and drop it into a glass mug, whereupon I pour the coffee over the sweet liquid. Through the mug, a layer of white sitting below a slowly whitening mixture of coffee and milk -- today’s, tomorrow’s and the week’s artwork, the unexpected gifts of a fading colonial power and a sugar-addicted native population. I stir the mixture further, and amble my way to a tall stool placed alongside the kitchen window, watching the early morning blue fade to the characterless grey and white of the urban tropics, the estate coming alive with the garish yellow of the flats, the playground with the rubber flooring letting go of the morning dew, and the heartlanders on their morning jogs, stretches and tai chi. 

Joanne is still sleeping by the time I head out for work. I plant a soft kiss on her forehead before I leave and, grabbing my backpack, make my way to Braddell, ready to face the tribulations of the day. 

At work, I face the hostile faces of all the women in the office, and in the centre of them all, Robert Sebastian Cheong, his eyes impassive behind rimless glasses, no doubt purchased at a pretty penny from one of the more upmarket opticians in the country. No Nanyang Optical for him, oh no, he only deals with top quality. Or perhaps he procured them from some boutique shop in New York which, of course, he would tell his many female admirers in SPH, for them to gossip and swoon and fantasise about on their weekly trips to Botak Jones. Because every Singaporean woman was made to live in New York. 

I sit down, and begin to type out a story on a mass durian theft in Sims Avenue. And beneath the steady clicking of the keyboard, the shuffling of papers across the room, and the whispering from the girls to my left, I hear the soft thump of expensive shoes making their way to my desk. It’s Robert Sebastian Cheong (who else would it be?). He asks me if I want to join him for lunch.

To join Robert Sebastian Cheong for lunch...does he not know that I’m the reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew? I inwardly chuckle to myself, and then, putting on a frown and looking out the window, say that I’ll get back to him once I’ve finished my work. His voice, completely undeterred by my condescension, chimes back positively, and I hear his footsteps recede away to his corner of the room. 

“I’m concerned about you,” he says, as if he’d become my manager and my morale had suddenly become a KPI for him. We’re sitting at Botak Jones. I’m having fish and chips. And he’s having hor fun. His hair, perfectly styled. His skin, glossy. And his clothes, a small dark spot neat the centre of his chest, the beginnings of a sweat stain. For me, I can feel the wetness radiating out from my armpits, so I’m just keeping my arms clamped down by my sides. 

“What’s wrong?” I say.

“You’ve looked very stressed lately, and don’t tell them that you know they told me this, but my girls tell me you haven’t been working on very much,” he brings a dollop of hor fun up to his lips, gravy dripping onto the plate, “it just feels like you need some help.”

“What possible help could I need?” I snap back. I’m staring at those despicable lips dripping in egg gravy. Robert Sebastian Cheong, have you never eaten noodles before? 

I say, “Maybe you should keep your lips to yourself!”

I say, “Maybe I’ve got shit to work on!”

I say, “Why don’t you hang out with ‘your’ girls instead of bothering me all the time?”

“Look, bro,” he replies in his perfect received pronunciation, a nervous smile framed by egg gravy, “you don’t have to get upset. I’m genuinely trying to help here.”

“Well, I don’t need your help, nor your girls, nor your concern or your compromised soul!” I yell back. 

“You don’t have to shout, it’s very immature,” he snaps back. 

“Who’s the one shouting at me,” I hiss, “it looks like you’re the one who’s immature.”

He frowns, returning to eating his hor fun ineptly. 

After some time, he says, “You know, I only wanted to help you. I know what it’s like to lose control of your life to work.”

I stare back at him. What game is he playing at? 

“Don’t try to relate to me,” I say, “you’re nothing like me. You’re just another government scholar trained by the elite to pretend to care, but I know you. You’re just like everyone else -- some automaton carrying out the government’s wishes. The only difference between you and the other drone on the street is that you think you worked for it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just another soulless citizen with a life planned out ahead of you, all the machinery of the powers-that-be seducing you to compliance. Your money, your status, your chineseness; a spreadsheet to the machine.”

He looks hurt. He glares at me like I’m crazy. I chuckle to myself. I know I’m right. 

“What makes you think that you’re not programmed with a future? The pre-determined life...it’s all of us. Maybe we just live with what we have.”

“I’m not pre-determined by a bunch of pencil pusher deities in the Singapore government. By a social regime policed by an educational system that has manipulated an entire population by economic success and, for you, ‘academic’ excellence.”

“And what are you then? Some free man trying to save us all with your miserablism?” he shoots back. 

I want to tell him that I’m the reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew. That I am the free person and that he is the pawn, some lousy statistic that I will coerce into self-destruction, for the good of the nation. Instead, I say to him that I am the freest man that he will ever meet.

“How cryptic of you to say so,” he replies, regaining his unsufferable cool, now laced with that Coxford-level irony. Probably a product of a secondary education immersed in the culture of debate. The debate of things of no action and of no consequence. 

He continues, “You think your outcast status precludes you from predeterminism? Do you wear bad shirts and ill-fitting trousers and refuse to speak to us because you’re better? Is your moral superiority granted by your failures?”

I tell him, “My superiority is granted to me by destiny. By the inherent nature of my soul that steps outside of the machinery you’ve so gladly stepped into, fashioning yourself into a gold-plated cog for your governments’ spinelessness, masquerading as so-called-pragmatism.”

“Oh? My government? What government are you under?” 

His sarcasm amuses me. 

“Perhaps I am under the government of god,” I say facetiously, “a much better one than the emptiness of the Prime Minister.”

“Maybe the Prime Minister is god,” he says, matching me and falling into my trap. 

“Then your soul belongs to the mortal and ephemeral.”

I say the last line with satisfaction and a smirk on my face. Refusing to admit defeat, he rolls his eyes, but I know I’ve won. I can tell by the mess of hor fun sitting everywhere outside his plate, and the untouched green chilli wasting away on his plate. The empty headed government scholar can’t even grasp chopsticks, never mind the timelessness of Ideas and Culture. Jiasen Li -- 1; Robert Sebastian Cheong -- 0. 

Abandoning the pretense of politeness, he gets up before I’ve finished my food and drink, straightens his now almost-drenched shirt, the entire chest area now dark with sweat, and leaves.