Maybe it's only natural to have an identity crisis in Singapore.

Thankfully, we can adapt, and we soon stop thinking about it.

How hard is it to create a group identity? It seems that any experience common to a bunch of people can create solidarity among them. Geography and politics are only two things that can make a bunch of people feel like they are similar. Having a similar race, history, culture, religion, and belief can also create solidarity among people, and cause them to differentiate themselves from the rest. Self-serving bias helps to create negative stereotypes and alienate the others.

Even a lack of communication between arbitrarily assigned groups of people can create solidarity. The inter-house rivalry, inter-class rivalry, inter-school rivalry, and even inter-platoon rivalry surfaces without any system in place to encourage it.

Singapore is an immigrant country. Creating a national identity is almost like trying to create a house identity - the people in them are only similar in that they happen to be in it. Perhaps, we could learn from the house system how this can be done.

In the case of interhouse rivalry, one way to do it would be to limit communication, distort facts about other houses, and finding ways to delude the members into thinking that they are better than the rest. In our context, it would be suicide.

Another way could be to create a unique experience. I don't know how this can be done, though.

It's not possible. But it is the case.

Why not? There are times when things like these happen.

Yet...I don't understand this world anymore. And I truly believed.

It's just... unnatural...

inconceivable...

yet, outwardly inconsequantial...

Could you have imagined that this would happen?

That someday, sometime, somebody is going to blog about something so vague that you have absolutely no idea what he is referring to.

Still, for a moment, you can't bring yourself to doubt that something terrible has happened to him, because the post sounds so emo.

Like, whatever he's emoing about, I sympathise with him.

But still, at the end of it all, you have no idea what you sympathised about. Or whether there is even anything to sympathise about.

Turns out that all it takes are these symbols to make one feel sympathy. It is amazing how by encoding situations with symbols, and by the fact that we react to situations emotionally, we can in turn illicit emotions with symbols.

Even when you can't decode the situation from the symbols.

This video would have been really cool if I watched it when I was 5. Now it's just hilarious.

Gundam


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Singapore is where you can find people reading "The God Delusion" and "When Dreams Come True(a christian inspirational story collection)" in the same platoon.

Serving/giving extras is a zero-sum game. If the entire SAF gets 7 extras, nothing will change.

In a 3D world, you need 2 people pointing at something to know where they are pointing at. In a 4D world you'll need 3.

The engineer's mine prodder reminds me of Cardcaptor Sakura's wand/mace. The extended mine prodder reminds me of the wand/mace empowered with "The Sword".

Speaking of which, I was reminded of the shopping malls in Brunei. The biggest mall in the capital is called "The Mall". The second biggest mall is called "The Other Mall". The water village is called "The Water Village".

Which again, reminds me of the fact that a naming competition was held for the budget terminal in Changi Airport. The winning prize was $2000 cash and a 3G mobile phone. The winning name was "Budget Terminal", and some secondary school guy was presented the prizes by the Minister of Transport.