welcome to Dettolville.

I am always, without fail, lamenting to friends about how sanitized Singapore is. Sanitized is one word I overused a little too much but in my truest opinion on our nanny state, 'sanitized' is synonymous with 'Singapore'. Apparently PAP was sponsored by Dettol.

Tourist-y kodaks of Singapore showing the Esplanade irked me, especially on the covers of city guides; or a Chinese opera woman - we are not Hong Kong. I found photos of our CBD skyline a little odd even. The worst of them all is that pseudo legend Merlion. They just don't seem to represent Singapore in one photo. Maybe I should take that back - perhaps they do. They are icons of Singapore, sanitized centrepieces that are there because in a society we need sanitized art houses that could be our answer to the Sydney Opera House, our sanitized landscape isn't completely picturesque without tall buildings, and sometimes a little sanitized folklore always make a country interesting - bingo! Have you heard about a lion seen in the tropics thousands of years ago? But the Chinese opera woman can be found in Hougang actually.

One thing I never had a chance to witness, and I wish to, is how those tall trees miraculously appear seperating road, as though those trees were left deliberately when they cleared the forest to build highways. I supposed it is for the best, environmentally. (How ironic. Well, trees are beneficial for better breathing in urban places.) But the fact that every single detail you see on those model landscape, right down to the trees lined up at equal distances, is exactly how it is in real life, is a little warped.

I think progress is evil. Everybody want to catch up with everybody else, and in the end - in the name of progress, everything else is jeopardised. All the things that were stood for disappear to make way for the agenda of the authority. And some things appear for the sake of appearing because they fear being left behind. So everything ends up the same and then what is the fun in that? What is truly synonymous with the culture of a society doesn't exist anymore. Progress killed the soul.

So can there be a little Soul in Sanitized Singapore? The homeless lurking in the alley, perhaps? Local jazz music besides the Monteiro clan? The mystics of Singapore River? PAP in their sanitized white, er, everything? What truly defines soul?

To have soul, to me, is to be true to yourself and be truly passionate at that. And no two souls are the same.

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For my A Level art piece, I did an installation about the warped perfection (my favourite topic) in Singapore. Propaganda art was my inspiration (read: Mao and Friends.) and HDB flats were used as metaphors. I took photos but I can't find them, which is bad since it is perfect for my portfolio. It was a stylized take on how I saw this country that I grew up in. Sometimes this trait creeps on me unexpectedly, though I've never been one to believe in perfection, let alone strive on it. I supposed this is the (sanitized) soul of Singapore - to be perfect in every sense of the word.