Any born and bred Singaporean can relate to the movie "Singapore Dreaming". It portrays a realistic aspect of our local life and culture, the dream which everyone in general is chasing, and which any child is brought up to realise the dream.
It is the dream of the 5Cs - car, cash, condominium, country club and credit card. However, as someone said in the movie, most people forget about the sixth C - coffin. It is so true that in the process of chasing the 5Cs, in the end when you lie down in the coffin, everything comes to nought.
The screenplay is by Colin Goh and his wife Woo Yen Yen, together with the famous plastic surgeon Dr Woffles Wu. The show is on a typical heartland Chinese Singaporean family, where sons are favoured over daughters, the patriarch as the sole breadwinner and the matriarch running the household effectively, but always taken for granted and losing touch with the world as a result of raising a family.
The message of the show is on love, materialism and family. The head of the household has worked as a legal clerk for more than thirty years, supporting a family of four (and another family of two, as discovered later on in the show).
He has a daughter who is very capable, both in terms of studies and working life. However, she was not able to further her studies as her parents needed her to help out with the family expenses so they could send her younger brother overseas to study when he flunked out of school.
As a result, she was always being looked down upon by her father for being just a secretary, and her husband was looked down for being a useless insurance agent. Yet she was the one that cared for the family more. She never hesitated to give her parents money whenever her mother asked, just so the money could then be given to her younger brother, who used up his father's and girlfriend's savings to go to Amercia to study but still came back a non-graduate.
Job wise, she was indispensable. Her boss could not function without her. Even when she was in the midst of her father's funeral, her boss called her back to the office just to do some simple administration stuff for him even though any one else could have done it.
Her younger brother took for granted the parents and girlfriend would always be there for him, thus he did not want to look for a serious job and thought of starting his own business. His father promised to give him the money to start the business, but before he even got any money, he started spending on a sports car, incurring the wrath of his girlfriend, who finally left him when she realised he took all her love for granted.
The father dreamt of striking lottery, and he finally won the top prize. All of a sudden, banks gave him credit cards, he was called for a country club membership interview and rose up in society. However, before anything materialised, he suffered a heart attack and died.
Even upon death, his two children fought over his money. HIs wife realised that she gave up her dream of being a singer long ago just to marry him, and in the end realised she knew nothing other than to cook, clean and nag.
So she administered her husband's will, giving S$300,000.00 to her daughter as she really needed the money due to her newly-born child, returned the money spent on her son by his girlfriend, and gave a token to her late husband's mistress and young son, yet giving only S$1,000.00 to her son, and returned to her Malaysian hometown to live out the rest of her life.
Without his father to pay his debts for him, the son ran into huge debts and was being sued for bankruptcy. Even his sports car refused to open on him, and he was livid when he realised that his mother only gave him that amount. His sister was shocked but her husband said that he believed the mother knew exactly what she was doing.
After all these while, she realised the daughter was the one that contributed more to the family, and the son was the one that kept taking and never giving anything, yet taking it all for granted. In my opinion, she did the right thing, as she wanted her son to finally learn a lesson and depend on himself instead of others.
I, for one, can relate to the movie, although he told me that I am "out of class". But the problems faced by any mere heartlander are the same problems faced by anyone, be they staying in a flat or a landed property. We all have to deal with parents' favouritisms, especially for us girls, even more so if we are the elder ones with younger brothers who are always spoilt by the parents.
We, too, are brought up to believe that only with a proper recognised qualification can we rise up in society, become affluent and gain status and recognition by anyone. Which is why people are getting more and more arrogant, thinking the world of themselves and being less tolerant of those who are less educated and in a "lower-class" job.
When we were young, how many times have our parents told us to study hard, and a simple thing like not scoring full marks in a spelling test would trigger beatings and scoldings, being deemed as useless and would grow up in the future to become a road sweeper or rubbish collector?
But what is wrong with a road sweeper or rubbish collector? It is still a job with a decent living, not commiting a crime. And those who can be in these lines are to be admired, since they are willing to take on jobs which most people turn their noses at.
But what the movie said is true. So what if you strike lottery? So what if you can suddenly own a sports car? So what if you can afford a condominium and many credit cards? When you die, everything ends. And the company you slogged for thirty years, after all your hard work, the entire company gives only a condolence fee of S$500.00, and easily hires another one to take over your post.
Even your children fight over your assets when you die. Everything is all about money. If you have no money, you have no status. People see the type of car you drive, the university you graduated from, the schools you come out of. If it is an obscure university which no one has ever heard of, then you will not be able to get a good job.
Employers recognise only Harvard or Stanford, Oxford or Cambridge, University of Sydney or University of Western Australia, National University of Singapore or Nanyang Technological University. If one graduates from a distance-learning course from an overseas university, it will not be recognised, which makes me wonder why are there so many distance-learning degrees in the first place.
Such is the facet of local life, and a very sad one indeed.
It is the dream of the 5Cs - car, cash, condominium, country club and credit card. However, as someone said in the movie, most people forget about the sixth C - coffin. It is so true that in the process of chasing the 5Cs, in the end when you lie down in the coffin, everything comes to nought.
The screenplay is by Colin Goh and his wife Woo Yen Yen, together with the famous plastic surgeon Dr Woffles Wu. The show is on a typical heartland Chinese Singaporean family, where sons are favoured over daughters, the patriarch as the sole breadwinner and the matriarch running the household effectively, but always taken for granted and losing touch with the world as a result of raising a family.
The message of the show is on love, materialism and family. The head of the household has worked as a legal clerk for more than thirty years, supporting a family of four (and another family of two, as discovered later on in the show).
He has a daughter who is very capable, both in terms of studies and working life. However, she was not able to further her studies as her parents needed her to help out with the family expenses so they could send her younger brother overseas to study when he flunked out of school.
As a result, she was always being looked down upon by her father for being just a secretary, and her husband was looked down for being a useless insurance agent. Yet she was the one that cared for the family more. She never hesitated to give her parents money whenever her mother asked, just so the money could then be given to her younger brother, who used up his father's and girlfriend's savings to go to Amercia to study but still came back a non-graduate.
Job wise, she was indispensable. Her boss could not function without her. Even when she was in the midst of her father's funeral, her boss called her back to the office just to do some simple administration stuff for him even though any one else could have done it.
Her younger brother took for granted the parents and girlfriend would always be there for him, thus he did not want to look for a serious job and thought of starting his own business. His father promised to give him the money to start the business, but before he even got any money, he started spending on a sports car, incurring the wrath of his girlfriend, who finally left him when she realised he took all her love for granted.
The father dreamt of striking lottery, and he finally won the top prize. All of a sudden, banks gave him credit cards, he was called for a country club membership interview and rose up in society. However, before anything materialised, he suffered a heart attack and died.
Even upon death, his two children fought over his money. HIs wife realised that she gave up her dream of being a singer long ago just to marry him, and in the end realised she knew nothing other than to cook, clean and nag.
So she administered her husband's will, giving S$300,000.00 to her daughter as she really needed the money due to her newly-born child, returned the money spent on her son by his girlfriend, and gave a token to her late husband's mistress and young son, yet giving only S$1,000.00 to her son, and returned to her Malaysian hometown to live out the rest of her life.
Without his father to pay his debts for him, the son ran into huge debts and was being sued for bankruptcy. Even his sports car refused to open on him, and he was livid when he realised that his mother only gave him that amount. His sister was shocked but her husband said that he believed the mother knew exactly what she was doing.
After all these while, she realised the daughter was the one that contributed more to the family, and the son was the one that kept taking and never giving anything, yet taking it all for granted. In my opinion, she did the right thing, as she wanted her son to finally learn a lesson and depend on himself instead of others.
I, for one, can relate to the movie, although he told me that I am "out of class". But the problems faced by any mere heartlander are the same problems faced by anyone, be they staying in a flat or a landed property. We all have to deal with parents' favouritisms, especially for us girls, even more so if we are the elder ones with younger brothers who are always spoilt by the parents.
We, too, are brought up to believe that only with a proper recognised qualification can we rise up in society, become affluent and gain status and recognition by anyone. Which is why people are getting more and more arrogant, thinking the world of themselves and being less tolerant of those who are less educated and in a "lower-class" job.
When we were young, how many times have our parents told us to study hard, and a simple thing like not scoring full marks in a spelling test would trigger beatings and scoldings, being deemed as useless and would grow up in the future to become a road sweeper or rubbish collector?
But what is wrong with a road sweeper or rubbish collector? It is still a job with a decent living, not commiting a crime. And those who can be in these lines are to be admired, since they are willing to take on jobs which most people turn their noses at.
But what the movie said is true. So what if you strike lottery? So what if you can suddenly own a sports car? So what if you can afford a condominium and many credit cards? When you die, everything ends. And the company you slogged for thirty years, after all your hard work, the entire company gives only a condolence fee of S$500.00, and easily hires another one to take over your post.
Even your children fight over your assets when you die. Everything is all about money. If you have no money, you have no status. People see the type of car you drive, the university you graduated from, the schools you come out of. If it is an obscure university which no one has ever heard of, then you will not be able to get a good job.
Employers recognise only Harvard or Stanford, Oxford or Cambridge, University of Sydney or University of Western Australia, National University of Singapore or Nanyang Technological University. If one graduates from a distance-learning course from an overseas university, it will not be recognised, which makes me wonder why are there so many distance-learning degrees in the first place.
Such is the facet of local life, and a very sad one indeed.
6 comments:
Well, i think to many foreigners Singaporeans are not as wise as them, in the sense that we do not know how to enjoy our life, we spend most of our precious time doing nothing but work and work for the material stuffs or 5Cs ! of course this not all Singaporean are like that, I m talking about majority. Well, personally, I feel that life is short, therefore we should live our life more fruitfully, I perfer more laid-back kind of life rather than rushy everyday kind of life. I agreed that in Singapore if we never work we may end up sleeping in the street or get starve ! But what i am trying to say is we must strike the balance in our life !
Very true, don't do things to the extreme, although I can be very extremist at times where certain things are concerned.
I only saw the trailer, and honestly, I can't really relate. But it does sound like a pretty good show, from the way you have described it. It seems that I am already in a world of my own :P.
Actually I had considered getting an HDB housing, but have now reconsidered. It is not because I "look down" on HDB flat. It is because I find that the way HDB properties are being handled (in its current state) is highly uneconomical. (I just learnt about the forced en-bloc sale thingy) I still need to find out more though.
The older estates may be better, ie bigger space, more convenient areas and cheaper. The newer estates are far away, small in area and yet very overpriced.
Are you sure older estates are cheaper???
I am not sure about the "estates" itself, but older flats should be cheaper due to their shorter lifespan (remaining lease). Not to mention a higher chance for a forced "en-bloc sale".
I was advised that once a flat is 40 years old, it is not going to be worth much to sell anymore.
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