It's the Lunar Seventh Month. The advent of the Hungry Ghost Festival, here in Singapore. It seems to be so indigenous to this region that even Wiki has very little to say about it. A drawn-out, bitter explaination can be found here.
In short, during the Hungry Ghost Festival, the gates of hell open and creepy dead spirits that are of course conveniently invisible wander the earth. Among them somewhere are your dead relatives, who no matter how often or how far you move, will know where you live. They stalk you on Facebook, you see. So you have to put food out and burn stuff for them. And also, hold concerts that are very loud and annoying downstairs of the block so you can piss off the non-Chinese.
But no, this will be short. Angry ranty bits get me going quite a bit, but I'm sick of being the dude standing around going RARGH ARGH YOUR MOM. I think, here, I will just point out little things I've noticed, and leave you to draw your own conclusions.
I just found it interesting that the calendars finally caught up. 45 years ago, we held our first National Day parade on 9 August. And it was depressing. Everyone was in a mixed frame of mind, because we actually gave a shit about politics in Singapore back then. And it rained. And I think everyone stood without an umbrella during the national anthem, except for one sick MP who had an umbrella. It was all very touching and Les Miserables like that. But as the song goes, "There was a time when shit seemed too much to bear and we should all go back to China and stop trying to make it here...but we deeeeeeeeeeed."
Now, 45 years later, at the height of the Our-Government-Gets-Paid-HOW-much??? drama, we have our National Day parade. The little box in the stands that's our government, mouthing their way through the anthem? That's something like three trillion dollars a year, right there. Ok, I don't know my figures and I don't want to get arrested. It may be forty-five trillion.
And the very next day, the gates of hell open. Coincidence? Maybe.
...or IS IT?
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