(Image: Interactive Installation, Viewer generated image, Korea Media Art Festival 2008, artist unknown)A quick note.
This week, i've seen at least 8 people, older than myself and working state they didn't know what they were doing with their lives.
I feel like there's a little malady in the planet. Its called whiplash and that's made any sort of certainty more difficult. Simply looking at the recssion here: We've been used to stellar growth here in Singapore, and suddenly the GDP hits something like -14% in a quarter and then before we know it its positive 6-9% and back down to 2-4%. If this were an omni-max movie (or IMAX as the Americans call it) we'd all be vomiting our guts out on the floor from nausea. We're not sure where our country is headed.
Whiplash in SMU: well, there was a time when this university graduated 60% finance graduates. There was a time when it was clear that finance was the way to go and how one would be rich and have a good life. You see, in Singapore, we like having a plan, a path, a certainty. Right now, it seems that finance is coming back. But it isn't really certain, what's clear is that the jobs will pay less and will be harder to get. I feel that most people haven't realized that the degree path that they've embarked on may not have the same results that it was supposed to get at the beginning. The plans we can possibly make for our lives, well, have changed from the day i've stepped into university to now. Its going to be an unbelievably long period of slow economic growth. It isn't clear what paths are good going forward. As with this recession, the origins of the next one will be invisible to the man on the street and to people not specialized in that particular area.
Social Whiplash: In Singapore, within 10-20 years, the bulk of the population would have been well educated, the old "hokkien peng (soldiers)" are literally, old. Most Singaporeans have learnt to trust the government, but the Singapore government is arguably the most powerless it has been since the years after independance, we've become the most trade reliant country in the planet, with massive contingent risks on others. The solution to economic woes is to import growth through the ablities of foreign talent in different sectors. However all the industries (this is a developed economy problem it seems) that will bring growth in the next decade, use specific, highly skilled labour in small quantities. Consumers or the general Singapore populace will be hard-pressed to feel the benefits of any growth and will not have the spending to drive the broader economy.
[Integrated Resort notwithstanding, that's of uncertain success]
All in all, only a few of us will be richer, the vast majority of us can count on being poorer or worse off if we're not as good as the migrants/PRs/imported talent (global talent: needed in any city). The home that we live in is going have an unrecognizably different populace (about 40% new Citizens/PRs/temporary residents), an experience akin to our grandparents (1940s-50s) in a Singapore of people still aclimatizing from their different countries than our parents in a "nation-building" (1960s-80s) Singapore. (Population going forward: Indian Indians, China Chinese, Singapore Chinese/Malay/Indian/Others and ALOT of "Others")
We can't even forecast where to place our feet properly. The sources of value in our time are somewhat unknown. I'd argue that it will come from the computer as the tool of our time, and as with all good things in this planet, it'll come with (catastrophic) risks which we hopefully will recover from after a nice recession (as usual, again...). The general trend is that for Singaporeans to make more money, we have to work overseas, to set up lives abroad, while keeping our links to a home that is constantly in flux.
