Still vividly remember the slogan Garden in a City or City in a Garden. It is a nice cliché, sounds nice and meaning nice. What about a 3rd World in a 1st World City or a 1st World in a 3rd World City? Whichever way you look at it, it sure sounds just as nice. And it does not give one a sense of drama.
Is Sin City now a 3rd World City or is there a 3rd World in Sin City? The recent happenings that filled the pages of the media do not give the impression that it is a 1st World City. With a population of 5.4m of which more than a third came from the 3rd World, the composition will ensure that the visual impact is not going to be 1st World. Just hop onto a train and you will instantly be hit by the presence of 3rd World. The noise, the smell, the mannerism, and ungraceful and uncouth attitude speak all of 3rd World. There is no denying this truth.
What else are on the media? Street rioting with rioters throwing stones and bottles at the police, and cars burning? This is definitely 3rd World stuff. Unruly mobs in the tens or hundreds of thousands, all straying aimlessly, eating, drinking, urinating and shitting in the very same place. Confirmed, 3rd World. Open your windows for a whiff of the scented air, better than haze.
How about the bizarre, headless and limpless body floating in the canal in the heart of the city? This must be one notch better than floating pigs in the river, or floating body in the water tank flowing into the homes for consumption.
What about jilted lovers slashing their potential ‘bribes to be’ in broad day light? What about daylight robbery? Road rages where people got beaten up, especially taxi drivers? And there is a booming red light district that is growing and expanding across the island, even into the heartland. Good stuff for the GDP.
And there are drunken brawls for the sake of vibrancy and fun with innocents being bashed for no reasons. Women being rudely accosted in public by the drunkards? And tropical diseases are spreading in the most expensive part of the city cause by mosquito breedings.
Welcome to the 3rd World in a 1st World City or a 1st World in a 3rd World City. How about a new slogan for the tourist board, ‘Welcome to experience the 1st World and 3rd World in one stop’? Or better still, ‘See the 1st World cohabitating in harmony with the 3rd World’ and witness how 3rd World commits less crime than 1st World. Or see how the 3rd World is helping the 1st World by creating good jobs for the 1st World.
Sin City is getting more attractive, more exotic and full of surprises.
Chua Cihn Leng AKA RedBean
*The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com/