新加坡

I was glad to read in this newspaper recently that nostalgia is good for the soul, for I can tell you I gorge on it as much as I can during our yearly visits back to Singapore.新蒲崗迷你倉This time around, we were too busy with other obligations to have much time for pleasure, but it takes very little to tickle the emotional memory muscle, as it were.A drive past neighbourhoods where we lived, the smell of a storm in the air, and even the sight of fern-covered raintrees on Holland Road all make me smile.This time, since we were here for National Day for the first time in five years, I even dragged my family down to Bay East Garden on Tanjong Rhu for a view of the fireworks. I wanted to recapture the thrill we had felt in attending the parade once or twice years before.It sounded good in theory but the arduousness of getting in and out to watch a rather brief pyrotechnic show from some distance away did not make it one of our finer moments. Oh, so that's why no one else who lives here met my idea with enthusiasm or agreed to come along.These personal journeys down memory lane are part and parcel of any home- coming, but they can seem particularly poignant here, given the pace of change.I have a dream of Singapore that jars with reality a little more each time I come back.With change being the only certainty, I sometimes ask myself if a place could change so much that I would stop recognising it as home. I don't mean just the way it looks, but also the way it walks and talks, and feels and smells. Would I always identify with this country's dreams and aspirations? Or would it one day become the place I once called home that I now visit for the people I love?Maybe both of us have changed.In the last few years, the mood has felt different, darkening over the fraying of the social compact. Time was, if you worked hard and kept the faith, you could earn enough to buy a house, save for retirement, and hand down a better life to your children.When did the gap between top and bottom widen, anmini storage salaries stop keeping pace with costs, so that the better life you worked so hard for was slipping out of reach?I'm not even talking about Singapore. This is the anguish being expressed in America today. Is the dream over?The promise of the new world was that everyone had the same shot. If you had drive and ability, you could make it. It didn't matter who your parents were, how much money you were born with, or what doors were open to you from the start.It didn't even matter if this were true or not. As an essential part of the national ethos, the myth of the American dream exerted a powerful force, firing imaginations and nurturing hope.Sadly, it is apparent now that unbridled capitalism steps over the many to elevate the few. It took the recession of 2009 to expose the shaky foundations of an outwardly affluent society.But I do not doubt that America with its ne'er-say-die culture of self-reliance will find its way out of the woods.What about Singapore? Here, people are worried about the same things: Can they get good jobs, buy a home, afford health care and give their children a better life?This has become harder to do. So while the US President is still trying to convince people to come around to his vision of a new American dream, Singapore has decided that a helping hand is necessary to mitigate the inequalities that result from a profit-oriented economy.I agree, those who need help should get it. But I would also be dismayed to think that we can no longer see past the here and now. That would not be us. After all, this nation is nothing if not an unlikely creation, built through will on a people's dreams of a better future. On that premise, nothing has changed.The right policies can create a secure environment, but everything else, as it always has been, is up to us. What is the good life that we chase? Material security, yes, cohesiveness, tolerance, space to be ourselves? Beyond the hardnosed questions of survival, what is our Singapore dream now?stlife@sph.com.sgself storage