After a year away from home I find that the most significant thing a Singaporean can do is get away from confusion and criticism.

Over ba chor mee my neighbor was telling my mum how overseas Singaporeans, such as her own daughters, turned off by the pay-to-view online subscription option offered by the Straits Times, choose alternatives like mr brown, and hence acquire a very cynical view of the world back home, if they did not already have one. That is of course short-sighted reasoning, but what's always irritated me is the assumption that everyone in Singapore is cynical about their prospects and do nothing but criticise - and with good reason.

Of course, everything cultural-identity-related here is so obvious, I can be reading an article about fist-flying in Taiwan parliament and then there'll be a "Did you know?" type box in the corner, detailing "Taiwan: Singapore as anti-corruption model" or "Singapore denounces actions of senate member so-and-so." Yes, everything is so obvious, right down to tearing apart Levin's cannot-get-away-from-JCness on Singapore Idol, while I was effusing about how ridiculous it was for Jonathan to sing a line like I think you're so mean / I think we should try with such clinical precision.

But when I was explaining Singapore's semi-turbulent communist history to my professor, he told me about article on Singapore in the New Yorker that talked about how "certain politicians played on the public's fear of unrest and chaos in order to cement their own positions and unfairly suppress loyal democratic opposition", thus encouraging me to "cherish Alfian Sa'at's courage to speak the truth to power". A bit rich, right or not? Easy for him to talk about appreciating criticism, we do that enough; but what about working with it?

In my opinion, like interpreting Bono's idealism as a sign of being removed from the masses, it is of course easier to be optimistic about Singapore when you're not there most of the time. Otherwise it becomes a matter of sinking or swimming, categorizing characters as survivors or victims (Maxine's mother survived, Maxine's aunt lost...) So I thought Alfian held one ferocious flag of survival, but reading the March Life! article Han saved for me, he stopped, hated giving up the medical degree, and can ham it up, the way all poets do. Don't sink, Alfian! And it makes me quite sad lah.