The biggest talk cock essay ever from strait times
From Sunday times
By Ho Kwon Ping
AUG 10, 2059: Citizens poured out into the streets by the thousand last night to celebrate the first centennial anniversary of Singapore's self-rule.
This country of 26 million people - eight million on the tiny island and the rest in a global web of Singapore-managed eco-cities - is also celebrating its 10th year as the richest economy in the world in per capita GNP terms.
Reading a congratulatory message from Mr Mie Gung Hoe - the first Singaporean secretary-general of the World Security Organisation, successor to the now defunct United Nations - the newly elected Prime Minister of Singapore, Ms Sharifah Ibrahim, declared:
'My fellow citizens, we have achieved many recent 'firsts' to celebrate our first 100 years of self-rule. To begin with, as a female Indian Muslim, I am the first non- male, non-Chinese prime minister.' She went on to cite other firsts:
* Singapore Airlines won the first concession to provide scheduled services to the moon.
* Singapore won its fourth Nobel Prize when an A*Star scientist created a 'microclimate microchip' that can be embedded under the skin to create around a person an electromagnetic field with a constant temperature of 22 deg Celsius. The Nobel laureate, the great-grandson of Mr Lee Kuan Yew - who, as it so happens, first mooted this idea whimsically back in 2011 - said: 'My great-granddad would have been so happy to see this dream accomplished.'
* Raffles Girls' Secondary School got into the Guinness Book of Records as the first school in the world to demand that every single student master six foreign languages.
* The world's first intelligible conversation in English between a man and an ape took place last week between a British tourist and Ah Meng III. The Singapore Zoological Institute combined the latest cloning and hot-housing education methods to enable the five-minute conversation on the comparative virtues of the Singapore and English weather.
Ms Ibrahim noted that her own election as Singapore's first non-male, non- Chinese prime minister was a 'first of sorts'. The 45-year-old Indian Muslim, who was previously dean of Singapore Management University's Law School, presides over a rainbow Cabinet containing almost equal numbers of men and women, distributed evenly among Singapore's various ethnic groups.
Her party, the People's Action Party, remains the dominant party 100 years after gaining power in 1959. But it had a scare 10 years ago when it lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament, mainly due to a small splinter party that was established 22 years after Mr Lee Hsien Loong stepped down as prime minister at age 68 in 2020.
Party political differences, though, revolve mainly around socio-cultural, lifestyle issues. There is broad consensus on the big, fundamental issues. For example, a recent survey to name Singapore's most remarkable achievement over the past 100 years found 95.6 per cent citing the ability to remain independent.
Everyone recalled that in 2021 and 2043, Singapore was made a scapegoat of domestic communal tensions in our neighbour across the Bridgeway. The 2021 incident was effectively defused by cool heads in both capitals. But in 2043, the SAF had to be put on alert to keep the peace.
Not a bad record for 100 years of history in a region which remains politically volatile. Thailand's repeated incursions into Malaysian territory in hot pursuit of Thai separatists almost led to war between the two countries in 2036, and Indonesian and Malaysian forces actually had a brief skirmish in 2039 over territorial claims in Kalimantan.
Nevertheless, compulsory national service - a badge of Singapore's sovereignty for almost 100 years - has evolved in the past 50 years. Lasting only 12 months and including women for the past 20 years, national service is focused now mainly on training already highly computer-literate young people to navigate the electronic battlefield. Complemented by a corp of career soldiers, today's military has mastered the art of 5G smart war. And although a declining birth rate has reduced each cohort of eligible young men and women, the decision was made in 2033 to allow Singapore Volunteers Overseas (SVO) as an alternative to military service.
The SVO scheme was devised partly to project our soft power overseas, but mainly to help populate the mini-Singapores set up under the Singapore Space Programme (SSP). A deliberate reference to the joint US, Russian, Chinese and Indian Space Programmes which have since 2020 resulted in a permanent community of scientists on the moon, the SSP officially began in 2025 after Singapore successfully concluded negotiations to lease territory in a neighbouring country.
The SSP has since gained traction. In the past quarter-century, townships in Vietnam and China that began as Singapore-managed industrial parks were converted into long-term leases. 'Eco-cities', which began around 2015 in China with Singapore playing the developer role, are now all leased territories.
The creation of these satellite mini-Singapores in the region and as far afield as Brazil and Kazakhstan has radically changed the definition of Singapore-ness. Nearly 18 million Singapore nationals have either settled in these enclaves overseas or were naturalised while working there.
Ten of the largest Spore GLCs are now ranked among the top 50 Fortune 500 companies. One of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, or GIC, recently started a programme to return 'dividends' to Singaporeans via their CPF accounts. Retiring Singaporeans now account for most of the new home purchases in Switzerland, which formed an arrangement with Singapore whereby the citizens of both countries could enjoy a modified form of dual nationality, and with that, the same rights.
Singapore and its SSP outposts now house the overseas campuses of more than 20 of the world's top 30 universities. Singapore-born scientists have now won four Nobel Prizes in the sciences, while the first Oscar for a Singapore movie came about five years ago, and more recently, the Singapore soccer team made it to the quarter-finals of the World Cup. These accomplishments have at last proven that this is not a nation only of geeks and nerds.
But probably nothing could beat the singular achievement of having the word 'kiasu' being acknowledged just this year by the Wikipedia Global Dictionary as being part of the lingua franca of 53 countries. To celebrate this, the National Kiasu Promotion Movement increased its advertising budget and extended its campaign to promote kiasuism for another three years.
The writer is chairman of the board of trustees of the Singapore Management University. Think-tank is a weekly column rotated among eight leading figure in Singapore's tertiary and research institutions
From Sunday times
By Ho Kwon Ping
AUG 10, 2059: Citizens poured out into the streets by the thousand last night to celebrate the first centennial anniversary of Singapore's self-rule.
This country of 26 million people - eight million on the tiny island and the rest in a global web of Singapore-managed eco-cities - is also celebrating its 10th year as the richest economy in the world in per capita GNP terms.
Reading a congratulatory message from Mr Mie Gung Hoe - the first Singaporean secretary-general of the World Security Organisation, successor to the now defunct United Nations - the newly elected Prime Minister of Singapore, Ms Sharifah Ibrahim, declared:
'My fellow citizens, we have achieved many recent 'firsts' to celebrate our first 100 years of self-rule. To begin with, as a female Indian Muslim, I am the first non- male, non-Chinese prime minister.' She went on to cite other firsts:
* Singapore Airlines won the first concession to provide scheduled services to the moon.
* Singapore won its fourth Nobel Prize when an A*Star scientist created a 'microclimate microchip' that can be embedded under the skin to create around a person an electromagnetic field with a constant temperature of 22 deg Celsius. The Nobel laureate, the great-grandson of Mr Lee Kuan Yew - who, as it so happens, first mooted this idea whimsically back in 2011 - said: 'My great-granddad would have been so happy to see this dream accomplished.'
* Raffles Girls' Secondary School got into the Guinness Book of Records as the first school in the world to demand that every single student master six foreign languages.
* The world's first intelligible conversation in English between a man and an ape took place last week between a British tourist and Ah Meng III. The Singapore Zoological Institute combined the latest cloning and hot-housing education methods to enable the five-minute conversation on the comparative virtues of the Singapore and English weather.
Ms Ibrahim noted that her own election as Singapore's first non-male, non- Chinese prime minister was a 'first of sorts'. The 45-year-old Indian Muslim, who was previously dean of Singapore Management University's Law School, presides over a rainbow Cabinet containing almost equal numbers of men and women, distributed evenly among Singapore's various ethnic groups.
Her party, the People's Action Party, remains the dominant party 100 years after gaining power in 1959. But it had a scare 10 years ago when it lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament, mainly due to a small splinter party that was established 22 years after Mr Lee Hsien Loong stepped down as prime minister at age 68 in 2020.
Party political differences, though, revolve mainly around socio-cultural, lifestyle issues. There is broad consensus on the big, fundamental issues. For example, a recent survey to name Singapore's most remarkable achievement over the past 100 years found 95.6 per cent citing the ability to remain independent.
Everyone recalled that in 2021 and 2043, Singapore was made a scapegoat of domestic communal tensions in our neighbour across the Bridgeway. The 2021 incident was effectively defused by cool heads in both capitals. But in 2043, the SAF had to be put on alert to keep the peace.
Not a bad record for 100 years of history in a region which remains politically volatile. Thailand's repeated incursions into Malaysian territory in hot pursuit of Thai separatists almost led to war between the two countries in 2036, and Indonesian and Malaysian forces actually had a brief skirmish in 2039 over territorial claims in Kalimantan.
Nevertheless, compulsory national service - a badge of Singapore's sovereignty for almost 100 years - has evolved in the past 50 years. Lasting only 12 months and including women for the past 20 years, national service is focused now mainly on training already highly computer-literate young people to navigate the electronic battlefield. Complemented by a corp of career soldiers, today's military has mastered the art of 5G smart war. And although a declining birth rate has reduced each cohort of eligible young men and women, the decision was made in 2033 to allow Singapore Volunteers Overseas (SVO) as an alternative to military service.
The SVO scheme was devised partly to project our soft power overseas, but mainly to help populate the mini-Singapores set up under the Singapore Space Programme (SSP). A deliberate reference to the joint US, Russian, Chinese and Indian Space Programmes which have since 2020 resulted in a permanent community of scientists on the moon, the SSP officially began in 2025 after Singapore successfully concluded negotiations to lease territory in a neighbouring country.
The SSP has since gained traction. In the past quarter-century, townships in Vietnam and China that began as Singapore-managed industrial parks were converted into long-term leases. 'Eco-cities', which began around 2015 in China with Singapore playing the developer role, are now all leased territories.
The creation of these satellite mini-Singapores in the region and as far afield as Brazil and Kazakhstan has radically changed the definition of Singapore-ness. Nearly 18 million Singapore nationals have either settled in these enclaves overseas or were naturalised while working there.
Ten of the largest Spore GLCs are now ranked among the top 50 Fortune 500 companies. One of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, or GIC, recently started a programme to return 'dividends' to Singaporeans via their CPF accounts. Retiring Singaporeans now account for most of the new home purchases in Switzerland, which formed an arrangement with Singapore whereby the citizens of both countries could enjoy a modified form of dual nationality, and with that, the same rights.
Singapore and its SSP outposts now house the overseas campuses of more than 20 of the world's top 30 universities. Singapore-born scientists have now won four Nobel Prizes in the sciences, while the first Oscar for a Singapore movie came about five years ago, and more recently, the Singapore soccer team made it to the quarter-finals of the World Cup. These accomplishments have at last proven that this is not a nation only of geeks and nerds.
But probably nothing could beat the singular achievement of having the word 'kiasu' being acknowledged just this year by the Wikipedia Global Dictionary as being part of the lingua franca of 53 countries. To celebrate this, the National Kiasu Promotion Movement increased its advertising budget and extended its campaign to promote kiasuism for another three years.
The writer is chairman of the board of trustees of the Singapore Management University. Think-tank is a weekly column rotated among eight leading figure in Singapore's tertiary and research institutions
