Dearest 郭生

今天我要谈您戏中的小朋友。

Little children appeared in quite a few of the plays that I am
familiar with, e.g. The Ninth Born, No Parking on Odd Days, Silly
Little Girl and the Funny Old Tree, Mama looking for her Cat, 我要上
天的那一晚。

Children are regarded as the future of the society and how they are
being educated determines the state of the country in the next few
decades.

The role of the children mostly took on the archetype of being the
innocent, inquisitive and questioning how systems and society work.
Through the eyes of the child, we see how absurd the world can be, or
how the world wasn't what it should have been.

In some of the plays, the children grew up and we see the systems
(education, government) had changed them and there in lies the
tragedy, as with the case of "No Parking", "Mama looking for her Cat".
In these two plays, the tragedy is amplified and became very powerful
when we realised how the vicious cycle will continue to churn out more
more people who don't want to challenge or question and just accept
how the system works, one generation after the other.

As with some of the other plays, the children stayed on with their
beliefs, ideals, innocence and were damaged, hurt and jaded with the
system, and to a certain extent, being regarded as crazy, as with the
case of "Silly Little Girl", "我要上天的那一晚", "The Ninth
Born". These people eventually become marginalised and regarded as
outcast in the system.

Do you know that Rocher Centre will be torn down? As with the National
Library, as with Bukit Brown cemetery, as with Kampong Buangkok, as
with many others that we have failed to salvage in the face of
modernization. These are all making way for building roads, more
expressway to fit in more cars on the road. Do you know that Singapore
has the highest percentage of land use in the world for roads versus
other usages? Yet people are still complaining about road congestions.
Land is scarce and we are bursting at the seams with about 5.6 million
people, with about a quarter of them being foreigners. Yet we are
among the world lowest in terms of birth rates. And our children will
be born into these ironies and contradictions and paradoxes.

Government wants us to procreate, but honestly, can we afford to raise
another child and pay our houses for the next 40 years, cars for next
10 years, raise up a child for the next 20 years, feed and clothe
ourselves for the next 50 years and our own urn when we die!!

Aiyah!!!!!!

Some had a theory that our current monetary system is responsible for
our current predicament. The rich will get richer, poor will get
poorer and then prices will inflate to a ridiculous level until the
world's economy collapse!!!!

FUCK!!

So I think it's likely I'm not going to put another child through this
by giving life...

Cest La Vie, 郭生

Hope you're chill up there having the time of your 'life', having fun
laughing at us children down here. LOL

cheers
Renee aka 慧羚启