The Skeptical Optimist

It’s been a long and eventful 2008. Just in general with prison breaks, larger than life political elections, devastating earthquakes, horrific terrorist attacks and of course an unthinkable financial meltdown. It’s been a busy year for the news business - which means not a good year for the world in general. Usually most people look forward to the new year as a chance to start afresh, do better and feel happier - somehow though 2009 appears to be viewed with some apprehension. This is one of the few times that a buoyant optimism hasn’t really been the mood for the new year.

For me, I feel that 2008 was the year the world sort of speeded up, with more intense news coverage, more internet connectivity and use, more of just everything. When you live in a fast-paced city like Singapore, sometimes we often forget to look back and reflect or even just hold on to the past.

My kids’ daycare is moving premises, and on the last day of their time at the old centre we went to pick the children up and I gasped because they had completely taken down every single piece of artwork, every last poster, photograph, set of shelves, divider, curtain - and just white washed the entire space. It was as if the last 2 years of my child’s life in school had been completely wiped out. I mean, sure they are going to a new swanky daycare centre, with brand new facilities et al. But it was the casualness with which they performed this move and erasure that really struck me. After all, a lot of us have the same experience in Singapore; I’m thinking of schools, workplaces, religious institutions and of course homes that have just disappeared off the face of island without much afterthought. I often wonder what this does to our sense of belonging and memory. Singaporeans are a pragmatic bunch, fundamentally, but these constant erasures have to affect us in some way.

(As I write, there are a few days left to the bulldozing of a large part of the Seletar Airbase, a place known for its colonial black and white houses, tranquil atmosphere and community life. Just another casualty of progress of course. Just another blip in our speeded up lives.)

So this new year - I say, be optimistic, look forward and try not to be too bogged down by worries and fears. But at the same time, take stock and remember to look back and appreciate the places, people, memories still around you… in many more ways than one, life is fleeting and there’s no point if it’s not lived fully.

Tags: 2008, 2009, hope, memory

Now and then I sit in on the morning shift for Suzanne Jung. It’s a different beast from the half-hourly bulletins that we usually do as rostered readers for the day shift. Primetime Morning is a 3 hour, non-stop breakfast programme that has 2 presenters and distinguishes itself from the rest of the bulletins with its varied segments and live studio interviews.

It’s really good fun, Steve and I get along fine and come up with some ok repartee (I hope). In any case, the first question people always ask after they see me on that shift is, “what time do you have to get up?” Well the short answer is just before 4am, for the show that starts at 6.30am. Basically I try to wake up before my alarm so the kids and husband aren’t disturbed. I pad quietly to the kitchen to fix my tupperware of breakfast which can be eaten either before the show or during particularly long commercial breaks or prerecorded segments. Then I drive to work, getting there around 4.30-5am to do my hair and makeup (eyeliner at 4.45am is always a little tough) and spend the rest of the time before the show making sure I know what’s happening for the interviews that day, checking the news updates and prerecording segments that go out later in the bulletin.

One of the things I really love though, is driving at 4.30am. The streets are almost empty except for the taxis on the night shift, and there’s something about the smell of the early morning air that takes me back to my childhood and the times I had to wake up before the sun rose just to go to school. That stillness of the early morning air feels like it’s waiting for someone or something; there’s a great sense of anticipation in the sleeping city and suburbs. Just a few more hours and minutes and the roads will be jammed with cars, the pavement lined with people waiting for buses and cabs and the trees full of birds.

Funnily this always makes me acutely aware of being in Singapore, this waking before dawn and before your circadian rhythms tell you to. Also, the way the sun rises like clockwork at around 7 and sets 12 hours later is also something that I feel is associated with being home in a way. When I went to the States to study or visited my in-laws in Italy for long periods at a stretch, it always seemed unnatural for the sun to set at 4pm in the winter and 9pm at night. My husband on the other hand is a little weirded out by the regularity of our days. His clock is wired to the turn of the seasons, how summer seems more languorous while winter days are short.

It’s funny how one gets accustomed to things as a child and then sees that as the norm for the rest of the their lives. But I’m also glad I experienced life in another country - it gives you a richer more complex perspective on how other people see things. And reminds you that this fairly ensconced and comfortable life isn’t the only one that exists.

These days doing the early morning shift now and then and waking up early to the quietness of deserted streets, I get a funny sense of belonging to the slumbering city. When the autocue in the studio comes on and the studio director counts down through my earpiece, I imagine students switching on their tv sets, bleary eyed like I was so long ago, starting their day before dawn and leaving the tv as background or foreground. I imagine all the workers ending their night shift and going with relief to their unslept in beds, the commuters in the crowded buses who watch us on the go and all the people who start their day as early as I do or in the last hour of the show. The television camera is a strange thing, because sometimes you don’t stop to think about how it brings you into the lives of people you might never meet. I hope though that we somehow inform and add to their lives, to your lives…

Tags: memory, morning news, seasons, time zones

Tags: children, death, memory, mothers