When I was on holiday in Beijing, I didn’t really keep up with the news since my Chinese is only a little better than my Japanese.

I’m probably exaggerating a little, but the fact is reading Chinese is quite difficult for me. I can speak well enough for basic conversations though, and I do fine with my spoken Chinese at work. Enough at a basic customer service level to even those irritating old women.

So I was flipping through some of the past days’ Today (a free paper circulating in Singapore) and I came across this article which was published on 14th April 2008:

In a nutshell, the Singaporean government is discouraging the usage and purchase of private cars in Singapore and advocates the use of public transport.

Even though owning a car in Singapore is already very expensive due to the need to purchase a COE before being allowed to own one, there are still a hell of a lot of private cars running on Singapore’s roads because our country is relatively affluent. Ownership of a car is also understandbly, a larger measure of personal (fake) success in a first-world country.

Well, this is actually good news for me because a car is the last thing on my mind next time when/if I graduate from Engineering school. Public transport is pretty damned convenient in Singapore and I’d rather channel my income into… other… stuff (those limited edition R2s can get expensive). So instead of being seen as a bloody cheapo, Singaporeans might consider me as a benevolent and public-spirited person.

So next time when I’m talking to my colleagues, you might hear me saying “Cars are stupid! Traffic jams and finding car parks are too troublesome! And they’re killing the planet!” when what I’m actually thinking is “what they’re really killing is my Little Busters! LE DVD collection, that’s what”!

The 3 dimensional world is so godamned fake. Like, seriously.