GROWTH?

I play quite a bit of SimCity 4.

In my “travels” around the SimCity world online, I realised that there are two main types of players. The first type is obsessed with cramming as many virtual people into their cities as they can. Their cities are skyscraper dominated, their mass transit systems, healthcare, education are bursting at the seams, road traffic snarls and pollution rules. The other is concerned mainly with creating beauty, nice little suburbs with little bungalows, many green spaces, trees abound, empty roads etc.

Sometimes, I feel that the Singapore government is a lot like the former type of player.

I understand the need of course. But it is still not easy to live with the impact. Sometimes, as I am squeezed up against the bus doors, desperately hanging on to the railings as the bus takes a sharp curve in the road, I wonder what the difference is between me and those people hanging out of the bus windows in one of those third world countries. Maybe only that we have no livestock on our buses, although, sometimes, today’s kids do not behave that much differently from livestock.

I remember a long time ago, when we would sit in front of our television sets and laugh at the “Big Hands” that they used to push Japanese train travellers onto the trains, because the trains were so overcrowded. Today, as I stand in front of the doors to a sardine packed train and more people coming down the escalators to board behind me, it doesn’t feel as funny any more.

Growth? Or otherwise? Sometimes it has become really hard to tell.

Anyway, when I feel totally overwhelmed, I will retreat back to the relative quiet and emptiness that is my home, and indulge in an hour or two or SimCity 4. I like my nice flat suburb of 20,000 population, with the hilltop home for the Mayor – virtual me. It gives me a bit of breathing space when I think of my virtual self enjoying her space.

Talk about living vicariously.