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I do.I do not regret moving away from home and experiencing a new life.But I do regret choosing Canada over Europe (I did have the choice).These are my reasons for ‘regretting moving to Canada’. If I wrote a piece about reasons for moving to Canada I would choose different aspects of life that can be helpful in shedding light on what is good in Canada compared to other countries. This is not that text.Here are a few things I am sure the responses, especially the ones from those who have ‘just’ moved here and likely wrote the comments in their ‘high’ of traveling, do not cover. This is not for people who were born in Canada as I can imagine no Canadian can live in my hometown entirely happily either. Only because Canada is an immigration destination, it seems to me the imagery that lawfirms create to encourage people to move (so they can get humongous amounts of money) is unreal. I moved to Canada as a graduate student and gained my residency and everything while I did a master's and a PhD. I did my PhD on an immigration related topic and things I know and state about immigration here are not just anecdotes, most of them are researched material.Bear in mind, none of the negative points I have mentioned here means Canada is “bad” - I am only attempting to clarify that Canada is nowhere near unearthly-IDEAL as many immigration law firms and advertisement on cheap satelite TVs try to depict for travelers. You get certain benefits you lose some. The same is with anywhere you chose as a destination. In any place, some issues might be tolerable to you, some might tear you apart in the long run. Knowledge is power.FOR THE RECORD:A) Canadians are very nice, polite and socially reserved. They are welcoming and genuinely do [want] not discriminate (often, as I have seen and I know they genuinely mean not to) against race or culture. There are very decent, respectable people I have met here. There are friendships I do cherish. But I do not think that I would have moved here for the sake of meeting these people. Especially for a person without their 1st degree family, life can feel very machine-like, disconnected here. It will if you are on your own.B) Things I have listed here have affected me personally. You can have an utter disagreement with them ALL. For example, I don’t like the cold etc. You might be an ice-lover and feel the best in cold climates. So then, move on. The cold won’t make you feel any regrets. Good! It certainly don’t matter a bit. Just as my opinions don’t matter. If someone finds this text useful, he or she knows how to use this info. It is always easier to see things from a critical perspective once one has lived in different places. Nonetheless, these are my viewpoints; most of the time people who have lived all of their lives in their country of birth (whether it’s Canada or elsewhere) think their country is either the worst of the best. There are also [especially] first generation immigrants who seem to be obsessed with the nationalist ideals of Canada, I am not one of them. I came to this country as a researcher and I well deserve and hold my right to be critical seriously. Yet, everything is relative.1 - The cold is deadly - and no one wants to admit it.2 - It is cold not only outside, Canadians like to burn extra fuel on airconditioning and to freeze their indoor areas too, both in summer and winter (and yes there are only two seasons in Canada). It really bothered me that there was not one day all year around when I could do my errands without having to carry a jacket or, ever thinking of wearing a skirt like I like to do - because the moment I step inside buildings it’s FREEZING (unless you are exercising). Although, I must say people do not dress to the weather, which is weird because in Sweden they do, for example.Winters are 8 months long here (Edit: when I say winter, I mean so long I need to wear knits, jackets, tooks and boots, if you go out with shorts in 10 degrees good for you, anything below 12 is winter to me and most people from mild climates). For at least 3 months, it’s below -15 (Edit: if anyone doubts this, they can track the weather and average temperature in various provinces, make sure you look at the ‘real feel’ value too. Unless you are in Windsor Ontario or BC, this is what it is, if not worse). You need a car. You need a really good home with proper heating, and still your social life is brought to a minimum during those months. Now, let’s see what happens when you are a broke student who lives in the burbs and cannot even dream of having a car. I live downtown and it’s a 15 min walk to my school (nice eh?) when it’s -40, I do mind having to walk 15 mins.3 - It is super expensive. And not all top brands of tech and retail ship there. Rent goes up significantly every year. You could look it up if you wished, but I am half-certain that Canadians pay the highest price for phone and internet services in the developed world. Other expenses are high too, compared to many countries - and it’s not like you get a top-quality life for the expensive things you spend money on. I am talking about a single person who cooks their own meals, does not even drink and, does not spare money on anything other than necessities. Again, many don’t mind this at all.4 - Public transportation SUCKS BALLS. Before I lived here I had heard on several occasions about how punctual buses are in Canada because if they do not pick people up in a timely manner people could freeze. That was, to my dismay, an utter lie. Lol. And on top of that, the reach of each city’s transportation system is very weak. Unless you live in the downtown area (which makes it easier just to walk or bike rather than having to wait for irregular buses for unknown periods of time) chances are you will have to spend 2+ hours on transportation every day just to get to where you work or you go to school. Most of the cities do not have metro (subway) and again when they do, the beauty of it is only when you are in close distances to the core downtown. Otherwise, the metro will never get you to the inner cities, and you will have to switch to subsidiary buses that… again will get you to wait… and wait… and wait.Intercity transport is also really outdated, I believe because it is monopolized and, expensive. I do not know if there are any countries left around the world with such a disconnected ground transport system - especially given how vast Canada is and how far apart everything is in North America.Never mind internal flight prices. I don’t want to even get started on writing about prices on air traveling inside the country. Just know that it’s often cheaper to visit Europe instead of visiting a province across the country.5 - Being in a relationship is overrated (I am married now so this is not being bitchy it’s the reality I’ve experienced). There are many people with lousy relationships to which they hang on to, just because being single is not normal (and I’m not talking about marriage). For some people, especially minnelials, concern about the physiological need for sex and the act itself as a much needed activity, is the centerpiece of reasoning for inquiring partners. Not that this can be a good base for a long lasting couple-dom in the philosophy of Canadians, but youth act on it for “getting one” a lot.The dating scene can look like an absolute bogus mess, which comes down to ‘ghosting’, ‘cat and mouse games’ and unmature troubles. Women chase men too much and for too long, and sometimes people really hope to share the rent so that they move in for that. People move in in a matter of days of knowing each other and move out in a matter of a couple of months. By the late 20s, anyone you meet has been through divorce(s) or separation(s), likely has kids, usually still ‘hangs out’ with their exes (you are likely to learn about the grisly truth only after you have invested yourself emotionally in an unworthy narcissist too hard). It is very common to be pointed at as ‘not getting enough sex’ and ‘not having a man’! Sometimes I wonder if it is the 1800s and the age of getting wedded is 16. Very often people you meet are bitter and cunning, only looking for another partner to suit their economic imbalances. People put up with cheating partners very often, and internalizing these standards, at least when you are super lonely, comes next. You’ll be surprised.Disclaimer: There are many many loving people and families in Canada. There are many many decent Canadians with loving partners, with selfless care for their parents, and absolutely beautiful bonds that has brought them together beyond material stuff. There are also inter-racial relationships as such. In plenty. But what you need to know is as a newcomer you do not always get lucky to be in the inner circles and to be taken seriously by people who you happen to meet. It does feel constantly as if all the relationships were formed way before you set foot on the land. And that is a very awkward feeling to have - to feel left out.I generally would not suggest a single person who is interested in dating to come here. If I ever do recommend Canada it’s to couples. If you have kids you will get to raise them in safe, all-look-alike neighborhoods where they never play on the streets - I don’t know why? It’s safe, it’s super flat and begs for two gates and a soccer ball or hockey puck- and you will have toput thousands of dollars on their daycare. I will not get into the cost of primary education. Not here.6 - As a foreigner with gradschool degree, unless you are an engineer or have an MBA or, if you are a real estate or car sales agent (or wish to become) forget about doing anything ambitious. See because going your own thing needs capital and needs connections. It is hard to have any of them as a recent resident with no previous history in anywhere.You could have all the qualifications in the world and work in Walmart and enjoy your 4 K salary with benefits (many people are happy with that and do put aside their goals and settle with having enough pay to get by as an ultimate). And if you refuse to work for years on years in a job for which you are overqualified, you are pointed at as a sloth who doesn’t want to work. Now, yes there are unemployment benefits and unlike some countries, you can still live with the bare minimum and go to job search workshops for free until you are hired. Also Yes, with a good education, and if you chose the right co-op (this means you should have been here during your bachelor and it gets harder and harder to get into prestigious organization the more you delve into grad school as a non-Canadian a job that suits your skills you get into a very comfortable safety net (good salary, ability to get a mortgage and a home and car all that). Some like it, some think with that they are trapped in a loophole and are wasting their talents.Your success is measured by salary (this is not exclusive to Canada of course, just that it’s a very prominent fact), pension, and mortgage, not if you are happy with your job (it's actually the norm to hate your work and I think that’s because there are many many service jobs and not many creative ones). Ironically no one wants to talk about numbers when it comes to money. There is a presumption everyone's well-being and financial condition is safeguarded by some godly ransom that they dug up from the graves of their ancestors.7 - Making friends and meeting people your type is a hidden gem. You might not mind the prices if you are rich, and would likely be able to skip atrocious housing conditions. It doesn’t negate the fact that the industrial nature of everything resonates everywhere no matter what you do. You chose your lifestyle.BUTPeople will not at least until a couple of decades get actually close to you (save if you have a family here) and at some point, you give up trying to break the ice. Or it’s not the ice, just an invisible shield surrounding some of us. And you will learn to do the same as them, and limit your relationships to thinking of them mainly as professional networks which you will have to employ for career purposes. You will create your own bubble around yourself and you will either learn to enjoy it, or you will keep regretting your life choices.There is also a case to be opened about dishonesty. It’s not that Canadians are two-faced. They are a good peoples. OK? BUT the way [most] people do not tell you what they mean and confuse you with their actions and words is astonishing here. Barely anyone is straightforward, and humor is a lost word in Canadian English. Everyone seems to have a stick up their arse (and you will become like that too). People only open up after getting absurdly drunk - mainly for a few seconds before they lose the ability to collect their conscious.(Edit: there is a general assumption that people in countries with Arctic climate and low-density populations have bigger bubbles around their selves, are more difficult to connect and are easily out of touch with their emotions. I cannot speak for Scandinavia for example, but, have heard foreigners from dense societies feel the same about them. Take this tho; emotional has negative connotations in Canadian English. So you know who you are).8 - It’s boring and I’ve seen no Canadians being ashamed of this so I’m not hating - it’s kind of funny! Save for the hardcore advocates of outdoors sports - even though the temperatures are usually below standard for those too, I would say! I have heard skiiers from Scandinavia come here and are shocked how locals go out on days they would absolutely refuse to exercise outdoors. Other than the few main cities I’m sure you know which ones are and, their downtown areas only, the rest of the towns and the burbs and the cities are a copy and paste version of one another - ugly 70s style cement buildings, from an era where architects stopped being creative and erecting venues was likely left to road builders! City structure is inaccessible without a car and, is alienating.Having fun comes down to - for a very extended time in people’s lives - bar hopping with teens (or grown-ups who like to act like they are still teens; super excited about being able to drink), in un-fashionable clothing, lol, hearing some country music and watching girls throw up and drop like flies - because alcohol is the holy grail no one wants to be left behind in consuming it as much as possible (and guess what? it is also more expensive than anywhere I have been, U.S. Europe, South America). You barely can enjoy your drink, or socialize all without it if you wished - it always seems to me that there is a race in ‘how much’ you can drink, so to say, you have a place in the society!!!I am an artist, and I have studied human sciences. This type of environment often does not cultivate creativity [in general]. Yes there are outstanding artists who come from Canada; Jim Carrey, Boards of Canada, Blond:ish, Ryan Gosling and so on. But which one lives in Canada still?I have known creative people and they are mainly of higher socio-economic classes. If not, it is that they get funding easier than others - especially foreigners - for that they are of established minorities. I do not know a first generation who has become a super star in Canada. The level of artwork, presentation and access to creative means is bare minimum because people care too much about having a routine and a salary - because back to the point, prices are no joke here, nor are your bills, your credit card or the mortgage etc. And the best way to secure those is being as predictable and average as possible. Art is regulated by the government, which is great in the sense that artists can have access to massive fundings; so long that they follow the government’s agenda which changes at every turn of the parliament.9 - The food including fresh produce, snacks, prepared meals and pub/restaurant dishes is bland and tasteless (I do not really know what it is, the way the American groceries that are exported to Canada are grown? GMOs? The amount of sugar and salt that is used in food versus all the other spices that should be but are NEVER used?)Edit: I accidentally came upon a source about proteins that indicated in North America some animal proteins (that are not naturally found in the structure of plants) are used for the growth of fruits and vegetables. I have also heard that many standards in agriculture and farming are way different from elsewhere in the world, whether these contribute to the tastelessness of food is for debate but surely modifications that are done to our food remain largely a mystery.‘Affordable ethnic’ cuisines are limited to Thai and Chinese food. For the rest you will often have to pay 3 times as much.10 - See - this point is nothing unnatural. But people think Canada is somewhere beyond earth and everything is super whatever. Including super hygenic. Well no it’s not. There are good and bad places. If you are not wealthy enough and have just moved you will face those very developing world problems. Get ready for wrecking accommodation, roaches, bedbugs, and mice. There are many many old residential buildings made of wood. Naturally, susceptible to all kinds of vermin. The hygiene level is also below my standards (and I am not fussy whatsoever). People very often do not seem to clean enough. Not all, of course. But it does not surprise me anymore that 50% of the times when I walk into a new place and I notice the clump of dust in the corners and uncleaned kitchen and bathrooms.Also, bad landlords, awful landlords and absolutely psychopathic ones who own houses and rent it out for extra income and make the life of the tenant hell, are plenty. Unless you are living in a condo building, which is at least 1.5 times rentals and twice as expensive as shared houses, situations can rise easily.Nature is great though. Again if you have the luxury of accessing natural sites by car. Freezing your ass camping, or, if you would like to go hiking and skiing - mainly in inhuman temperatures. This is all given the fact that you do find the time off to ever do something extracurricular.11 -Universal Health Care: it’s there, it’s good, better than the U.S., even than the E.U. because you do not need to necessarily be working to have it, so long that you are not actually sick or require an emergency. I cannot count the number of times I have heard people they were kept in the ER for hours with no primary care, no drugs nor testing because there were no specialized doctors available to look at them (this goes from food poisoning to having a broken bone to anything else). I am not talking about medical mistakes. I am talking about a severe shortage of doctors.Doctors, I mean specialists, literally flock to this country in the hopes of practicing their medicine away from their home country where they have to compete with several others. It is almost impossible for them to get back on the track with new qualifications they require to work in Canada as it takes a decade to get through the tests and everything… and guess what? Life costs money and they end up being taxi drivers - or whatever, not doctors anymore!!! (The taxi driver doctor is such a stereotype you cannot even keep a blind eye). Now, those doctors CAN, in fact, make a good living driving taxis or working in Walmart or wherever, but what do you think happens to people in need of special care?Well if they are rich they go to the States, Europe or the Middle East, in emergency situations sometimes the correct diagnosis does not take place on time and they end up being slaves to the pharmaceutical industry for their lifetime.Plus note that the Universal Health Care does not cover the costs of most of the highly specialized medical treatments - unless you have extra coverage with your work.So, despite being a relatively healthy person you can enjoy regular checks with your family doctor, anything beyond that if you are not employed at the right place and do not have a ton of money to pay for treatment in the U.S. can be scary.Hmmm…what’s the cancer rate in Canada again?12 - Unemployment Benefits; I am not going to say it is awful to have help when you become unemployed (but I guess most governments in the world have something along those lines). It is relatively easy to get the few hundred dollar checks and it can cover some basic costs. But middle-class worker who does pay some rent for a decent place and happens to become unemployed cannot really manage monthly expenses with the unemployment benefit check that the government sends. It is just a little help. It does not hold one’s life together unless one decides to move in a basement with 4+ roommates during the time he or she is unemployed - which can mean months. I do not propose the provincial governments should raise this pay, I am just saying those who move to Canada to get these benefits are very much like those buggers who soak up the money sitting on the streets acting like they need help while the real trouble of unemployment (however small in percentage) is draining students and real workers.The other thing is, many of those who actually rely on government help money are unfortunately native people whose life and tradition has been torn apart by the colonial system for many many decades. (again I am not going to elaborate on what has happened to the indigenous peoples of Canada, you do your research). But just so you know their unemployment in a system that has destroyed their traditions, languages and families, is not something that can be fixed with a few hundreds of dollars per month, but needs a historical healing. The other benefactors are lazy entitled [often local white] people who do not look for work, do not accept low wage work, and do choose to beg on the streets (because they can collect some more from kind people who help them) while they reside in social housing or dirty cheap team houses. Often drunken bad-mouthed homeless people who are plenty in the richest cities of the country - you only need to take a 5 minute walk in downtown Ottawa or Toronto, for example, to realize poverty is not something specific to ‘the developing countries’. But interestingly, there are no videos or pictures showing this type of thing to the enthusiastic immigrants as ‘Canada’. No, Canada is not only its homeless people. Neither it is its national hockey team. But there are these issues here, like anywhere else in the world and the spotless imagery many people have of this country is simply laughable.And last but not least International Higher Education: There is a humongous number of people who come to Canada as international students every year (I wrote my Ph.D. thesis about this, so this is only a glimpse of the facts I have come upon while writing. Rest assured, I have presented my research to the department of immigration and citizenship and they approved I had my facts right, so there). All around the world, studying abroad is encouraged and celebrated, especially is one gets into a highly accredited institution in the top universities that are mainly located in anglophone countries. Many of those who come to Canada are essentially pursuing this as a pathway for accessing immigration to Canada. Little they know the number of foreign students is so overwhelmingly high, and the information regarding their success in getting permanent residency is very scattered; the reality is the government of Canada recognizes international education as one of its most important economic assets[1] (immediate expenditure of incoming international students earned about 12 billion dollars for Canada in 2016[2] ) but despite the available programs for immigration of students, the ultimate goal has never been to settle all of them[3] .Each international student pays up to 3 times the tuition fee[4] the domestic student does (depending on the province) and funding (especially for foreign students) is becoming more scarce every year. Now while you might be experiencing all of the social aspects of life including the above-mentioned, before deciding to study in Canada you might want to check the job market from within - meaning people who have been through your field of study. Do not rely on the advertising university partners provide or the pretty pictures on university websites. Studying here is no joke and one is better to consider everything and more (including finding a good adviser who is not planning on being a dick to you for the entire course of your graduate degree) before committing to a program that requires great attention.Also please note that an international student can not enjoy any of the government programs such as immigration services, health care, unemployment benefits etc. These only come to immigrants and citizens. Especially after an international student graduates, he or she is literally relying on a single paper called Post Graduate Work Permit. There is barely any budget dedicated to guiding this young and sophisticated bunch through the Canadian system.EDIT: Now, don’t get me wrong. I do not absolutely hate my life, so please, be kind and save the philanthropic positivist advice, I’d prefer a proper mural or DJ gig lol - you see no matter how great I feel about myself, I have my opinions. This is not my diary or resume. I have had my successes, which come through years of effort and not giving up and also having met the right people, of course, after many many wrong ones. Here, I have not included anything close to my day to day dire experience with matters such as underemployment, higher education fees, the monopoly in the art scene etc. These are the reasons that convince me, as per speaking to the general public, why I would have possibly chosen another destination - somewhere warmer with better urban architecture and a dense population (who knows maybe in a place like that I would have experienced for example racism or whatever and I would be writing something critical about that imaginary place) - if I went back and decided to go abroad and explore the world at 24. Again, if you are here to represent Canadian patriarchy by hateful comments, you are simply on a wrong post, go read something that fulfills your agenda. Also, this is in the 2010s, Canada screens in almost only highly skilled technical work force and, I am in the arts and humanities. My experience would be incomparable to numerous people who moved here 30 years ago as general labor.This is not by any means a thorough socio-cultural nor is an economic analysis of everything that there is to know about Canada. For that, there are more comprehensive resources on Academia.edu - Share research and researchgate.Footnotes[1] Canada’s International Education Strategy[2] Economic impact of international education in Canada - 2017 update[3] Douglas Todd: Immigration disappointment looms for Canada's young foreign students[4] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/international-students-universities-ontario-tuition-1.4199489

What was Singapore like during the 1960s?I lived and grew up in Singapore in the 1960s and thereafter lived in many other countries for more than twenty years. I hope my past experiences living overseas will help me give you a more worldly-wise and balanced account of life in the 1960s. This post is told from ground up, from the perspective of the common man, and not a top down statistician or politician’s macro view of the country’s independence, racial riots, economic struggles, politics,…etc.It is much based on my life in Redhill Close in the 1960s which we had both a surburban and rural lifestyle rolled into one - one that probably represented 85% of the people in 1960s.This article is adapted from a blog post Bon Voyage.If you like this post, please share it so that more people, especially youngsters, will know how life was like in the same space, but in a different time in the 1960s.IntroductionI grew up in Redhill Close and so this estate is very close to my heart. It was built in 1955 under the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), a housing scheme under the pre-independence Lim Yew Hock Government. It was commonly known as "chit lau chu" or 'seven story houses' in Hokkien or Teochew.When the flats were built, there were shanty attap hut dwellings scattered in its surroundings.The estate was accessible by a closed-loop ring road from Tiong Bahru Road and was only served by the Hock Lee Bus Company's Number 8 Service for a while. That went on until a new road Jalan Bukit Merah was constructed and appropriately called 'Xin Lor' (新路/'new road') in Hokkien, by the locals. Bus Service number 8 plied from Redhill Close to North Canal Road, near Raffles Place.LivelihoodMost of the dwellers of the attap hut kampong were pig farmers and other forms of subsistence farmers. Those who couldn't live off the ground, or get a job, sold cooked food in public places, which was illegal without a food catering licence.Among the hawkers that stood out was the fish ball noodle stall because they had errand boys going around the estate hitting at a longitudinally cut bamboo stick making a rhythmic "kok-kik-kok" sound to solicit for more business.They would take orders and deliver the noodles to their customers without delivery charges. Some customers living in the upper floors of the apartment blocks would lower their rattan basket tied to a rope to receive their bowls of noodles to save the boys climbing up several floors.Each bowl of noodles cost about 20 cents and the boy's wages was probably one Straits Settlement Dollar a day, about ten Singapore Dollars today.—-There are many such hawkers selling a varied number of services. Some of them would do more than just selling food and will perform to attract attention. One of them is the muah-chee hawker. He sells a dessert that is a cooked rice dough that is mixed with sugar, peanut powder and sesame seeds. While mixing the dough with the condiments, he would be bouncing himself up and down by flexing his knees as if he was dancing an A-Go-Go dance. Hence we called him the A-Go-Go man and he is often the highlight of the day when he stopped near my home. Kids would run to him to buy the muah-chee like he was the Pied Piper.For those who is not well versed with Chinese food. this is how muah chee looks like:Then there was the Iceball man. He will grind a block of ice into snow and colour it will sugar syrup and condensed milk. This was how it looked like:When the Ice-ball man was not around, we would buy ice-bags (‘sng bao’ 冰包), which were literally sugared and coloured drink frozen in plastic bags from one of the ground floor apartments that sold them. We would bite the corner of the sng bao and start sucking the melted juice that came out from it, in the process freezing our lips to a swollen red. Even with my swollen red lips I would lie to my mum that I did not spend my money foolishly on sng baos, thinking that I could fool her.There were also hawkers that were not selling food, but other services. There was one that sold glass. He would cut glass to measure for homes that happened to have broken a piece of table top glass or a cupboard glass. You wouldn’t think that he would be selling much, but there was demand those days.Another one was a tinsmith. He went around mending pots and pans. Aluminium pots and pans were used so intensively that they wear off and leak. Or it could be an old thermos flask that had started to leak. That was when the local friendly tinsmith who carried his stall as two wooden boxes balanced over each side of a bamboo pole over his shoulders came to the rescue.Yet another was a hawker that sharpened scissors. He had a hand operated grind wheel and a grind stone to fine tune the blade sharpness after going through the grind wheel. He announced his arrival in the neighbourhood with by yelling “buah katoh” (磨剪刀, “sharpening scissors” in Hokkien). Scissors were an essential item those days, as many were home-based seamstresses or housewives who mended their kids’ torn clothes frequently. Those boys who played rough games like Hantam Bola or merely got into fights frequently, like I did, can attest to that. I salute all those mothers who had so lovingly mended their children’s school uniforms those days, so that they can go to school the next day.Such repair services were needed because people could not afford to buy new replacements. It was a culture of keeping and repairing the old to make it work. Perhaps those trying times were also a training for mending human ties and making them work. Divorces were rarely heard of. People stayed married through thick and thin. Couples understood the need to tolerate, compromise and adjust. Divorces were taboos. It was a culture where people lived for keeps.Old things were used over and over again, until they were beyond repair and no more functional. People even used a kind of blue dye on old white shirts to make them look fluorescent and new looking again, instead of buying new ones.Prices for these hawker services were very competitive. Customers would bargain and try to save every cent they can get away with. We would even bring our own egg to the char kway teow (fried rice noodles with cockles) stall so that it will save us five cents.—-These illegal hawkers, as they were called, were constantly on the run from the Ministry of Environment enforcement officers.These officers were called 'teh gu' (地牛) in Hokkien, roughly meaning 'territorial bulls' when translated. When they caught the illegal hawkers, they would literally smash their stalls up into bits. Those were heartbreaking moments to bear, as we witnessed the hawkers' back breaking hard work for days or even months demolished right before their eyes.Yet the next day, they would be out selling their wares again. People got to eat and families needed to be fed. Life had to go on. People those days were tough and persistent. Only the fittest survived.However from the Government's point of view, they felt they had to be cruel to be kind, for the greater good of preserving public health and food safety. Most of these hawkers were eventually offered licence to sell their stuff in centralised food centres, now called 'hawker centres'.Animal FarmThe farmers would let their pigs roam around freely in the estate, where they (the pigs) would eat whatever scraps of food they could find and also conveniently crapped anywhere they liked.The farmers would also send their kids house-to-house to collect swill every morning - that is, the left over food, bones,…etc from households. The kid will collect the tin full of yesterday’s swill and give us an empty tin for the next day’s swill. The swill tin is usually a used cooking oil tin can with the top cut open with two holes for the improvised wire handle. Swill are filthy stuff of rotting food. With the uncovered top, it attracted houseflies and spread diseases. Therefore, sometime towards the late 1960s, the government provided plastic pails with covers for the swill and mandated that all swill be collected using them, putting an end to those rusty improvised swill cans.The swill would be collected and boiled en-mass to sterilise and then used to feed the pigs. Smelly stuff. Then every once a year, they will give every household a crate of 24 eggs to thank them for the swill. Nothing goes to waste those days.As kids, we had to watch out for those random heaps of shit in the playground and grass patches. When we played badminton, we had to be careful not to land the shuttlecock on any of those nasty heaps. With practice, we got more precise with where we wanted our shuttlecocks to land.The pigs and humans mostly co-existed in the same space peacefully. That is, until the retarded game of some boys daring each other to land a quick punch on any roaming pig and run. They chose the pig at random and did not victimise any of them. All pigs were considered on equal grounds. No pig was more equal than the others. The pig would scream out loud and run, and so would the boys. It was the boys' idea of having fun. Kids could be cruel with animals. Fortunately, they did that only very occasionally, when they felt that they needed some extra excitement in their already overstimulated minds.Stray dogs had it easier. They were all loved by the kids, especially the puppies. The dogs would learn commands and tricks like sitting down, rolling down and shaking hands very quickly. They also got fed little treats, like biscuits or pieces of bone. But the good times didn't last very long, as the authorities would send men with rifles to shoot them and cull their population. A very cruel practice that continued till a few years ago.Cats somehow got away. Cats always do.There were also goats herded by ethnic Indians in the neighbourhood. They would bring their goats out in the morning to graze on some grassland and then bring them back at sunset. In between, they would sell goat milk to the residents.FamiliesMy family moved from a squalid single shop house room at Clarke Quay, along the Singapore River (now a hip clubbing arena), to a two-bedroom apartment in Redhill. We were a first occupant of the then brand new flat. Then, the lifts frequently broke down as the kids from the neighbouring attap houses would come over to take joy rides. High rise dwellings and lifts were curiosities.When the sixteen storey apartment block (Block 55) was completed at Lengkok Bahru, up the hill from Redhill School, we kids from the seven storey houses went there and up to the top storey corridor. Sixteen storeys was a big deal then, when the highest you have been was only seven storeys. I remember when I first look down from the sixteenth storey, my first thought was that the cars looked like Matchbox cars and the people looked like ants.There are 21 blocks of two-bedroom flats in Redhill Close, numbered from 1 to 22, Block 4, is a row of single-storey shops. I remember that there were two provision shops, one photo studio, one laundry shop, one traditional Chinese medicine shop and a corner coffeeshop where fights happen frequently.The rent for each apartment was $52 a month for many years, until they were sold to the tenants in 1982.Most of the flats were lived in by ten or more people. Usually father, mother, eight kids and a grandma, all squeezed into about 600 square feet of floor. At night, every square foot of the floor was slept on and there were double deck or triple deck bunk beds to pack more in. Family members that had to use the toilet in the middle of the night had to be careful not to trample on their siblings.As if those conditions were not uncomfortable enough, it was common for families to take in additional member(s), usually a Malaysian relative working in Singapore to stay with them. Kinship was very strong. Together they would endure and tolerate physical discomfort, to help a kinsman to get ahead economically.Besides them, cousins also come to stay with us during their school holidays. We didn’t seem to mind and instead were delighted that there were more kids to play with.Some families eventually spilled over to the common public corridors to sleep in the night, when the kids grew up and needed more space.Most families lived well despite being financially strapped. However, there were some that didn’t get along too well. Upstairs from where we were, there was a family where the grown sons often get into fist fights with their father. Yet the children were very united when threatened by outsiders. Once we saw the sister, who was around eighteen years old, rushing downstairs with an iron pole in hand. While passing by our apartment, she told us that she is going to the market to fight some gangsters who were threatening his brother’s fish porridge stall.Some took on corporal punishment on their kids to the extreme. There was once when I saw a kid being severely caned by his elder sister and dragged out of the house without his pants. It was a deliberate oppressive act was to shame the child. The loud and desperate cries soon attracted a small crowd to the commotion! The crowd stood there watching, instead of stopping the abuse - an abuse that would likely damage the child psychology for years to come. The crowd also seemed to enjoy watching the abuse, like a show. I was petrified seeing how a kid whom I know, was rendered helpless by his own sister and was unable to protect something so fundamental like his own body and nudity.Money IssuesMany kids were undernourished and underweight and so they were fed free milk in school. It was compulsory for skinny kids.Most families had only one breadwinner. The mum would have to be a housewife to take care of the kids and the household.The fathers, those that were not illegal hawkers or professional gangsters mostly held blue-collar jobs like taxi drivers, carpenters, construction workers, vegetable sellers, fishmongers...etc.A very small number of them had a few years of formal education and those that spoke English were held in high regard and had comfortable desk jobs like bookkeepers, calligraphers, bank clerks,...etc. Those who completed their Senior Cambridge School Certificate (equivalent of 10 years in school) were prized possessions and were hired by British companies. These were the privileged ones, with the exception of those who had the untimely misfortune of working for the British Army, as they were retrenched in 1968 when the British troops withdrew from Singapore. Then, finding another desk job was hard.There was an exceptional one in my block, an interesting man who folded beautiful paper flowers and would finish his huge bouquet at 5pm every day. He would then take Bus Number 8 to deliver them to his client at North Canal Road.Wages were meagre and families lived from hand to mouth and paycheck to paycheck. Err… that is if you were one of the lucky ones to have a regular paycheck to start off with. Kids hardened by physical pains of corporal punishment, were petrified whenever they were threatened to have dinner taken away from them. These kids had experienced hunger and knew that having dinner forfeited would deal them the ultimate pain, worse than being beaten by the cane.Then, if you were a kid with three square meals a day, you were considered rich; and if you had less, you were considered poor. There were a visible number of families who just scraped through with three meals of very diluted rice porridge (with more liquid than grains) and black soy sauce. There were many who were poor. I have seen some going over to their neighbours to borrow rice.When money ran out, they borrowed.One of my neighbour’s daughter borrowed a few dollars from my sister and never returned it. Subsequently, she borrowed a dress and never returned it. Each time my sister asked her, she said the dress was in the wash, hanging out to dry, but we saw her wearing the dress later that day to work.I once played the game of Police-and-Thief with her younger brother. In this game, one group will play Thief while the other group, the Police, will go chasing them and bring them down physically. Being kids, it was a rough game. I caught up with her brother, made a dive and got hold of him by his shirt. In the process, I inadvertently tore his shirt. After that, he sat there quietly feeling very upset. Then, he told me that that was the only school shirt he had. I didn’t believe him, but the next day, I saw him going to school with his torn white shirt mended, quite obvious that it was badly torn.You see, his family lost their sole bread winner very early and they survived on his mother doing odd jobs that she could bring home here and there, until the oldest daughter finished school and started work as a secretary. Then, her salary supported the entire family, though secretaries didn’t earn a lot in the 1960s, probably drawing a salary of 100 Singapore dollars a month.One relative came over to borrow one thousand dollars (about SG$10,000 in today’s money) from us, as the husband and sole breadwinner was retrenched. It was a significant sum, but my father obliged. We were not rich and that sum was probably a bank overdraft. They eventually paid back.Forty years later, I met the son in a restaurant by chance and out of small talk courtesy suggested that we ought to meet for lunch someday. Instead of enthusiasm, I was shocked as he was evasive and suggested that I call his secretary to arrange. You see, this son had risen very high and wealthy, and was holding a comfortable senior position in the Establishment. He was probably afraid that I was asking for favours or help. But I had no such agenda and only meant to have lunch with a cousin whom I played with as a child. I was not in dire straits to need to borrow money, or ask for any help. That said, I am not sure if he would lend me money if I really needed it. Naturally, I didn’t contact his secretary and the lunch didn’t happen.The more entrepreneurial Redhill residents converted their living room into Chinese temple shrines to collect donations from worshippers; others converted their flat into gambling dens; and yet others sublet one of their bed rooms, packing the kids further into whatever space they could find. There was a married man and father of eight kids, who married a rich older woman and had a baby with her. There seemed to be an 'understanding' between the man and his two wives. In return, the second wife contributed financially to his family coffers.Some became tontine leaders that managed pools of subscriber contributed cash, but ran away with the money when the going got tough. Such cash was meant to serve as micro-loans to deserving members in times of need.Yet some others became illegal lottery bookies. They operated within a trusted network and sometimes communicated to their members via coded language scribbled like random graffiti on common walls. They made good money until the day when luck stacked against them and they had not enough money to pay the winners, as there were too many of them. And so they had to vanish. This was a blessing in disguise, as those that continued soon got arrested and thrown in jail. It was expected, as the police, too, learned the coded language enough to write the bookies’ fate on the walls.Some women worked as washerwomen, manually washing other people's laundry, as there were no domestic washing machines. Some worked as amahs (domestic servants) for expatriate Caucasian families. Yet others worked as seamstresses at home, so that they can continue to run the household and look after their children.The more desperate ones became bar girls, dance hostesses or prostitutes. These women of easy virtue would often end up having their daughters follow their footsteps when they got too old and their daughters got old enough.When all else failed, the desperate ones stole. When caught, they were first beaten up before being jailed, thus throwing their family into deeper jeopardy. Others became gangsters and ran prostitution dens and illegal casinos, extorted protection money, intimidated the weak and fought or killed their enemies.And that is why all parents wanted their children to study hard and do well in school, and not have to go through the physical hardship and financial uncertainties like those sea of nameless faces toiling in factories."Study hard and get a job that holds the pen, not one of rough (hard) labour," was the maxim.The New DawnIt was only a few years later in the late 1960s that there were more jobs, as Singapore's industrialisation plan began to trickle down to the masses. Then it was possible to get a job as a menial factory worker installing transistors for US$1 a day, which translated to SG$3 a day. A bowl of noodles costs 30 cents, so adjusted for inflation, it would be about SG$30 a day in today's money. It was still not much money, but it paid the bills.These factory workers would negotiate for free uniforms, so that they could save some money. Every cent counted. To make themselves a little different from others while donning the uniform, they would modify it a little bit here and there for some identity.Some female factory workers, particularly the Malay ones, would cut their uniforms very short and tight to exhibit their well endowed body and attract men. After a hard day's work of repetitive tedium, getting attention from the opposite sex helped to lighten their day and make the heart flutter a little. Canteen, common corridors and bus stops were their staging grounds.These sexy girls were so game into having a good time that they would respond to wolf whistles from construction workers in passing Datsun pickup trucks - much to the whistlers' delight.As people lived in cramped conditions, it was hard to find privacy in places for romance and physical intimacy. So when Tiong Bahru Park nearby was ready, many young couples went to the darker reaches of the park at night for some hanky panky and sex. They would lay their mats on the grass along the darker reaches of the park along the perimeters of Tiong Bahru Secondary School for their moments of ecstasy.However that didn’t always work, as sometimes, they would be watched by cheeky undercover National Environment officers on the pretext of catching litter bugs. These officers would confront the couple and issue a fine for littering, at the awkward moment when the man disposed his used condom on the grass. Thus giving a new meaning to being “caught with your pants down”. This cheeky voyeurism was called ‘liak kow’ in Hokkien (‘Catching Monkeys’). It begs the question as to who had a sadder sex life and who really had the last laugh.Left alone, it is human nature that men and women will find ways of dancing the mating game. This manifested as a bit of titillation here and a bit of flirtation there. Somehow, they would find gaps and opportunities amid their hard lives for some relief.The Original Old HillYes, there was indeed a little hill that was literally red in colour at the fringes of the estate, we called 'Au Buay Sua' in Hokkien, that translates to 'the hill behind' in English.Most people spoke Hokkien, Teochew or Cantonese; including some Malays and Indians who could speak them fluently. Conversely, many of the older Chinese folks could speak Malay fluently. Malay was an important common language those days. It is still the National Language of Singapore today, though many people can't speak it.The surrounding of Redhill Close was a random sprawl of shanty attap huts, separated by narrow winding mud tracks. At night, much of the kampong was not lighted. Some of the huts didn't even have electricity and fresh running water, and so relied on kerosene lamps and wells. Sanitation was simply served by huts with a hole in the ground. Some units did not even have land or dwelling registration.ReligionsThere were also two Chinese Folk Religion temples at the top, where many Chinese people worshipped at. Besides prayers, the mediums would occasionally go into trance to find answers to the worshippers' problems. During festivals, there were Hokkien or Teochew wayangs staged along the slope of the little red hill, attracting large crowds of audiences, along with hawkers, mini gambling den operators and other peddlers grabbing the chance to earn a few extra bucks.Most Chinese people worshipped Chinese Folk Religion deities, which is, contrary to popular belief, not the same as Taoism, although officially they are ignorantly and conveniently lumped into one. Taoism is a philosophy and arguably not a religion, though anything can be made into a religion if we try hard enough to do so.There was also a visible number of them that were Buddhists, some in their purest form practising Buddha’s teachings, whilst others were only into the exoteric rituals of prayers and joss sticks.Then there were a growing number of Chinese who converted to Christianity.The Malays were mostly Muslims and the Indians mostly Hindus.There was a time when a particular religion was systematically trying to convert everyone else. They claimed that their religion was the only Truth and that the rest of them were just superstitions.The irony is that a superstitious person will always be another person practising another religion, other than your own. You are never superstitious practising your own rituals in your own religion.That was not acceptable by some sections of the community and it took some 30 years later that a Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act was instituted in 1992.Really, all religions are man-made without exception, though most of them claim they are not a religion but a faith or a fellowship. I think that is mostly to wash away the bad memories of religious wars and malpractices in history. I think people should be free to believe what they want to believe and there should be respect all round not to coerce others into their religion.As Lee Kuan Yew once said to the effect that these religions (those accused to be mere superstitions) have given their believers a peace of mind for thousands of years, so who are we to say that they are false.However, there were situations when science could account for the superstitions. For instance whenever there was an eclipse of the moon in the 1960s, thousands of Redhill residents would come out to scare away the purported heavenly dog eating away the moon, by banging on their pots and pans to make a collective deafening ensemble. As a kid, I tried explaining to them the science of eclipses, but to no avail. They countered the argument by saying that the caretaker of the temple and their devotees were also banging on their pots and pans. Monkey see, monkey do.Sometimes I wonder if believers will eat shit if their religious leaders, too, ate shit.The TriadsThese shanty kampongs were breeding grounds and hideouts for the triads and they would have their initiation ceremonies almost uninhibited in the forested areas. Gangsters pursued by the police would run into the kampongs and the police would not dare to venture into those slums in the dead of the night in pitch darkness. So there, the triads festered.Once at a pasar malam (night market) along Jalan Bukit Merah, a young man snatched my mother's gold chain and jade pendant from her neck and ran, when she was bent down to examine something she wanted to buy. My mother gave chase and my sister barely 11 years old, grabbed me on a piggy back and ran with my mother. But we were not fast enough. It was quite a trauma for me as a five year old. The snatch thief ran and disappeared into the attap house cluster in the dead of the night. There was little we could do. A family friend suggested that we search the nearby grass patch, and that on the off chance, he might had the more valuable jade pendant carelessly slipped off the chain. We did that search and by sheer luck and to our delight, found the pendant.This incident was reported in the evening newspapers and my mother’s first time in the newspapers. The second time was later in 1964, when she was about to deliver my younger brother when there was a curfew outside in the aftermath of a racial riot. Luckily, she was picked up by a passing police patrol car that took her to the hospital.Ironically, my younger brother is the only one among the eight of us that was delivered in a hospital. The rest of us were delivered at home by midwives. These midwives learned their trade from their mothers and were not trained in medical schools, but were used by most mothers. Sometimes, there were mishaps and the weaker babies died. Only the fittest survived.By the early 1970s, pasar malams were banned, not for the incidents of snatch thievery, but for the bigger danger that they had become staging grounds for gang clashes. The night market crowd was used as a cover for gang members to form up before the battle without being noticed. Then on their leader's calls, they would charge their opponents with parangs (machetes), mangrove scaffold poles and metal pipes. Light bulbs filled with sulphuric acid became acid bombs and were hurled into the air at their opponents. It was a theatre of horror.Those fighters were fearless. They were fiercely loyal and were avowed to the code of silence to protect their brothers. They were motivated by a combination of sense of belonging, the security of a family, their boosted ego and the lure of money.It would be interesting to see how these fighters measure up against today’s MMA fighters in a free-for-all, where there are no rules, no referees and no time-out. Triad fighters fought to kill. In street battle, the one most fearless and motivated to kill will win. The order of importance is fearlessness, strength and martial art. It rhymes better in Hokkien as “it ta, zi laat, sa kanghu” (一胆，二力，三功夫).These gangs from Chap Pueh Sio Kun Tong (18 小坤堂), Dee Si Ang Koon (24 红根) and their spinoffs, often fought to settle territorial disputes.There were gang chants and songs to identify and set themselves apart. As all gang names were prefixed with numbers, gang members would challenge their opponent in coded language in Hokkien, such as, “What number are you playing?” or “Where are you playing?”. Such challenge and response protocols percolated down to the lower rungs of the gangs and then seeped out to copycats and kids.The last two groups mimic the ways of gangsters hoping to spread fear and gain respect. It didn’t always work, as they might meet a one-hell of a loner one day who will beat them into a pulp and they would be unable to mobilise their fictitious gang to protect them.Many petty fights among the junior gang members arose from a gang member being beaten up by an opposing gang in another territory. When the beaten up gang member reported that to their brothers, they would mobilise a section of them to counterattack. There was no investigation and no questions asked. They were mostly short-fused and psychologically hardwired to protect their brothers. Sometimes, the fight could have started out of a petty ‘staring incident’, where gangster A stared at gangster B, and vice versa, that eventually escalated to their smashing each other’s heads up with beer bottles and chairs. People had died out of such ‘staring incidents’.Eventually, the elders of each gang would get together to ‘talk reason’ to resolve the dispute. When they were resolved, the offending party will pay damages in the form of a feast for the offended gang. So there was a code of ethics in the triad world.Besides the island-wide famous gangsters of Lim Ban Lim and Fei Chai (fatty), there were other legendary names we hear in Redhill. One of them, let’s call him ‘Parrot’, a gangster who was later rumoured to have been an undercover detective. My gut feeling is that he might have been just an informer.Some gangsters joined the army, as they were wanted by the police. They would soon rise to the ranks of sergeant or staff-sergeant and would be the company sergeant major to manage National Service soldiers who also had secret society connections. These sergeants would stay inside the camp to avoid police arrest in the civilian world. It was only in the later years that they dared venturing out of the camp compounds. By that time, the police generally left them alone and respected their rank and status in the army.Another, was nicknamed Sam Mah Chai , after the famous Hong Kong opera actor Sun Ma Sze Tsang of that era. He was a fierce fighter during his younger days. I didn’t meet him in the 1960s, but some fifty years later, I met him on a film set where I acted with him.In the scene on set, he played the role of my screen father who is visiting me (my character) in prison. Such irony.He looks like a regular old man in his 70s. He is lean and tanned and mostly polite and quiet. When I asked him, he recounted his younger days as a fighter in gang clashes, his time spent in the Pulau Senang (island) penal colony and the mutiny/riot in 1963. He also showed me the scars on this arms and said that he got them while blocking himself from parangs (machetes) swinging at him. He said that it was a miracle that his arms were not chopped off. He said that he was young and stupid, came from a broken family and found himself in bad company and influence, and all that eventually led him to join the triads.The government eventually clamped down hard on them with the infamous Section 55 of the Penal Code, that gives the police arbitrary powers to arrest and detain secret society members indefinitely without trial.New public places that were built were to be gangster proof - hawker centre tables and chairs were to be fixed to the ground, so that they could not be used as weapons during a fight; and more places were brightly lit up.As a kid, I have seen quite a few fights, gang clashes and riot squads in action. If you were a kid that used to roam around a lot, chances were that you would have gotten into some petty fights just to protect yourself or your friend. Kids toughened up and became streetwise very quickly those days.Photo courtesy of SPH ArchivesChildhoodIn the day, the kampongs were the natural playground for kids. Boys would go there to catch spiders and fish.The boys would catch a certain species of spider that would fight whenever they saw another one of them. This species was found in the bushes near the railway tracks.The trains run from Tanjong Pagar to Malaysia twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. The ownership of the railway land was a legacy from the days when Singapore was part of the Malaysian Federation and it was still sovereign land belonging to the Malaysian Government. That means that the Singapore Government had no jurisdiction over it and the Singapore police had no right to enter it for law enforcement. It was a long stretch of Malaysian sovereign land, which Singapore only got back in the year 2011. As a result, a squatter colony flourished on this ‘no-man’s land’ next to the tracks with the nearest squatter roof eave overhang literally a few inches from the side of the train as they whooshed past every day.When there were no trains, the kids would be playing around the tracks. It was a closely knit community where the adults would check that the railway tracks were free from kids loitering around when it was time for the train to pass. I dread to think what would have happened if the railway company had decided to change their time table suddenly. Hundreds of children would be had been overrun and killed. Thankfully that never happened. They probably knew that they could not change the time table.The railway track area was a remote area, so the smaller boys from outside the squatter colony must be vigilant and vanish into the bushes whenever they saw bigger boys approaching from a distance. Often these bigger boys will rob the smaller boys or beat them up. It was the law of the jungle. Singapore was far from the safety levels we have today. Those were the days when everybody would turn into a bully given half a chance. This was extended to politicians, policemen, teachers, nurses, bus conductors,.... etc.To get to the water stream, the boys would need to skirt around a shanty hut built at the edge of the stream. They would have to squeeze through a very narrow path between the house and the water, wide enough only for tiny feet to cross. Inside, there lived a mad woman who would rush out with her long messy hair and full grin whenever she noticed kids passing by. Rumours had it that she used to have a baby, but she died soon after. Thereafter, she lost her sanity.The boys would fish at the upstream of the water where it was clean and clear. They would catch those beautiful guppies with rainbow coloured tails.As it flowed downstream, the water got murky very quickly by the toilet hut discharge that went directly into the water. This water would flow to the drains along Redhill, down to the Alexandra Canal and finally discharging into the Singapore River. It was no wonder why the River was black and stinking like an open sewer, and was nauseating to go near after a hearty meal.However, it was at the downstream that the bigger fishes were found, particularly the big black catfish. As they say, you can't catch many fish in clear waters. Catfish were considered a longkang fish (fish from the drains) in those days. These days, it is an expensive delicacy.And of course there were fighting fish, where bets were made as to which fish would win in a fight. Put together in the same jar, these beautiful fish would waste no time tearing each other apart and both of them will end up with tattered fins.We also flew layangs (kites) with strings laced with powdered glass. The goal was to fly high and cut the strings of other kites off.There was the factor of how much glass you have laced on your strings with and there was the technique of ulo-tarek (release and pull) at the right time. Basically, when the opponent’s kite tightened to cut your string, you slacken your string so that it was hard for them to cut yours. Then, you would surprise the opponent by tightening up quickly, coming down hard and fast on them, and cutting them off.When the string was cut, the kite flew away loose from the owner and eventually came down. On the ground, there would be lots of kids running after the kite, as it will belong to anyone that catches it. Of course fights occur frequently over the argument of who got to the kite first. There, we saw a lot of bullying around with the bigger boys pushing and shoving the smaller boys down to the ground to get the kites.We laced our strings by winding them around two trees that were spaced apart, and then coating them with glue boiled from cow hide, before running finely pound glass over the glue coated strings. Finally, we left them to dry under the hot sun.We made the kites with thin strips of bamboo and tracing paper.There was also this local cherry tree that the boys loved. The cherries are edible and the tree was colloquially called the ba-cherry tree. I just found out from the Internet that its scientific name is Muntingia Calabura, aka Jamaica Cherry or Singapore Cherry.But the boys didn't love it because the cherries tasted good, but more so because they could use them as ammunition for their guns made from pieces of waste wood and rubber bands. They would target at passing school boys and have their white shirts splattered spectacularly cherry red, driving the victims into a rage and the shooters running for their life.Sometimes we would wander further away to places like Pasir Panjang to see the beach, and in one instance, cut long green bamboo poles and drag them home to make pencil stands or piggy banks. Pasir Panjang Road was once a narrow road with villages along either side. The villagers would send their ducks crossing over to the beach to eat the abundant seaweed during low tide, and after the feeding, the ducks would wander back across the road home safely.We also walked through the Redhill attap houses, cross the railway tracks and went upslope to Mount Faber, which was a tourist destination. Once, after a tourist bus came, we were asked to pose with several of them for photos. We were just scrawny little kids in singlets, shorts and slippers, but felt like stars at that moment. One young couple from Canada (I think), told me that they had quit their jobs to see the world. That statement really floored me and kept me thinking about for days. How could it be that the local people in Redhill were struggling to stay alive, while these Caucasian tourists could be gallivanting around the world and even quit their ( I assumed) well paying jobs to do so? I could not fathom that thought and the question stayed etched in my psyche for years to come. Perhaps it had planted a seed in my mind so much so that 13 years later, I set off to live and work in 19 countries across 4 continents over 20 years.With no money in our pockets, we invented our own toys. We turned clothes pegs, bottle caps, abandoned wheels (probably from prams), drink straws, old copper coins, ice-cream sticks, rubber bands, cardboard boxes, wish-bone pieces of wood, rubber tree seeds, Acacia tree fruit, papaya tree stalks,...etc, into toys. We even learned a technique of shooting lallang grass blades at other people.We would slide down grass slopes with cardboard boxes, climb on staircase railings, climb scaffolding, climb trees, jump from the second storey to the ground floor, explore abandoned bunkers, crawl through drain tunnels,...etc. We survived all that!Boys will be boys. We didn't know what the girls did for fun. They were probably doing their homework and playing five-stones at home. They didn't matter to us. We probably thought they were boring. Kids look at the world as one humanity. It was only years later during puberty that we divided the world into two halves and got selfishly interested in only one-half of humanity. LOL.It is sad that all these antics are mostly lost among the kids today. Nowadays, they have virtually merged themselves into their mobile phones and computer games. They have become one with the machine, but not with nature. They do not know how much they have missed and have bypassed the chance of growing up inventing their own games, imagining their own stories and exploring new and dangerous places.SchoolsSchools weren’t so demanding as they are today in Singapore. That said, education standards were still very high and rigorous. For instance, we were taught language grammar and punished for speaking badly. That usually meant physical pain. A whip on the bum or a smack on the head. However, we were not pressured to hate or fear school. Besides, we didn’t only learn from school, we also learned from each other, by living through crises, through empty spaces of time staring into the distance (the blank), by exploring nature first hand and by making mistakes.In contrast, kids today learn by NOT making mistakes, within a strict structure and time table with a highly prescribed curriculum. A lot of spontaneous opportunities for initiative and creativity are lost. Their prime reward is only their scores, that will mark their lives. Or so this is what is expected.During recess time, mothers will bring home-cooked food to feed their kids, although the canteen offered rather inexpensive food. The philosophy was that home-cooked food was healthier and also that they could save some money. Mothers walked 15 to 20 minutes to the school lugging the food along in tinkats to feed their kids. I was always very delighted that my mum brought food for me during recess. It saved me queuing up and also the food was delicious.However, I remember once, my classmate rejected his mum’s food. He said that he was not hungry, but I think it was because he was ashamed of his mum. His mum was a tanned wrinkled woman who could only speak Hokkien. I guessed Hokkien was considered a low-class language at that time. We were even punished for speaking Hokkien in school by overzealous teachers. I bet they didn’t know the impact it had on the kids’ self esteem and the pride of their culture by banning the language in school. This incident had shaken me quite badly till today. I felt sorry for the mother.This is how a tinkat pot looks like.Most of us attended the three English medium schools in the neighbourhood, called Redhill Primary, Bukit Merah North and Bukit Merah South. We studied English as a first language and our ‘mother-tongue’ as the second language. Bukit Merah North offered Mandarin and Malay as second languages, while Bukit Merah South offered Mandarin and Tamil. The three schools shared a single big field that flooded every time there was a heavy rain. When that happened, the boys would be out there in the rain and flood playing in the muddy, murky waters. If you do it often enough, you don’t fall sick doing so.This location is now occupied by Gan Eng Seng School.Those that wanted a Chinese language education studied at Keng Seng Primary, a government-aided school formed by a cluster of attap huts in the kampong. Those who wanted a better Chinese school went to River Valley Government Primary or Tuan Mong High School.There was a wide difference between those from Chinese medium schools and those from English medium schools. Those from Chinese schools were much more disciplined, as it would be, given that Chinese ideograph characters are not phonetic and had to be committed to memory - every stroke and stroke order. And then the need to memorise huge amounts of classical text by heart. They were also prouder to be Chinese and associate themselves with the accomplishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The extreme ones even dressed like people from the PRC, the guys would wear white short sleeve shirt and blue pants with basketball shoes made in China and the girls would sport pleated long braids, white blouse, pleated blue or black skirt, white socks and black shoes.I guessed this must have scared Lee Kuan Yew, as by 1978, he closed all Chinese medium schools, so that we could be safer from the Communists. China at that time, was sponsoring the insurgent Communist Party of Malaya (CPM). Lee also started a speak Mandarin Campaign to take away dialects, and cut the clans of their following and the triads that thrived on them.Mandarin language teachers those days were mostly bullies at heart. They would intimidate the children, insult them and despise them for not being able to speak their mother-tongue, which strictly was not true because most of our parents then could not speak Mandarin. It was the language of the Northerners, get it?! We in the South spoke Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and other languages (which they downgraded into ‘dialects’).Actually, many teachers were bullies at heart those days. Maybe it was the product of the times. A time of turmoil, uncertainty and lack of good social order demanded everyone to take the upper-hand given half a chance.Teachers would smack us on our heads with their hands, with a heavy book, smack us with wooden rulers and canes; throw chalk at us, throw dusters at us; make us kiss the blackboard; pull our ears hard; make us stand outside the class, stand on our chair or stand on our desk…etc. It was also no use complaining to mum and dad, as the first thing that mothers would say when they meet teachers was to remind the teacher that they are to beat their child if they were disobedient. In other words, parents gave teachers a blank cheque to beat up their kids if they were naughty.By the time we reached secondary schools, we had Chinese dictation tests. It was from here that many of us had nightmares about such tests for many years to come, deep into adulthood. In Chinese dictation tests, the invigilator does not read the text while the candidates write. You only hear ‘start’ and ‘stop’, and in between, you are to regurgitate one or two pages of text from the book, word for word. Hundreds of hours were taken away from our play time to memorise texts for such tests. Such tests were later discontinued. Lee Kuan Yew once commented that it was insane.For those in English medium schools, we also studied Bahasa Kebangsaan (National Language), which is Malay.We spoke English in class, but Chinese dialects and Malay outside, but still, we didn’t have Singlish. It was not born yet.Besides the academics, Lee Kuan Yew also started Pesta Sukan (Sports festival) in 1964 as a series of friendly sport competitions. This is to build a rugged society, as he knew that with a population living from hand to mouth, sports and physical fitness was never a priority. Many sports amenities were built with very cheap entry fees and I started going swimming at Queenstown Swimming Pool, the third public swimming pool in Singapore, about three kilometres away.As a result, I also became an all rounder athlete. I represented my school in Athletics 100 metre and 200 metre sprint, 4 x 100 metre sprint, Long Jump, Triple Jump, High Jump, Basketball and Softball. I had a whale of a time with my extra-curricular activities.This campaign to build a rugged society was very successful and timely, especially in 1968 when we had to build our own army rapidly when the British troops withdrew from Singapore.Band on the RunThe 1960s was also the golden age for Singapore music. This bolstered by the British Army which was stationed in Singapore and they had bands playing in their Officers’ Mess during weekends. Local bands like The Quest, The Stylers and The Shadows were very popular among the expatriates and English speaking Singaporeans. These Singaporeans were mostly Eurasians, Peranakans and the more Anglicised Indians, Malays and Chinese. Many were second or third generation Singapore born citizens and a visible number of them were from Catholic schools and good government schools, where proper English was spoken.This was enough for Radio Television Singapore (RTS) to start the first Talentime (1967/68). Three teenage girls from Raffles Girls Secondary, called The Tidbits, won the first prize and went on to cut their first albums with RCA/Cosdel.Western music brought along Western Pop culture of long hair, bell bottom pants and flora motif slim fit shirts with big collars for men. Girls sported straight long hair and loose blouses with flowery designs. There was also a more decadent side of substance abuse of ganja (marijuana), cocaine and MX pills.The authorities knew they had to stop this spread of decadent Western culture and imposed an Anti-Long Hair Campaign, where long haired males would be served last at government counters. Western pop bands spotting long hair coming into Singapore would have to cut their hair, or be turned back. Urine tests were also conducted in random nightclub raids, army camps and schools.Students in schools were subjected to regular long hair checks and repeat offenders would have their hair cut on the spot by the discipline masters. Teachers would cold heartedly pull the side burns of boys that were too long and have them grimacing in pain. Some discipline masters would cut a gap in the middle of the hair, so that the offenders would be forced to cut their hair short, GI-style, making offenders looking like a fool to their friends. However, fashion comes and goes. What was silly in those days looks cool today. So, there is no meaning to anything other than the meaning we attach to it.Lee Kuan Yew was a strong man well known for his draconian methods. He knew that if he wanted to have the industrialisation plan working, he would need healthy young men to work and not run the risks of them taking on the laissez-faire hippie lifestyle of sex, drugs and Rock-and-Roll. He violated many aspects of human rights, but he did get the industrialisation plan going.Getai in the 60s. Photograph courtesy of Mr Aaron Tan, Lex(s) Entertainment Productions.However, the majority of Redhill residents were not that hip and were more into local Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew and Mandarin pop songs, with predictable kitschy cha-cha beats and electric guitar melodies. The Chinese religious leaders saw that and staged Gotai (歌台) to entertain their deities and worshippers. Some local singers got famous through this route. Such Gotai persists till this day.One of my brother’s friend, Wu Gang, won a record label contest and went on to be a local star. He had his educational certificates left in our house for safe keeping, in case his attap house home caught fire - quite common those days. He was a top singer in the local scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Thereafter, he went to the UK to further his studies in fine arts and returned to start his own graphics design business. Upon graduation, he came to our place a few times but thereafter I didn’t get to meet him.Some forty years later, I got to work for a Chapman University student film project called “Last Wish”. It is about the mending of relationship between a singer-celebrity son and his father at his death bed. I played the role of the father, Sean Goh played the role of the son and the director of the film was his actual sister, Jean Goh, a final year student of Chapman.It was only a few days ago, at the time of writing, that I found out that Sean and Jean are the children of Wu Gang. Sean and Jean sing a lot and Jean won a national Mandarin singing competition in 2016.Small world.Small IslandIn 1960, Singapore was 250 sq miles with a population of 1.6 million. The people had big families and were reproducing fast, which prompted the government to start the Family Planning Campaign in 1960. The message was “Stop At Two [kids]”. Many mocked this to mean “Stop at two o’clock at night”. Mothers that had their third kid onwards were pressured to sterilise, or have their kids’ priority for schools….etc, placed last. The Campaign was an outstanding success. The average number of babies per woman went down from 6 in 1960, to 1.2 in 2016.In the 1960s, there was no MRT, no highways and roads were narrow and single lane. Accessibility from one end of the island to the other by car might take a few hours. During Chinese New Year, my parents would hire an old Austin car to pack all of us in to go from Redhill to Upper Serangoon to visit my grandmother. The distance was merely 7 miles apart, but took us the whole morning to get there, with the traffic grinding to a snail’s pace with the festive crowd. One of my sisters would have to stop the car to come out to throw up, as she could not take the long hours confined in the heat and humidity in the car. The same journey today would take 35 minutes by MRT.So Singapore may have been a small island then, but people did not travel the same kind of distances every day. People barely wander more than 2 mile radius from their village hut. They would frequent their village regular coffeeshop to listen to dialect broadcasts on cable radio Redifussion, frequent the People’s Association’s Community Centres to watch TV, or visit their local open air cinema. They probably made yearly or bi-yearly trips to the City to replenish groceries and essentials, or visit a ‘far-away’ relative.Perhaps that was how those runaway tontine leaders, illegal bookies, unmarried mothers, shamed members of families, banished gang leaders, …etc could vanish and still remain unnoticed in Singapore for years. Those days, there were no Internet, mobile phones, computers, fax machines; and very few people had line telephones and televisions.SummaryRedhill Close for all its good, bad and ugly, warts and all, was a close-knit community where everyone knew everyone. It was where gossip and news took no time to get around. Neighbours would visit each other anytime. Often, those without TV would go over to those apartments with TVs to enjoy the evening's programme. Those that lived along common corridors and had televisions in the living room would leave their windows open, so that neighbours could stand by the corridor and enjoy the evening's programme.Mothers would often leave their kids to their neighbour's care for an hour or two, while they made their trips to the wet market; and they would return that goodwill when asked upon.Kids mature very quickly those days, as they were assigned family duties very early in their life. By the age of 16 years old, he or she would have gone through thick and thin with the family and had helped their parents bring up seven other younger siblings, taken care of a grandma and laboured through the drudgery of housework. His younger siblings say of age 14 years old or below, would in-turn be in-charged and responsible for the well-being and safety of those even younger. So there was a strict hierarchy in the family, where the older was responsible for the younger ones. The younger ones got taken care of and did not have many duties, but they had to obey their elders.Kids that grew out of communities in the 1960s learned to be self-reliant, tough and empathetic to the needs of others. And so when they were older, they would partake in protests and strikes against bus fare hikes, price rises or unfair dismissals. Though those were compounded by the fuel of anti-Imperialist and socialist movements.At 16 years old, some boys would become merchant sailors earning about $1,000 a month, a princely sum at that time, considering that an accountancy graduate in 1968 earned $400 a month. Others joined the army and got trained and toughened up to be operationally-ready very quickly by Israeli war veterans. All that so that they can contribute to the family’s coffers and pull everyone out of poverty and hardship.That was life around 50 years ago. Most residents were living under the poverty line by today's standards. Yet, we were rich in human spirit and mostly happy. I saw more smiles then, than I do now in Singapore as a progressive modern metropolis. The oldest man I knew was never lonely and the ugliest woman got married and had many kids.My mother had six kids when she was 30 years old. Nowadays, many girls 30 years old or older, have no kids, nor are they married. And yet some others in this age range are still in their cutesy narcissistic online fantasies with aspirations to be social network personalities. I am not judging what is right or wrong, but just saying the way it is. While everyone is free to make their own choices, there will always be consequences arising from those choices.Some people say that times have changed and that "policemen those days wore shorts". But I still feel that somethings will always be the same. Love has remained the great constant over centuries of history. Love never changed. With the onslaught of media influences and peer pressures, we ought to ask, "What would Love do in a given situation?"Thereafter around 1969, the attap houses were demolished to build Housing Development Board (HDB) flats to accommodate ethnic Indians resettled from the Silat Road and Kampong Bahru enclaves, due to the extension of Jalan Bukit Merah (road). Several years later, the little red hill, where the estate got its name from, was flattened to build what is now Bukit Merah Central (“bukit merah” means "red hill" in Malay).This year, the estate itself is due for urban renewal. It will be demolished and replaced by closely packed tall modern blocks, with multi-storey car parks identical to many other uniform-looking estates in Singapore. The existing residents will have the option to move to replacement flats built nearby around Henderson Road.Where do we go from here?Singapore has made huge economic strides by any standards. This is because there was a leadership that cared and a population that trusted their leaders and worked hard to achieve their dreams. They were simple, but noble dreams: Merely to earn enough money to bring up healthy and moral children that will do well in school, in an environment without war, riots or violence.Times have changed people. It is not like this today. With progress, comes comfort, risk aversion and self-centredness. Many people have forgotten how it was like to be really poor. The younger ones have never experienced it. Leaders pay lip-service to it, fall into group-think and are petrified to lose their million dollar jobs.High salaries may preempt corruption, but they also numb sensitivities to human values, reducing us to mere digits of equivalent dollars. It distorts the perception of life, since nature does not have money; and that trees and animals grow without the need for money.While a million dollar salary is a lot of money to most mortals, it is now perceived by the elites as an entitlement and that their family will suffer if there are minor adjustments made to that salary. Or that anyone earning half a million dollars and below are considered mediocre, implying that money is the prime factor for measuring a human being. Or ignorantly assuming that it is common for every family to own two cars.So it is evident that the citizens’ struggles with the very basic day-to-day issues are not in the minds of the elite. Issues that are as basic as paying for electricity and water, apartment rent, school fees, costs of text books,…etc. The elites generally leave these issues to somebody else lower down in the hierarchy to sort out, or to sweep under the carpet.Bureaucrats across the ranks, hired for their brilliant minds, second guess their political bosses and window dress numbers to look good, maintain status quo and keep their jobs.Those with alternative views choose to remain silent to keep their jobs and their above market salaries. Their biggest conflict they have now is with their true selves: The true self that is crying out to live truthfully.So this was how life was like in Singapore in the 1960s and how it contrasts with life today. The hard times of old made us strong, but by now, those values are largely eroded and relegated to the scrapbooks of history.Still, I heard that a prominent politician hails from Redhill and so I wish that this son of Redhill will bring back the spirit we once had and pull us out of this slum of moral decay.If you like this post, please share it so that more people, especially youngsters, will know how life was in the same space, but a in different time in the 1960s.If you would like to read about how life is in contemporary Singapore, including some funny and ironical bits, you may like to read:How is living in Singapore like?What do the people in Singapore do that is different than the rest of the world?Thank you for reading this far. It is a long article and I hope it is well worth your time.

Bernie's chances are pretty good and getting better every day. Despite a MSM blackout and Clinton's rebound from the Benghazi hearing, Bernie's revolution is gaining traction.Today, December 17th, Bernie has just reached over 2,000,000, yes that is two million individual contributions and has nabbed two major endorsements.Communication Workers of America:Bernie Sanders Wins Endorsement of Communications UnionDemocracy For America:Progressive Group Democracy for America Endorses Bernie SandersMr. Dean is backing Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, and sent a letter to the organization on her behalf.But to no avail:Nearly 88% of the group’s members voted to endorse Mr. Sanders, compared to 10% for Mrs. Clinton and 1% for Mr. O’Malley. More than 270,000 votes were castLiberal group Democracy For America endorses Bernie SandersBernie Sanders picked up his second significant progressive endorsement of the day on Thursday afternoon, and this one might sting for Hillary Clinton.Update:The latest poll by CBS in Iowa shows Bernie trailing Clinton by 5 points with a +/- of 5.3. That is a statistical tie. If there is even a moderate turnout of unlikely Democratic voters the it is very likely Bernie will win Iowa. He is 10 points up in New Hampshire. If he can win both, then the snowball that is Bernie will turn into an avalanche.CBS News December 2015 Battleground Tracker, IowaUpdate:Bernie shatters records with 2.5 million contributions to close out 2015. Since almost all were small donors, they (we) can all donate again and again. Think about it, during the Christmas season from Dec 17 to Dec 31st, Bernie received 500,000 donations. That is no less than phenomenal. That is people power right there. FEEL THE BERN, pretty sure Clinton and the DNC are feeling it now!Update: Jan 10thLooks like Bernie will win Iowa, new poll shows a dead heat. Add Bernie's unlikely voters and Bernie wins!http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/10/bernie-sanders-makes-strong-showing-in-new-polls/Even ABC is taking notice:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bernie-sanders-popularity-making-hillary-clinton-campaign-nervous/story%3Fid%3D36187078&ved=0ahUKEwilo4_x15_KAhWMOz4KHfodCAwQqG8IITAA&usg=AFQjCNH6YK6cPzuQGDqyvzYmsWROuqwA3Q&sig2=9VcwMbk18Rd2oGwiG_aYNwEdit January 26th:Iowa is just around the corner. Questions will be answered. Bernie won a major endorsement from MoveOn. They are contributing to Bernie's ground game there. Bernie is positioned for a win. It is now up to caucus goers to make or break the Iowa contest.I wonder if another major snowstorm would help or hurt him? I think it might help him, I know many supporters would don snow shoes to head to the caucus'.One other interesting turn of events, Clinton is calling for more debates. Yes, hard to believe. To me it is a very good sign that Clinton is in trouble.The stars are in alignment for Bernie (no not Susan Sarandon), I almost, almost feel he can't lose in Iowa. Can't wait to find out...January 30th: Over 3 MILLION contributions. Bernie sends out a call to supporters and they respond. Picture Bernie as PRESIDENT sending out a call for an issue, people WILL respond. We CAN do this! But we must get him elected first. People of Iowa PLEASE help us!Update February 2nd:Nearly a tie in Iowa, a coin toss may have cost Bernie the win:​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Disappointing, but proof that Bernie can win. I would have to say after his strong Iowa showing, his chances are looking even better.Off topic, but I have been saying Cruz is the man to beat on the Republican side. His grassroots organization payed off in Iowa.I hope Democrats take notice. If you don't want him as PRESIDENT, you should strongly consider Bernie. It takes a grassroots movement to beat a grassroots movement. Clinton just doesn't have it.Post New Hampshire update:Over 20 point avalanche. Don't think anything else needs said.On to Nevada. Interesting, the Clinton folks are already pulling a "New Hampshire" by downplaying thier chances there.I sorely hope that that "southern firewall" is made of paper and it BERNS!Post Nevada Update:Well Nevada was a major disappointment for me, I thought Bernie was going to win. I realize that 5 points from where he was a month ago is still pretty good. I was hoping for the slam dunk in Nevada.South Carolina is important, he is not expected to win. The key metric is by how much Clinton wins by. If it is 5 points, it is as good as a win. 10 points, about the same as a tie, over 20, a big loss.Losing, even by a large margin isn't even close to the end. There is still some good chances on Super Tuesday.Bernie is tied with Clinton in "Real" delegates. After three states that is phenomenal considering Clinton's advantages.Bernie's chances remain as good as ever. Despite the narrow loss in Nevada, Bernie is trending steadily up. Clinton is trending steadily down. Hopefully, Super Tuesday will be the crossroad. After Super Tuesday, Bernie has some "yuge" opportunities.Despite any MSM spin on Nevada, Bernie and his supporters are FEELING THE BERN more than ever, myself included.Post South Carolina Update:Wow! That was an unexpected, expected result. As usual, I dared to hope for a miracle. It didn't come.I hope there are two kinds of 'Black Vote', we already know about young vs old. I hope there is a North and West vs South difference. In South Carolina's Pastor driven electorate, Bernie didn't have a chance. Clyburn puts the word out to the Pastor's, the Pastors tell the Congregation to vote Clinton. This is all expected, what is not expected is that young voters don't come out in droves to vote. This is key. Turnout low = Clinton win.Bernie's chances are still very good. First it was Clinton who was to have the cakewalk to the nomination. Then after New Hampshire there were raised hopes that Bernie would have the cakewalk. Neither has turned out to be true. What we have now is a protracted slugfest that will likely go all the way to the convention.Certainly Bernie has and always had an uphill battle.If Clinton does win the nomination, there will be alot of long faced Bernie supporters.What is important to remember all the cheers and Hillary chants will be swiftly squashed when she is defeated in the general election. The black vote won't cut it there.Trump, Cruz, Rubio will crush her. By wrapping herself in Obama's legacy she MAY win the nomination, but she has guaranteed she will lose the general.She never was a good general election candidate. So many Democrats say they will hold thier noses and vote for her. Why hold thier noses? Well, the Republicans and all thier money will illustrate for us in round the clock attack adds. Email, Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton and his escapades, and that's just for starters.I hope the young people supporting Bernie take thier support and turn it into votes. If they do, Bernie wins. A big IF for sure, the future depends on them more than ever.March 6 Update:Bernie won Kansas an Nebraska, but lot Louisiana. Clinton actually won a few more delegates than Bernie so delegate wise not much changes.However, the two state win is a major momentum builder. He has got to start winning bigger or loosing the southern states by a lower margin.He will probably lose Mississippi, but a big win in Michigan could nearly tie up the pledged delegates.Can Bernie do well with African Americans in the North? There is a path to victory, but it is a slugfest.In keeping with the original question--indeed Bernie has a shot and I think it is better than average.March 7th update:Big win for Bernie in Maine. Bernie is now winning the pledged delegate count since Super Tuesday.Better than average just got a little better. His debate performance last night may just be enough to put him over the top in Michigan.I apologize, but I have to go slightly out of context on this question. It has the most views and I really have to call the media on its Bernie/Clinton narrative. Internet search returns headlines regarding Clinton's big win in Louisiana. How she's racking up the delegates. Bernie WON three yes 3 states since Super Tuesday and more total delegates than Clinton.One the flip side Trump won a big victory and lost some smaller ones. For the Dems MSM says Clintons big win insures that she will win the nomination. For Trump his smaller losses show "He can be stopped". Well MSM, which is it? Can we please get some fair, balanced, factual reporting?So if you don your tin foil hat for a moment it would seem someone has an agenda here. Could it be corporate interests and thier propaganda arm the MSM? Yep, young voters don't blindly believe everything they see on TV. Guess who they support? You guessed it, the PEOPLE'S candidate, Bernard Sanders, former Independent Senator from the great state of Vermont.March 8th Update:Might just be the biggest upset in primary history. Bernie is winning Michigan! How is MSM going to spin this one?He's up by 5 points!!!Way better than average chance now.11:30 EST Bernie Sanders won Michigan! His chances look better than ever!Sunday before Super Tuesday 2 update:I lost track of how many donations I have made to the campaign. I just donated another 27 dollars. I've never donated to a candidate in my life. I hope that all of my donations and the millions of others puts Bernie over the top on Tuesday. I am cautiously optimistic. It's not quite do or die, but it's close. Quorans voting on Tuesday please vote for Bernie, ask your friends and family to vote also.It is time to take a stand against the oligarchy. Quorans tell me it's foolish to be a "Bernie or Bust" supporter. I say you must stand for something or you will fall for anything. I hope at least 51% of Tuesday's voters take a stand. 55% would be better though. Stay tuned for the next post Super Tuesday 2 update...Not So Super Tuesday Update:Clinton did as expected in Florida and North Carolina. The big disappointment is Ohio. I hoped Bernie would win or tie there. He did slightly better than expected in Illinois and Missouri. Though both were hoped for wins.Bernie's down, but not out yet.I don't know or even think he can beat the delegate math now. It will likely come down to California and Pennsylvania.The calendar is favorable for the next several primaries. I think he has to win 72% of remaining delegates. Not impossible, implausible maybe. It will take big news from the FBI to turn the tide, the young voters don't appear to be enough.Clinton won big with the black vote again.Not the update I hoped to make. Maybe next one will have better news. I still Feel The BERN, nothing can stop that. I just wish Ohio voters had felt it too.We're one step closer to President Trump, Clinton will lose, mark my words here today.OK, it's Thursday and I am recovering from my Tuesday disappointment. Bernie didn't actually do that bad on Tuesday, not that good either. I heard on the local radio that there were issues voting in Ohio. Maybe that contributed to the less than stellar performance. Bernie however essentially tied Clinton in her home state of Illinois. He tied her in Missouri also. Ties are moral wins for Bernie, but delegate wins for Clinton.He has got to pull off some major wins, if Clinton could do it in the South, Bernie can do it in the West. Supporters have to vote, bad timing for spring break. Hope is restored, awaiting results from the next primaries, stay tuned...March 23rd Update:Arizona called for Clinton with 2% reporting, voters still in line, and Democrats turned away.Nothing yet on Idaho and Utah.http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fm.dailykos.com%2Fstories%2F2016%2F3%2F22%2F1505136%2F-Arizona-Officials-Confirm-Legal-Action-in-Primary-Fiasco-Sanders-Ask-Voters-Monitor-Situation%3F_%3D2016-03-22T20%253A06%253A58-07%253A00&h=lAQGtdLrOIs this really the state of our democracy? I will never, ever vote for Clinton!!!Well results are still coming in for Arizona, apparently Clinton will win the state unless something comes of the legal action mentioned above.However, Bernie had overwhelming victories in Utah and Idaho. South Carolina style victories. If he can pull off the same margins in the upcoming states he is looking really good for the home stretch.Not sure how Bernie did with Latino voters, Arizona is such a mess. The primary system has got to change. Divide, confuse, delay, devalue; the oligarchy cannot continue. Some of the reports coming out of Arizona make you think it's in Central America or some other third world area. To borrow a term from the oligarchy's candidate, "we are better than that" or at least we should be.BTW I heard about similar voting issues in Ohio, but didn't see any big news coverage and Bernie didn't mention it so I kind of wrote it off. Maybe there was something going on there too?Anyway, Bernie's looking good. Can't wait till it's all big wins.March 27th Update:YUUGE wins for Bernie, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii. At least 50 delegates closer. I think this sums up the day, yes there is some symbolism here:https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dwv0vtxDRWTw&ved=0ahUKEwi4uvLKy9_LAhWEVh4KHfrnCxgQtwIIJzAE&usg=AFQjCNH6_1kRLQmk27CtIRIBQdgn-4aXEQ&sig2=Qq_tWnGHVSTEJ6BysKKZXADid Bernie just get a "tweet" from God?Or is nature just coming to say thanks for trying to save the environment?Awesome day!Happy Easter everyone.April 5th Update:Bernie won Wisconsin! Almost 10 points with 45% reporting!Wyoming is looking real good too!! To top it all off it appears that Bernie will win Nevada as well. Lots of shenanigans there.Justice department is looking into Arizona as well.If Bernie can crown this momentum with a New York victory he may very well be our next POTUS. It's a big IF, but things are all looking good.Just a couple weeks ago they were calling for him to drop out. I have just one thing to say to that, NUTS!There are reported Clinton links to the "Panama Papers" via Russian businessmen and the Clinton Foundation, if true and it gains traction it is going to really hurt her. The prime minister of Iceland has resigned over it. FBI is still looming, things are not looking good for Clinton. Things are looking great for Bernie.Update 4-9-2016:Awaiting results from Wyoming. No big surprise expected there. Bernie should win by a considerable margin.There is something I think is key to many questions regarding Bernie's chances to win the nomination and ultimately the General Election. Bernie currently has a 5.4 net RCP favorability spread. Clinton on the other hand has a -14 spread. This coincides with polling that indicates Bernie beats ALL Republicans in mock General Elections, and by greater margins than Clinton. Clinton loses to Kasich in most polls. Yet the media still proclaims that Clinton is more electable. They claim you can't trust general election polls this far out, but taken with the favorability polling that is pretty convincing evidence. In fact there is no evidence that Clinton is more electable.I wonder if Trump was more favorable, he's at -34, if Democrats would still be voting for her.The only thing concerning me going forward it the number of large delegate closed primary states coming up. Unfortunately, Wyoming isn't going to make any significant difference in the delegate count.I am again cautiously optimistic for a win or tie in New York. A win could feasibility spell the end for Clinton. I hope there is no funny business at the polls. As always, Feeling The BERN!Bernie won Wyoming. They split the delegates even though Bernie won by 10 points. Someday I am going to figure out how this delegate allocation works. I hope Bernie meets with the Pope. That would be some good PR. There is even a hit piece about this that Bernie asked to be invited and it as totally debunked by the Cardinal, I believe that sent the invitation. The media can be quite shameless. Anyway, it is on to New York. I am so hoping that my next post will reference how everything changed in a New York minute with this primary. Good luck Bernie!April 19th Update:A very disappointing result out of New York. I didn't expect a win. I expected just under 10 points, was hoping for under 5 realistically, and dreaming of a win.I knew it didn't look good when the stories of irregularities started coming out.http://m.nydailynews.com/news/politics/brooklyn-democrats-purged-voting-rolls-article-1.2607500125,000 Brooklyn voters purged from the system, polling machines not working, closed polling locations.Let's face it, the Democratic Party in New York is shady, there is rampant corruption.http://m.nydailynews.com/news/politics/exclusive-fbi-probe-expands-de-blasio-mayoral-campaign-article-1.1769448Disgusting that we can't have a clean, fair election. Clinton would have probably won, but not by 15 points. I suspect the audits will turn up nothing. We'll be told they will do better next time. Nothing's happening in Arizona, probably the same in New York.Well better luck next week...April 26th update:I will finally get to cast my vote for Bernie today. I have checked my registration numerous times. I had to register as a DEM to vote. I am not happy about that, but what can you do? Except maybe vote for someone that will fight to change this crony system!I hope it's not to late for Bernie, the delegate math is daunting. A self fulfilling prophecy of our beloved MSM.I hope this will be a SUPER Tuesday. I honestly doubt it though, 4 closed primaries.If you're an Independent they make it hard to vote in the primaries. Post result commentary later. FEEL THE BERN!Well Bernie lost 4 of 5. He won RI, the only open primary.Barring some miracle I think we can call this race over.http://www.politicususa.com/2016/04/26/bernie-sanders-waves-white-flag-defeat-congratulating-clinton-primary-wins.htmlI have to agree with the article. I think Bernie knows is over too. Mathematically, he could still win, realistically, barring the aforementioned miracle, it is over. My vote didn't matter. I hope Democrats enjoy President Trump.SANDERS WINS INDIANA IN MAJOR UPSETSince MSM is putting out any headlines I figured I would provide one for my fellow Quorans. Bernie won Indiana by 5 points! So much for dropping out. By the way, Trump has polled within 2 of the unfavorable (-14) Clinton.Independents! Clinton cannot win them. Imagine for a moment what the race would look like if all voting was open in every state.News flash, they let Independents vote in the general election. You might want to think about that super delegates.I will make a deal if anyone cares. I am a Bernie or Bust supporter. If the super delegates vote with the state winner and Clinton still wins I will consider voting straight Democratic while holding my nose. Just so we are clear, Bernie gets Washington supers, Clinton gets South Carolina supers for example. Pretty fair, I think.May 11th Update:Bernie won West Virginia by 10 points, but nets 5 delegates.The current deficit is about 284 pledges delegates. The are just over 1000 delegates left.What does it mean? I don't know. The math exists for a win, it doesn't seem likely. Especially when 10 nets 5.The convention could get interesting, but I doubt superdelegates will flip.I would like Bernie to get the supers from states that he won. If that is enough to win then great. If not then we are in trouble. I hate to say it, but Clinton should be the nominee if she wins by pledged + states won super delegates. The exception would be an indictment actually happening (doubtful). In that case I would hope Clinton would have the sense to drop out.I think she is going to lose to Trump. They are neck and neck in PA, FL, and OH polling. Trump will pull in voters not picked up in polling.It is a tough call to have or even to allow superdelegates to determine the nominee. Like I wrote, it unlikely they will flip. The Establishment got us here by relentlessly pushing Clinton, I don't see them changing now.In my opinion, we are screwed either way. Trump or Clinton. Which is less bad? Miracles happen right? Our future is in the hands of the remaining states. California voters, please vote for Bernie! Things are looking good in most of the other remaining states. It's all for nothing without California.May 18th Update:No shockers tonight. Clinton apparently won Kentucky by about 1800 votes. Couple interesting points though--Clinton got over 200k less votes than in 2008. Bernie got over a thousand more than Obama in 08.MSM will call it a momentum blocking win for Clinton. Remember this was a closed primary and Bernie lost by .4%. Clinton and surrogates will call it a win. I do think the "powers" will be looking at Clinton. She outspent Bernie and campaigned hard to basically tie? The pundits won't talk about how weak she is looking. I think they are starting to see it. No real change in the delegate math, last I checked it was 25 each.At least Bernie finally notched his first closed primary win in Oregon. He'll pick up a handful of delegates. After tonight I estimate him to trail between 280 to 278.6-2 Update:It's seems like an eternity since the last primary. According to some polls Bernie is in a statistical tie in CA. He has a good chance in all but New Jersey.It is maddening that the media is saying Clinton will clinch the nomination in New Jersey. They continue to include the super delegates in the count. She will not clinch the nomination in pledged delegates in NJ or all of the primaries on the 7th. Clinton is a horrible candidate. I can't believe someone on MSNBC stated that she "seems like she is lying". If some in Liberal media are jumping ship is it a far stretch to see some superdelegates flip?Looking forward to a very positive post on the 7th.June 8th Update:Dissapointing results all the way around. NJ and NM was expected, South Dakota was not. The California results are troubling. I check Reddit last night and many were reporting voting problems including affiliation changes. There were hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots cast which will take a while to count.There is no way Clinton won by 13 points. I suspect she will win, the question is by how much.There has been so many voting related issues, media bias, and dirty politics this election that I just don't know what to say. Disgusted comes to the top of the list. I am profoundly saddened that Bernie will not be the nominee. There is no next time for Bernie. I guarantee that I will not vote for Clinton. I will either write in Bernie or stay home. My God, it really is Trump or Clinton. Come January of next year we will have a very unpopular President. FBI? I am not holding my breath.Thanks for reading and keeping up with my journey through this roller coaster ride of a primary.Stick a fork in me, I am done.