Saturday, September 03, 2011

Circus of Life

This is an interesting installation put up by students from ITE Central. The art pieces are not exceptionally attractive... however, what caught my attention was the observations of the lesser noticed side of our beloved country. It did not portray youth or energy, but an area that some of us actually refused to acknowledge this side of our society.

Put it across more bluntly, it's showcasing the less desireable side of the "World Class Country" that we strived to become... In fact, this is not new to us... we have seen articles in the newspapers that talked about the elderly were employed to clean up dining areas (in food courts), pushing trolleys (in the airport), etc. In fact, some people (especially the foreigners) asked why do they still need work despite they are so old (some, seem to be in their 70s!). Why they are not staying at home to be taken care by their children?


Just to pick a few art pieces....
1, Does this old lady 'look familiar'? Well, we find many of them in food courts all over the island. What do they normally do? When we finish our meal, they'll come over to pick up the bowls, etc and put them onto a trolley before sending them to the 'backyard' to wash up. They are, somehow, indispensible because the pleasant environment nowadays largely depend on them... if one day, they fail to report to work, just wonder... would we be able to find clean tables for dining easily? Hm... #iwonder...

2. Next, the flyer/brochure distributor... we can find them anywhere, in particular at shopping malls, MRT/bus interchanges... sometimes even at the void deck of the flats. They have a common mission, indeed, to have all the flyers given out. Well, you can't just dump the flyers if you can't finish distributing! Die die must give out. What do passer-bys normally do? Just take and throw away. The flyer/brochure distributors don't like me for sure 'cos each time I would wave my hand to signal to them that I don't want. Yup, am making life tougher for them.


3. Someone with a broom who sweeps the floor at public places... do you recognise them? Have we ever shown our appreciation to them? Without them, how would Singapore look like? #iwonder Do we still recall how much litter was gathered at Orchard Road about the Great Singapore Swing? Well, well... so much about civic-mindedness... but we can't do 'away' without them.


Click HERE to view the album in Facebook


No comments: