Last night two volunteers from my work invited me to see a play with them. We saw The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ. It was hilarious. I had no idea that there was space for this type of discussion in Singapore, so it was also pretty enlightening to me.
Essentially, JBJ is a super controversial guy. The way I heard it - he's the only person who has been willing to stand up to Lee Kwan Yew and tell him he's corrupt and talk about nepotism, etc. He was the head of the opposition party in Singapore, and apparently even if people agree with him, they don't vote for him. He's just a lone dude.
This play was basically making fun of Singapore politics and culture. They talked about how difficult it is to get things done with crazy bureaucracy and about how people don't like to talk about controversial things. One of the ladies I was with said that people will go to these plays, and they'll laugh, but then they won't talk about it. They said that there are spaces to complain and make fun of Singapore, but they're not common. It was really funny.
The best part was that this morning I was meeting with the president of our organization, and her phone rang and talked to someone for a couple of minutes. At the end, she said, "Okay, JBJ, thanks for calling. I'll talk to you soon." I asked her whom she was talking to, and then I told her I saw a play about him just last night!
Chag Sameach.
Happy moon(cake) festival.
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