by Panu Wongcha-um

Historical research is one of the last things that come to mind when activities-to-do in Singapore are concerned. My past visits to the island-state, as well as my past dealings with Singaporeans and expatriates in Singapore, have left me with the impression that Singapore is a port of call for bankers and financiers, rather than intellectuals. There are several reasons for this perhaps.

First it seems that everywhere I go in Singapore, I cannot escape investment bankers. I constantly find myself in the company of people where some of them are either investment bankers or investment banker-to-be. Another reason is that a lot of people that I have met in Singapore are not shy in asking about how much money I am earning. This question is asked with even more distress after I tell them that I am a history grad student.

Conversational etiquette and decency aside, levels of income and successful careers seem to be the ultimate fixation for people living in Singapore. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that. Career ambition and richness are the natural aspirations for the middle-class, and the socio-cultural surroundings of Singapore certainly encourage such ambitions.

Another group of people that I regularly run into and end up having conversations with are taxi drivers. Here is a group of people with the same aspirations as far as making more money and earning a living are concerned. But unlike the bankers and financiers (and those financiers- and bankers-wannabes) who talked about work in term of stepping stones to further successes, the taxi drivers are more anxious about real concerns like making enough money to pay the bills, sending their kids to school, and having enough to live on when they are old and can no longer work. As mundane as their preoccupations sound, conversations with taxi drivers are far from boring. In the past, I have run into many interesting taxi drivers around the world who have told me fascinating and colourful stories. Taxi drivers in Singapore are no exception.

In my experience, conversations with taxi drivers are often one-way: that is only the taxi driver talks, with me hardly have any space to articulate myself - apart from regular nodding or grunts of approval and disapproval. Apart from the silent ones, taxi drivers in Singapore more often than not would go off on their own tangent and provide the most interesting monologues on topics ranging from football, local and global politics, through to music and history. Certainly, there is no such thing as a proverbial taxi driver; each is as unique as the other.

The very driven business-as-usual attitude of Singapore has given the island-state the reputation of being boring. This is countered to some lengths in rather self-promoting claims that it’s a cosmopolitan hub with hedonistic activities on offer. However, both representations seem to echo only the voices of the upper middle-class locals as well as expatriates.

Listening to countless taxi driver monologues, Singapore is far from boring or in need of extravagant claims. Like finding unique voices in historical research, such chance encounters with interesting taxi drivers reveal hidden and rich stories of characters living in the so-called “heartlands” of Singapore, characters that a foreigner like myself may miss in the hustle-bustle of the island-state. Such representations moreover drown out the voices of those who also call the not-so-picturesque HDB skyline “home”.

What’s more fascinating is the special air of ordinariness that I get from talking to, or more precisely being talked to by these taxi drivers. This air of ordinariness is the inspiring feeling that despite of what you do as a career, it does not define who you are - something that is far more extraordinary to have in the high-pace cultural landscape of Singapore.

In a sense, this ordinariness translates into an individual ability of being able to be reflective of all things around without being overly concerned about social mobility or that the fear of speaking out would threaten life ambitions. Content and substance of these monologues aside, the ordinary spirit of the taxi drivers is admirable in a place where the highly educated and highly mobile aspire to be extraordinary.

Imitating the social aspiration to be extraordinary, life in a Singapore’s university reveals a very healthy competitive atmosphere, but without the balance of reflective ability that I think is required in a place of learning. Listening to the occasional monologues from the “uncles” and “aunties” behind the taxi wheels, reminded me that innovation and creativity comes from being carefree rather than obsessing with ambition.

The random monologues also remind me of an imperative responsibility overlooked at times: that the opportunities of the quest for knowledge come with a price for the society at large. Without considering the characters, the aspirations, and the spirit of the ordinary men and women, who have given people like me an opportunity to do research here, we would only be mere mercenaries, partaking unworthily in the quest for truth.

In researching as well as teaching history in Singapore, I have to navigate through the steps of being career-driven academically without losing sight of the carefree spirit that is also required in places of learning. After all, history, being part of the humanities branch of knowledge, requires us to think about the voices of people in the past, the process of editorializing and representing these voices, as well as an awareness of how our present translates, understands, and consumes the cultural landscape of the past.

In future-driven Singapore, practising history can be quite a difficult ordeal because the engine of the island-state is more concerned with progress, and less so with reflective gaze. The stories told by taxi drivers have pointedly reminded me that there is more to this place than pure business or ensuring a series of ambitious life stepping-stones, and in the process, convincing me that perhaps there is a place for history in Singapore after all.

The author is currently a MA candidate in the Department of History, National University of Singapore.

Tags: Singapore, taxi drivers, telling stories

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Impressions | Conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.