Broken clockwork

lasts forever, but doesn't

2023 Aug 2 Wed 22:32. Bishan, Singapore.

The year revolves around 4 terms, 2 semesters. It is an interminable Mon to Fri of workdays, and the weekend is more overtime too, so you cling on, of course, to so-called public holidays and school vacations, and desperately hope you don't have to be indentured on those nights too.

No, work from home is not the promising future, but the denial of your employer using your residence as workplace for free. And remote work is trapping you even at your leisure food and drinks, your leisure malls and shops and buys, using that retail space you pay for, so that they also don't.

And in the end, still making you feel liable to return back to your external offices and slave commutes back and forth anyway, it's your fault to be tha majority of workers.

But your serfdom began in your earliest educational years, when your parents try so hard to take away your unstructured, spontaneous, only truly creative freedom, at the earliest possible beginnings of your conscious existence -

assisted conception (because nature is ailing…) ; playgroup; kindergarten regimen; pre-school early intervention for special needs (forbid, not our child, please! It's for life!); tuition sweatshops and enrichment skunk works.

And so breaks are Christmas to prepare for a spirally more demanding curriculum next year; Chinese new year for your first crucible common tests; end of first term for enforced camps away from home; mid year vacation not to rest from first exams but to be busier for rest of year.

No spring flowers in the south in September, because crucial life-then-death nationals come; then finally the packed year-end cultural mandate of high-stress overseas travel, because everyone's doing it.

Adult labour, you were well prepared by our educational system, to comply with company culture, organisational politics, and national policies, henceforth from 20s to 60s, and even after you retire.

And before you finally die after a dragged ageing, your transformations will be recommended and complied with by the latest fashions and trends, your religion being whatever those you hold in authority tell you to listen and just follow.

OK, here comes the end of free post and paywall break. Your clockwork generations from hospital births past open-shelter wakes come crashing down. Not that Covid first rehearsal. Really, more thoroughly.