Be honest.
When it comes to Singapore, most of us love to slam the authorities, nitpick about local habits, gripe about the traffic, rant about housing prices, go postal on the foreign worker issue and much, much more.
So it's rather nice to see people, other like expatriates who tend to wax lyrical about our nation, to declare what they actually like about Singapore.
The folks at digital marketing agency Tribal DDB have put together a cute website called www.welike.sg "to rally Singaporeans to connect digitally and share their LIKES about Singapore with National Day just around the corner."
It basically lists out all sorts of quirky things that we do in our little island that define us as Singaporeans - including "we like choping seats with tissue paper" and "we like to buy 4D". It also allows you to add to the list.
Giggles aside, the idea is to share via social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook that you like Singapore, and list what you like about it. By pressing a button or two on the website, a link to the whole long list of "likes" representing Singaporeans' collective identity will appear on your Twitter or Facebook account.
(Only the URL to the welike.sg page shows up, so don't worry about spamming your friends with the super-long list.)
Tribal DDB says that more than 20,000 people have showed their "likes" over just the last few days and even government agencies like the Singapore Tourism Board and the official site of the National Day Parade have posted their "like" on their Facebook wall.
There've apparently been more than 20,000 people who have liked the site in just a couple of days.
Said the agency: "We hope that this story will inspire people as they read and connect and laugh and debate what people LIKES about Singapore!" (sic)
Being Singaporeans, the "likes" sarcastically include dislikes, such as "we like referee kayu" and "we like using phones while driving". I suppose, even with the best of intentions, there is just no stopping Singaporeans from complaining - a fact pithily captured by the exclamation "we like complaining for the sake of complaining".
But, since National Day is just round the corner, I've actually gone through the entire list and picked out 10 of my favourites (not in order):
- "We like cheap, reliable public transport."
- "We like how Singapore has so much greenery."
- "We like how it's safe."
- "We like roti prata."
- "We like upgrading - ourselves, our flats, everything."
- "We like the sound of bells when the ice-cream uncle comes driving around the HDB estate."
- "We like to eat black carrot cake with a lot of chilli."
- "We like the peace we have."
- "We like drinkable water from our taps."
- "We like saying the National Day Parade is cheesy but we watch it anyway."
And here's one that I've made up: "We like National Day because it is my schnauzer's birthday."
Okay, I'm being silly, I know. But that's the point of the website so make some up yourself and post it here (and/or on the welike.sg site). But be nice, please. It is National Day weekend after all.