My father is the reason I have been reminiscing about Chinese New Years past. He had Chinese friends, some of whom were rich contractors and businessmen, and others who were country bumpkins. They walked into our lives because they could hardly speak or write English and they needed father's help with writing their letters and other documents for various official or legal purposes. Some of the men were clients of the law firm at Winchester House downtown where he worked as a legal clerk. By visiting our house, they avoided Shenton Way prices.

My father would type away on his trusty Olivetti while these Chinese men hung about drinking black coffee. Most conversed in bazaar Malay but a few could speak only dialect and so they had relatives or friends in tow as translators. We would see some of them for weeks before they disappeared, never to appear in our lives again. But there were others who maintained ties with my father over the years for assorted legal wrangles. They were the ones who made Chinese New Year come alive for my siblings and me.

I remember a Mr Lee, a small, bald man with a wide smile who ran a concessions store at Roxy cinema in Katong. This was in the early 1970s. He was grateful for my father's help and visited our house every New Year, bearing oranges and packets of nuts and snacks from his store. He also gave us hongbao, causing an outburst of joy and familial feeling: my older brothers who ordinarily would not give me the time of day were suddenly brimming with offers to help me spend my newfound wealth.

Mr Lee also gave us bags of firecrackers, which my brothers would set off almost the minute he left. They were fun, but no match for the bamboo poles of firecrackers that shopkeepers in my neighbourhood showed off in the evening. Our street was called Jalan Lapang, or Clear Street, but on the eve of New Year, it was anything but that. Loud pops and crackles filled the air, kids would be out in their pajamas, some in awe, others limp with fear as they hid behind older relatives. After the ban in 1972, our street never had these shows of light and sound.

The next day, you could hear the gambling in neighbours’ houses. Our neighbour on the left celebrated Christmas and Chinese New Year with equal gusto and we would receive plates of tarts and kueh bangkit twice a year. On each occasion, my mother would be assured that they used pots and pans reserved strictly for cookies, not meats. Then, there was Baba Tan, a rich elderly Peranakan who bought kueh from my grandmother’s stall on the street outside our house and hung about with other patrons (he was the first person I heard the words 'Tuan Allah' from, except he said 'Ala', his Hokkien-trained tongue could not wrestle with the double L in the Arabic word). He would also give me hongbao, sometimes twice, because he was forgetful.

The best part of the New Year would be the visiting with my father. I remember going to the houses of two men in particular, Yam Peng and Mr Tan, somewhere in Siglap. Both were businessmen whose fortunes seesawed over the decades. Yam Peng died a few years ago, I saw in an obituary, his real fortune a large extended family that mourned him. One visit to Mr Tan’s house was memorable. His New Year gatherings were lavish and, sometime in the afternoon, a troupe of lion dancers appeared at his front gate, cymbals crashing, drums thumping. The fiery-eyed lions looked very menacing and the sounds were just too much. I ran and hid between the fridge and a cabinet counter in the kitchen. But fear gripped me all over again as I turned to look at the counter. A bowl of blackened sauce and chunks of what must have been pork stood inches away. So deeply ingrained - even at that young age - was my aversion to pork, I felt sure I was going to faint. But children are resilient, and soon I was back playing, tucking into loveletters and, I left patting my pocket full of hongbao. The horror of leaping lions and stewed pork was forgotten.

My father embodied what it meant to be colour blind. He had friends from all stations in life and all races. His friends took him for what he was and he, them. Questions of religion did not quite enter the picture and even if they did, they were elided with grace or accepted with commonsense. Some cynics say the reason the older generation was more accepting of difference was because people were not very particular then about their religious practices. You could take the easy way out and blame that, or you could try. Yet, I recall that Muslims were strict about their food even then. At Mr Tan’s, a Muslim cook brought in the Muslim meals, with minimum fuss.

Perhaps it was easier for my father’s generation to forge friendships across racial lines because class distinctions were less apparent. People lived in more mixed housing. The street I grew up in had bungalows as well as kampong houses. The kampong we moved into later had bungalows and even a tiny block of low-rise flats. The middle and upper classes were not ensconced in their private enclaves. They had to go out beyond their charmed circle often enough for daily interactions and for business.

Back then, you never knew who you could end up being friends with.

I don’t know whose side God is on in this race and if Mr McCain even has time for God right now, considering how he is criss-crossing two time zones to tour seven states in these last 24 hours - Florida, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico and Tennessee - before going home to Arizona.

All the polls show that if voters act the way they spoke to pollsters, victory is Mr Obama’s by a landslide.

Can Mr McCain still pull off a surprise and earn the title the Comeback Kid all over again? If he does, pollsters and the media will go into paroxysms of guilt, anger and recriminations, for certain.

But assuming the pollsters are right, the math seems to be against him. The Democratic candidate is ahead in every state won by Democrats John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. In short, he appears to have closed the deal in the Democratic strongholds.

He is also ahead in states that Republican president George W. Bush won in 2004 and 2000 - Virginia, Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico. Mr McCain has to win the traditional Republican states and claw back Mr Obama's advantage in these states, especially those with huge electoral votes like Florida (27) and Ohio (20). Not only that, he needs to snatch from Mr Obama those states where the Democrat already is in the clear lead, like Pennyslvania (21) and Virginia (13). So maybe Mr Buchanan is right. Mr McCain needs a miracle.

Given how sweet these numbers look for Mr Obama, one should be optimistic of his chances. But listening to old-timers - both here at home and friends in the US - who say they have seen race intrude into voters' choices, one can't help but feel a little uneasy these final hours before polling day. Just to drag my mood down further, one could also look at this other figure - the national poll that shows Mr McCain is ahead by 13 points among whites across the nation.

But the rational part of me says, then again, this is not a national election but many, many elections fought in vastly different states. A white American friend also dismisses the race issue. "We are already a postracial society," she says. What does that mean, I ask. "We've gone past race. We don't notice it or even if we do, we don't talk about it, or we appreciate it. It's what you make of your life, not the skin you're born in." She lives in New York.

My colleague in the US too believes race has taken a backseat in this race. Not that it's gone away but just that it's given way to worries over the economy and that's what is giving Mr Obama the righteous wind he spoke about in finishing this election the winner.

What will his victory say about race in America? What of his defeat?

Either way, a lot. If he wins, he makes history. If he loses, he also makes history because the record will show that a black man, no matter how qualified, will have aways to go yet.

So let's not count your chads yet. Look out for these things instead these next 24 hours:

- Voter turnout - If they come in record numbers, Obama’s the man. Democrats are notoriously bad at coming out to vote. This time, it will be different, they claim. We’ll see.

- Man vs machine - If the machines or whatever crude implements used in some places do not break down, he should be home clear. If not, it could get ugly.

- The voting patterns in some key places. I quote veteran pollster John Zogby here who says: “Since McCain must hold all of the states normally won by Republicans ("Red" states) or win Pennsylvania (the only "Blue"/Democratic state he is currently contesting) if Pennsylvania goes to Obama, and if Obama also wins any one of the previously "Red" states of Florida, Virginia or Ohio, the election will be clearly his. Victory, for Obama, in these states would indicate a trend that could also carry over into other red states, namely Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico.”

But after all is said and done, the race thing is still THE story, if you ask me. If Mr Obama pulls off a big victory, he will make minorities in other places think of possibilities rather than parameters, of speaking up rather than staying down, of hope rather than hate.

Mr Obama's rallies over the past months have ended with the Stevie Wonder song "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours" playing each time he ends his speech. The world wants him, if the results of all the international surveys conducted are any indication. Is he yours, America?

The truth is I find myself irresistibly drawn to Mrs Sarah Palin, with a mix of fear and loathing and awe and grudging admiration. Mr John McCain and the Republicans are asking Americans to accept that she is fit to sit a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world. But even if Mr McCain loses, which he probably will, she’ll be hanging around. Her mascara-extended lashes are batting away at the 2012 presidential elections.

Can she lead a diverse population of 300 million, a country with half the world’s military spending at its disposal and the world’s largest economy?  How did she achieve what many other hugely more able candidates – think of poor Mrs Hillary Clinton here – tried to, only to stumble and fail?

As Mr McCain’s aides have sheepishly admitted, the vetting stamps weren’t even whipped out for her papers before the Republican candidate decided she was his veep partner. For a while, it looked like an inspired choice that would invigorate the Republican ground. And it did.  But only for a while, before the carefully-crafted image of empathetic hockey mom cracked to reveal what many describe as an incurious mind and an ill-disciplined politician with a knack for going off-message.

That’s just her political chops. Let’s not go into such alleged indiscretions as the abuse of petty power, from wreaking revenge on a public servant because of a family squabble to claiming expenses for personal travels.

Already, more voters have concluded that she is not qualified to be a vice-president, dragging down Mr McCain’s chances. The latest New York Times/CBS News poll out over the weekend found 59 per cent of voters believing her to be unqualified to be veep, compared to 50 per cent a week earlier. Voters also said they had much more confidence in Mr Obama to pick qualified people to serve in his administration than they did Mr McCain.

Still, the question has to be asked: what was Mr McCain thinking and how did she get so far?

Would someone like Mrs Sarah Palin get within sniffing distance of being, say, Deputy Prime Minister in Singapore? On the one hand, one could argue, why not? After all, what is our problem that only deadly serious types like Prof S. Jayakumar and Mr Wong Kan Seng should reach such positions? Even the handful of women leaders we do not have Mrs Palin’s casual charm.

Mrs Palin is out there shaking up and talking down to Washington DC’s male establishment. In contrast, Singapore’s female politicians are happy to be team players and you would not catch them whipping up a crowd with declarations like, “Hey I think it’s time the Istana had a taste of girl power.”

But these are all probably good things and in keeping with the political culture where one cannot be seen to be coveting power. One is called upon to serve and one accepts gratefully but also with grim resignation the sacrifices one makes of family time, career opportunities and private space.

In the US, and mostly everywhere else, it is OK to show you want power. In Singapore, such open ambition and reliance on charisma is a liability. I dare wager that is true not just for the ruling party but also the Workers’ Party.

Mrs Palin would probably not be invited to a PAP tea party of say a decade ago. More recently, she might have snuck in under the banner of diversity, with the PAP anxious to show that it has representatives of different backgrounds and generations.

Even if she were picked as a candidate, would she rise in stature and to significance in the Singapore system? Probably not. The qualities that the Singapore government values in its ministers are glaringly absent from Mrs Palin. 

The PAP system is not perfect and suffers its own weaknesses. But, I am quite relieved actually that its recruitment system would not take a Palin-like candidate very far. I can almost see the late Mr Lim Kim San pursing his lips and casting an acerbic remark about her, the way he did over some other candidates that journalists would mention at our internal meetings when he was our company chairman.

The late Mr Lim was a sharp talent scout for the PAP and one hopes that the same tough, unsentimental scrutiny of candidates is a tradition that continues to this day.

So, Mrs Palin?  A backbencher, perhaps. Hip hop dancing at Chingay Parades, why not.

But it’s good to know that the decisions that matter would be made not by the likes of her, but more by politicians in the Hillary Clinton mode: smart and tough and who will earn people’s respect sooner than she is relatable or liked.