26 Jun 23 Monday Briefing
Not the usual, however
What a week, dear readers. We started the past week learning about about composites and the dangers of the ocean from someone way more famous as a film director than a deep-sea explorer and ended it wondering what the hell is going on in Russia (hot takes welcome in the comments).
I could attempt to recap that, but there’s so much ongoing chatter that we’re better off monitoring the situation than recapping.
On a personal note, my week ended with news from an ex-colleague that one of our mutual colleagues from 18 years ago had finally passed after a long, painful four years battling cervical cancer. An utterly tragic, possibly preventable death, given that she was only 60. Growing up in Malaysia and Singapore in the 70s, especially the former, does not necessarily guarantee great health outcomes. It is unclear if early HPV vaccination would have made a difference.
I attended her final send-off at Singapore’s Mandai crematorium this Monday morning, together with my ex-colleague and his two children, who were toddlers back when we worked together. They are now articulate young adults in university. As I move inexorably towards middle age, I am starting to attend more funerals than weddings and births, and these occasions become reunions for the living as much as memorials for the dead.
It’s hard to escape my occupational hazard of futures thinking even during such occasions. Land-scarce Singapore faces challenges when it comes to our dead. I noticed more construction around the crematorium to accommodate more niches, because it seems like our current culture prefers tangible resting places than to scatter ashes or keep urns at home. Space is definitely way more finite for those whose religions require burial, and in any case graves have to be exhumed after 15 years and re-interred in smaller plots, or cremated, if their religion permits.
Changing hearts and minds of the living towards non-land solutions is the biggest challenge so far, I think. Singapore’s Government has even taken end-of-life planning online, perhaps to cater for an ageing digital population. More eco-friendly solutions are undergoing feasibility studies, but the majority still stick with tradition rather than land-saving alternatives such as human composting/green burials/sea burials.
I reference how Singapore will need to make nice with our closest neighbours in the near future in my post for World Futures Day 2023. If Singapore is to continue peopling its shores, its dead will have to make way for the living, religious and cultural beliefs will have to adapt, or the living will have to move to other countries with more space.
As for the dead? Save the restless ones, I don’t think they care.