In a crowded country

Have you heard of the recent survey which showed that we are the least happy bunch of people in Asia?

It was given a fair amount of coverage by the local media. This is just that kind of stuff that sends journalists and social commentators in a tizzy--on a talkshow one of them even started to quote philosophers and scholars about the meaning of life etc, ad nauseum. Please.

But the media have gotten the facts wrong. It is the happy planet index (HPI), not the happy folks index. It measures "the efficiency with which countries convert the earth's finite resources into well-being experienced by their citizens". i.e. keeping a healthy balance between earth's resources and human needs and wants. The website also provides a survey to let you measure your own HPI. Mine is lower than the national and worldwide averages. In fact, the survey says that I might as well have been living in Cameroon or Ethiopia. Oops.

What can be the people be unhappy about? My totally unscientific, unscholarly, biased, and frivolous explanation for our (and especially my) low HPI is that we are cooped up in a country too small to accommodate all of us. Crowds are everywhere, and they tire me out. I went to a shopping mall last Sunday and had to jostle with others on the train, the bus, the mall, and the shops. The constant drone gets to me. I'm tired of being elbowed, pushed, bummed into every time I decide to venture into town during the weekend, or the mad rush for a seat on the train, or having to endure queue jumpers. We need more room, seriously.

I feel hemmed in not just physically but also psychologically. A colleague from a neighbouring country commented that the people here are some of the most avid travellers she knows. It's not surprising--being in the country too long without reprieve makes me feel numb, like I've been anesthesised to prevent overstimulation and encroachment from the overcrowding, noise, stress, work, info. My senses are dulled and I seem to view everything around me in a post-anesthesia, indifferent daze. Maybe this is what those sociologists meant when they say urbanites live very atomised lives.

Consider this: in the list of countries by population density in Wikipedia, Sing*p*re ranks number 4, more than 6,000 folks per km sq. Other countries that we assume are as urbanised and populated as ours have much lower numbers. Japan: 340, South Korea: 480, Taiwan: 600+. Australia, 1 of my fav countries and whose people I consider to be perennially of good cheer, has only 3 peeps per km sq.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that the Aussies are even lower down the HPI. I was flummoxed. What do those people who have a whole continent to themselves have to complain about? That's when I remember that I read recently that Australia is also the driest continent on earth, with conditions so harsh as to make most of its interiors uninhabitable. They have the room--they just can't use it. Gee. No wonder the people behind the HPI renamed it the (un)happy planet index.