Columns of white light penetrate every nook and cranny of our city. Our world is a world devoid of darkness. Even with a long roll of blackout blinds, I cannot protect my room from the invasion of this monstrous lighting. The harsh yellow light slips through the gaps, burning up my little room like strips of fire.

I don't understand. What is the purpose of all this lighting? Floods of light all switched on simultaneously sharply at 7pm preventing the transition from day to night.

This envelope of lighting is all around. From the massive colonies of HDB flats to the unpopulated school and office buildings. Are we this afraid of the dark?

Singapore is a land where no ghosts roam. We are clean and efficient. Bright and technologically advanced. Any quiet spirits would have escaped in fear.

We vacuum the undesirable. Set things in order. Place the beings in nicely packed boxes. Enforce tight laws to keep our civilization running like a well-oiled machine.

The ghosts? We have no room for them. We have a massive population to fit in our tiny island. Shadows, darkness, the old and the reminiscence. These are boring obsessions to be wiped off with our rapid progress.

In place of them, we have lights. Stadium lights, HDB lights, bridge lights, office lights, school lights. A massive tsunami of lighting never to be switched off.

It is interesting how we have funny schemes talking about the saving of electricity by using some so-called energy-efficient light bulbs, refrigerators, air-conditioners and those sorts.

Want to save electricity? Just switched off all those damn lights shining purposelessly and causing insomnia.

But we can't...

Light. It is our national identity.

Lights not for reading, not for eating, not for living but prying eyes that infiltrate every Singaporean household. Light is our constant reminder to be productively efficient whether we are eating, sleeping or working.

We need light so that our little programmed minds will never forget about all those KPIs, GPAs, and other alphabets. We need light so that we can never idle and have a moment of peace. We need light so that we can work like mindless robots 24/7 to keep our brave new world running in the path of excellence and beyond.