yesterday i had 80minutes between appointments and wandered into 8Q SAM and immediately had a man in the high castle moment when one of the exhibits was of an alternate history in which singapore and malaysia had not separated, and all those familiar national day slogans and logos were reimagined as those of a single nation under merger, and somehow that was more unsettling than i expected (because of course, our generation remembers the 1997 merger-scare controversy. in our heart of hearts we do fear this alternate history, and are secretly relieved.)