By Liew Hanqing

I WENT clubbing on Halloween night dressed as US vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

I had my brown wig, my Tina Fey glasses - even a faux campaign placard that screamed 'McCain-Palin 2008'.

I thought it was a clever idea. I was wrong.

For almost the entire evening, all I got were bewildered stares from my fellow party-goers.

I asked one of my friends if it could be that the young party-goers - many who looked between 18 and their early 20s - haven't heard about Sarah Palin.

She replied, rather placidly: 'Not surprising.'

It would not come as a surprise, then, that even as the world buzzes over newly-elected US president Barack Obama, that same chatter seems conspicuously absent in local cyberspace, which is usually loud and diverse with opinion.

Netizens who frequent popular local forums, usually up-to-date with chatter on the latest happenings, have posted few threads about Mr Obama's momentous victory that made him the first black American president.

It is strange, given that no US president has ever energised the emotions and enthusiasm of America's youth, and marshalled their support the way Mr Obama has - both online and on college campuses.

One local forum thread, posted yesterday, questioned: 'What's the difference between Obama and McCain?'

The thread drew just three measly responses, one of which said: 'No difference. One is Pepsi, the other is Coke.'

On another, more active thread on another local forum, a netizen mused: 'Okay, Obama won. More important is how the market reacts to this tonight... Will the US market free-fall?'

Another joked: 'Can Obama tell LTA to take away the ERP gantry at Eunos?'

Undergraduate and former Nanyang Technological University hall president Balachandran Krishnamurthi, 23, said he was not surprised by the apparent apathy of Singaporean youths to the US election.

Apathy

He said: 'Most of the election hype is in the news. You don't hear people in the streets talking about it.

'When my peers meet up, they don't talk about US politics. They're more concerned with their own issues, like studying for their exams.'

Mr Balachandran, who had been supporting Republican Senator John McCain, said he had been keeping up with the elections through online news websites.

'But ultimately, I think many people here feel the US elections don't really affect them,' he said.

Blogger Gerald Giam, who writes for The Online Citizen, said there is a need for Singaporean youths to be more in touch with global current affairs.

He said: 'We are not mighty America. We are tiny Singapore. Unlike Americans, we cannot afford to be insular.

'We have to know about what goes on in the world because we depend on the world for our trade and survival. The world does not revolve around Singapore.'

Even keeping an interest in the smaller South-east Asian region is just as important.

He said: 'The typical TV-watching Singaporean, myself included, knows more about American and Korean culture than about Malaysian and Indonesian culture.

'I think that is a problem which needs to be addressed if we are going to realise our vision of being a global city.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on Nov 8, 2008.