Some stupid Singaporeans just don’t bloody get it….
I’m busy with work at the moment but this is one of those quick
rants that I just have to write in order to let off some steam
because of some bloody stupid idiots on Facebook. My last post went
viral in a big way, I have had 36,000 hits on my blog in the last
16 hours and in less than 24 hours, it has already become the 5th
most popular blog post of all time on my blog and it’ll probably be
the 3rd or 4th most popular post by tomorrow. Whilst I am always
glad that my message of support to Leslie Chew attracted so much
attention, there was one comment on theonlinecitizen’s Facebook
page which well and truly pissed me off. This idiot Tang Jon wrote,
“Limpeh is FT alien in limpeh’s country”.
OK, let me lay out a few facts for you since you’re clearly a
fucking idiot. I am not an alien in the UK, I hold a British
passport, not a Singaporean passport today. London is home for me,
I have lived here for many years before deciding to cut off my ties
to Singapore by taking up British citizenship and renouncing my
Singaporean passport at the same time. Ironically, I had no problem
whatsoever returning to Singapore to work as a British expatriate
for a short stint in 2011- that just goes to show you that I can
have the best of both worlds should I ever decide to work in
Singapore again, I don’t need a Singaporean passport given the
PAP’s open door policy on foreign
talents.
Am I an alien in my country, the UK? To answer that question, we
have to first understand the question. Now I have written a piece a
while ago about my experiences working in Prague, in the Czech
Republic where I had encountered migrants from China who speak
neither Czech nor English. Certainly for them, it was a terribly
lonely, alienating experience to face such a linguistic barrier,
being trapped in the very small Chinese speaking community in
Prague, unable to communicate with the rest of the Czechs in the
city. Indeed, most of them are on limited work visas tied to their
jobs in the Chinese restaurant trade and without a decent command
of the Czech language, few of them have any hope of gaining any
form of permanent residency in the country. For those Chinese
migrant workers in Prague, of course it they feel like aliens in
someone else’s country.
I look at the experiences of many of my Singaporean peers who
have chosen to spend their adult lives in Singapore and whilst
alienation may not be the best word to describe their experiences,
they do often complain that they are treated like second class
citizens in their own country. Where do I begin? How about the way
scholarships have been given out generously to PRCs like Sun Xu and
Malaysians like Alvin Tan whilst deserving local students are
passed over? How about the way Singaporean men have the burden of
national service followed by years of reservist liabilities whilst
having to compete with foreign workers who have neither NS
liabilities nor CPF payments to meet? Or how
about the way the governments pays no heed whatsoever to the
people’s wishes and do what the hell they want on the issue of the
population white paper? The sense of frustration is palpable and
the reason why they all put up with being second class citizens in
their own country is common. “My parents are here, yes life here
sucks but what can I do? I hate it here but I have no choice but to
be here.”
I get the feeling that many of my peers remain in Singapore by
default, rather than by choice. There is a very big difference
between the two options. Some of them are luckier than others in
that they do enjoy a warm, loving relationship with their parents
and their other family members, giving them a very good reason to
want to remain in Singapore – but not everyone is so lucky and for
those who don’t, I really don’t know why they stay on in Singapore
since the government has long jilted them like an unwanted ex.
Whether you feel like an alien where you live, whether you feel
happy where you live depends on many factors – do you have a good
job? Do you have many friends who are there for you? Do you have a
good work life balance? Do you earn plenty of money? Do you have
leisure activities that you enjoy? Are you in a happy relationship?
Are you pursuing your dreams or are you merely doing a job you hate
to pay the bills? Do you feel thankful for the life you have or do
you stay awake at night worrying about your problems? Are you in
good health? Do you have the money to enjoy the fun things in life
you like? The list of question goes on – however, one theme is
clear: you reap what you sow.
Choosing to spend your adult life in the country you were born
does not guarantee happiness or help you with any of the factors
listed above. It doesn’t make a difference whether you choose to
live your entire life in Ang Mo Kio or if you have done what I did
and have lived and worked all over the world in my adult life – if
you want to make somewhere ‘home’ then you need to invest a lot of
effort to make enough friends, develop meaningful relationships,
find your place in the local community… Are you ready for the
litmus test?
Imagine if you have had an accident and you sprained your ankle
– who would you be able to call to take you to the hospital for an
X-ray? Would you have a number of friends who will drop everything
and come and help you?
What if you encountered a difficult situation at work and needed
someone to talk to and give you advice – do you have people whom
you can totally trust and will be there for you, even at one in the
morning?
If you found yourself in financial difficulty, would you have
friends who wouldn’t hesitate to lend you money to make sure you
could pay your bills and not go hungry?
Or take what happened to me this week for example – I have some
legal documents to look at arising from a tenant. You see, I have a
flat which I rent out – I let that flat out through an estate agent
and there have been some problems with the contracts. I needed a
lawyer to go through the contracts to check if what the estate
agent had done was legit – so I texted a few of my lawyer friends
and David was the first to respond. He said, “just come over any
time, what do you need?” I jumped on my bike and got the documents
to him the same afternoon – he sorted it all out there and then.
Those of you in Singapore – would you be able to get free legal
advice like that amongst your network of friends? I know I can both
in Singapore and London because I have plenty of lawyer friends in
both London and Singapore. Actually quite a large number of my
former VJC peers have ended up in law…
You know, one thing I do when I catch up with my old
VJC friends is to talk about what everyone
else is doing, “have you heard about Jane? Where is she working
these days? Is she married? Do you talk to her on Facebook?” You
get the idea. It was through this grapevine that I heard about how
someone from my cohort killed himself a few years ago. Let’s call
him VJ since he was from VJC. Now VJ was
always a bit of a loner, he didn’t have many friends – he simply
seemed more interested in studying than making friends. When the
rest of us were playing basketball or just chatting, he would
simply be sitting in the corner, alone, reading a book. Nothing out
of the ordinary – we just thought he was shy and left him alone.
That was how he spent his two years at VJC.
The first sign that VJ was unstable was when we got our results
for our JC1 exams. He did reasonably well, I
thought, but clearly he wanted to do a lot better. He argued with
the teacher over the grading of his essay in quite an aggressive
manner, making the teacher feel quite uncomfortable. I remember her
saying, “Please calm down, we can always talk about what
improvements you could make in the future but I cannot go back and
change the grade and it is not for you to challenge my judgement.”
He then threatened to complain to the MOE
about the issue and started crying hysterically. That was when the
rest of us thought, good grief, this is just an internal exam?
Aiyoh.
You get it, his studies were the focus of his life – in the
absence of any friends, his relationship with his grades was quite
different from the rest of us. There was no doubt that he was
academically brilliant, but he clearly lacked the kind of skills to
make friends. During lunch breaks, he would always been seen on his
own and we thought, well he wants to be left alone and none of us
really made too much of an effort to approach him. Friends who knew
him back in his secondary school told us that he was like that too
back in his secondary school.
VJ disappeared from our radar when I enlisted in the army and I
never heard anything about him until fairly recently. It seems he
had a really terrible time in the army, because it was the kind of
environment where you really needed to get along with those around
you. Without the need to study and the validation of good exam
results, his raison d’etre was lost – he didn’t know what to do
with himself or how to get along with those around him. He was
constantly bullied throughout his army life and it was the dream of
going to university that kept him going. He did go to university,
graduated with flying colours and then the same problems persisted
as a working adult. I found out that he had a difficult boss who
made life difficult for him and well… one thing led to another, he
was passed over for a promotion despite being far more qualified
than the rest of his team. He tried to argue with that boss in the
same aggressive manner he argued with our teacher in JC and he hit
his boss. His boss made a police report and rather than face the
music, VJ killed himself as he simply couldn’t cope with the
situation which had spiralled way out of control.
Yes it is a very sad story, but this is about a Singaporean man
who remained in Singapore all his life but did not make the effort
to invest in building meaningful relationships with those around
him. That was why he felt so isolated when life got difficult – he
had no one to turn to, no one was going to come to his help and he
was effectively an alien in his own country by that token. You reap
what you sow, VJ didn’t bother sowing any seeds of friendship and
he paid the price.
As for my life in London, I am very content thank you and it is
not a question of luck or the UK being a nice country – quite
simply, I am reaping what I have sown. I have many friends who are
always there for me when I need help (and I am always there for
them by the same token). Even in a tricky work environment, I am
able to find allies and friends to guard me against my enemies. I
have worked hard for my company and my employers have rewarded my
loyalty financially. I am financially very sound and can afford to
retire tomorrow if I wanted to – but I still have many more dreams
to pursue and am in a position to hold down my day job whilst still
pursuing other interests in the arts. I lead a varied social life
with my friends, am active in two sports (springboard diving and
gymnastics) and am very fulfilled in my relationship. I’m not
saying my life is perfect – right now, I am left with ambiguous
instructions from my boss on our latest project and I’m like, what
exactly does he want me to do with this marketing campaign? I don’t
want to spend ages doing this only for him to tell me it’s all
wrong later. Groan.
No, my life isn’t perfect – far from it – but it doesn’t change
the fact that I am very happy, very satisfied with where I am right
now. There is still ridiculous, downright stupid assumption on the
part of some Singaporeans that Singaporeans who move abroad will
face a sense of isolation and feel like an alien in the new country
– but let’s look at this more closely. My dad doesn’t speak much
English (well, he has a smattering of very basic English), so when
he came to visit me in London, he was terribly suspicious of
everything and everyone. Take for example, the prices we were
paying in the restaurants: he would often accuse the waiters of
trying to cheat us, despite having been presented with an itemized
bill clearly stating the cost of every single item – but he didn’t
understand enough English to read the bill. Clearly, someone like
him would feel very alienated in the UK given his inability to
speak English well enough to function in British society. Would he
acknowledge that? No, not in a million years.
In sharp contrast to my dad, I speak English as a first language
and am fluent in Welsh on top of that. Well, I am a linguist. My
second language is in fact French, not Chinese and I do use French
regularly at work. Well, to be honest, my conversational Mandarin
is probably a bit better than my French, but I read and write far
better in French than in Mandarin. But just to irk my dad, I would
always tell him that my French is better than my Chinese. Given
there are no linguistic barriers for me in the UK, I am then in a
far better position to start making friends, finding my place in
the local community and pursuing my ambitions.
You know, I realized one thing a long time ago. You stop seeing
the ethnicity, nationality or skin colour of the person you are
dealing with pretty quickly and you start treating them as an
individual when you get to know them as a person. Did I learn this
experience whilst working around the world? No, I learnt this is my
primary school in Sembawang Hills back in the 1980s – I had friends
who were Chinese, Malays and Indians. I didn’t choose my friends on
the basis of their skin colour or ethnicity – I basically chose the
people whom I liked, who were nice to me. I gravitated towards
those with whom I shared common interests and it was this process
that I still use today in seeking new friends. Is this rocket
science? No, it was such a basic principle about friendship that I
managed to figure it out at the age of 7. This is why I was
appalled that an adult like Tang Jon can make such ridiculous
assumption based on the perceived notion of being an alien in
another country just because I am of a different skin colour- how
utterly ludicrous is that.
So there you go. I am disappointed that Singaporeans who grew up
in a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-religious
society can still emerge so ignorant and make such bloody stupid
assumptions about this issue. I sincerely hope such idiots are in
the minority and most Singaporeans would have benefited a lot more
from having lived in a multi-ethnic environment. Peace out.
http://limpehft.blogspot.sg/2013/04/some-stupid…!/2013/04/some-stupid-singaporeans-just-dont.html