been taking mrt for the past month and had generally not much issue with foreign workers/ foreign talents. i cannot distinguish them from locals if they keep their mouth shut. last evening, i decided to take a bus instead as i thought it would be a nice change. and so i boarded bus no 2 from outside my place for my trip to victoria street. it was a journey that left me in shock. and needless to say, i did not enjoy the journey. the two key things that marred my bus ride experience stood out:
- first, it was an inconsiderate singaporean (or so i thought judging from his behaviour and mannerism). you see, the bus was relatively empty. i went up to the upper deck. all the double seats were occupied by at least one person. so i decided i shan't move to the back and took a seat beside this 50-plus year old slim built chap. when i sat down, he turned his head and gave me a dirty what-the-fuck look. i did not bother. but what i did not take too well was the fact that he chose to sit in such that his buttocks `overflowed' onto my seat and he tilted his body towards the window. to him, this spineless sotong-trying-to-sit-up posture might just do well to allow him to rest, but i felt he was being inconsiderate. he did not even move his buttock back into his seat even after i sat down! i decided to just ignore him. and just as i was about to settle down, i get two local chinese talking. well, nothing wrong with that really. they kept their voice down. but i was irritated by the irritating effect given that their pitch was low, real low and this was set against the international setting around me... read on...
- second, it was the bloody loud and noisy non-singaporeans/ foreign talents. apparently, it seemed like the majority of people in the upper deck came from all over asia. it was easy to recognise them cos they were dressed very differently. and wat was superbly annoying was the fact that all behave like they were in a wet market. it was very noisy and it seemed everyone was trying to outdo each other's loudness. and this whole fiasco was made worst by the fact that the noise comprised a whole lot of languages that i was not familiar with. first there were a whole lot of mainland chinese who either spoke in mandarin (complete with all the twurling and twisting of their tongue) or in their local dialect which i totally did not understand. and then, seated to their back were a whole lot of southern asians whom i believed were bangladeshi-workers. and then there were a small group of southern chinese malaysians speaking in their malay-accented mandarin. and to complete the picture, i had 2 local indians, each seated in their own double seat half shouting to each other in tamil. but well, i must at least say that these indians at least sounded singaporean to me. but on the whole, i felt almost like a minority in my own country for that short moment. ironic. and it was then that i fully understood why many are complaining about too many foreigners in the country.
6 comments:
I don't want to offend but i felt rather uncomfortable after reading this.
I am always on the receiving end of stares here - stares that say " what are u doing here, you foreigner?"
So despite any negative images (either real or perceived) that the foreign talents have on other singaporeans, I wonder if u would have been equally disturbed on your ride if the people making all the noises had been singaporeans. Would there be any difference if the people had been speaking american/british english?
Are we not expecting some behavioral norm the same way society expects gays to fit in?
Apologies if i am too direct but it's the germ way..........
nah, not offended at all. and thanks for sharing your views. i am expressing my discomfort and feelings after what i thought was too drastic a change in the whole feel of singapore.
it is about comfort level with the pace of change. it's perfectly fine for me to have them here. the rationale is clear and i buy them. but i was shocked with the whole 'sudden' change of the feel of the society (to me, it also translates to identity if i stretch it further). esp when this change result in a society that i now cannot even connect with at the emotional level. it is a scary and unnerving thing.
you gave an example abt u being stared at over there. i think the context is different. you were being stared at becos you are perhaps one or two asians in the whole bus of caucasians. that made you stand out. as for what i experienced, i as a singaporean, felt like i was in a totally foreign country.
oh, i forgot to answer ur questions:
(1) ... if u would have been equally disturbed on your ride if the people making all the noises had been singaporeans...
yes. i dislike noise regardless of whether they come from singaporeans, non-singaporeans, gays or straights. being quiet / speaking softly is a reflection of a mature society where people know how show basic respect & courtesy to people around them.
(2) Would there be any difference if the people had been speaking american/ british english?
no. if it is in the same context of a public transport, i will still feel irritated if they are ang mos. and i don't like to be made to feel like a tourist in my own country. however, if it is in a tourist bus, i can accept it.
(3) Are we not expecting some behavioral norm the same way society expects gays to fit in?
this is for the society to answer. personally, i strongly believe that everyone, regardless of gays or str8s, need to observe some sort of social decorum in public.
:-)
and to add to my earlier post, my feeling of frustration voiced following my bus journey is the culmination of my observations and experiences in my daily living in singapore over the past couple of years. in less than 5yrs, we see the population explode from 4mil to 5mil. and everywhere from supermarkets, to hawker centers, to void decks, and everywhere, it is filled with foreigners. and when u start to see signs being put up in languages other than those that are not the official language, you know something is not right. we now have posters in thai, bangla, hindi, chinese (even tv adverts are targeting china chinese these days!), tagalog, and what have yous!
It's not just u. Every other friend i spoke to in SG talks abt the excess of "foreign talents" in SG -in a tone that almost make "foreign talents" a vulgar word.
True enou, the situation is quite different here. Many foreigners here come as guest workers or on humanitarian grounds (persecutions back home etc); many are thus on social assistance. But many germans do not distinguish between those that are here on economic reasons (to parasitze on the social security system) & those that come on "valid" grounds. Foreigners are blamed for taking jobs away from the locals!
I am risking being elite myself in not wanting to be associated with "these other people" (I sometimes explode exclaiming: I AM NOT Vietnamese!!!).
I don't really know what i am saying/thinking but i am afraid, whether we like it or not, that that's the beginning of cryptic racial discrimination.
well, like it or not, discrimination has been occuring since the dawn of time. we have to learn to live with it...
and hmm, foreign talent vulgar? well, we have lots of foreign talents in gaylang these days too. and you know what? they hail from many places around asia and the operators of such places would `import' even more of them during high key events such as f1, international seminars, etc...
oh, abt the bus journey, did i mention that all the south asians in the bus alighted at gaylang and upon alighting, the whole group made their way into the very notorius lorong? heh heh... foreign talents imported to serve foreign talents...
heh heh...
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