The summer holidays were largely spent trying to squeeze an internship/scholarship/photocopy-and-coffee-making-ship out of the people over at Singapore Press Holdings (HA! YOU GUYS DO GOOGLE ME!), but my meager experience as an international kopi kia* in Melbourne apparently isn’t quite up to scratch for their connoisseur tastes.
Much has changed since I last saw Rooland. While the usual annual scorcher of Victoria made its rounds, the Land of Plenty also had a taste of Spanish female rage in the form of La Nina as a double whammy of wind and rain ravaged Queensland. Lots of wind and rain [/understatement]. What did surprise me was the rejection of much foreign aid by the Federal government, claiming that Australians were ‘experts at disaster relief’ and “didn’t require it yet”.
Of course, they proceeded to consider taxing the living hell out of her citizens. Go, Australian pride!
But all this happened a few thousand kilometers away, and Singaporeans by and large remain chronic sufferers of “news-sympathy”. This contagious ailment tickles some vestigial compassion for our fellow Man’s suffering to eke out a “how dreadful, I hope they’re all right”. Thankfully, this condition lasts a grand total of 5 minutes, before promptly releasing us back into “Somebody Else’s Problem” mode.
The Chinese, by virtue of our cultural heritage, are savers to a fault.
From young, we have been weaned on rhetoric stressing the importance of every dollar saved. Parents warn against wastage by telling us how every grain of rice left in our bowls equated to a pimple on the face of our future spouses. We content ourselves with buying imitation, Shanzai, goods if they look and perform the same or better as their brand-name originals. We spend little on ourselves, with many preferring to send the balance back to our families or accounts back home.
Should the world be surprised that our governments think likewise?
Flagging confidence in the United States’ deficit-ridden economy have turned investors to the security provided by the ever-increasing global clout wielded by the Chinese economy. After all, plenty of cheap labour and goods are unlikely to cause hurt in the current world recession.
Unless you happen to be American.
So did you fly in a fighter plane?
- Present boss, asking about those days.
Ah, the good old SAF (Singapore Armed Forces) days! Life was so simple then: just follow orders, stay out of trouble, and keep your opinions to yourself. What was that? Where’s your brain/individuality? In that cryo container down the hallway, marked with the “do not unseal till ORD” Post-it(tm) note.
'Cuz we are the best in the SAF~♪ So ECHO-oh-oh...
National Service is a necessary rite of passage for all of us guys from Singapore, and we all have a love/hate/love-hate tsundere relationship with it. Can’t be helped, really. It’s pretty hard for Joe Average to appreciate those days: the daily 5BX (basic exercises) of training, maintaining yearly IPPT standard requirements, signing ‘extras’ (extra duties as punishment), ‘arrowing’ others to do your work for you and (God Forbid!) Sandbag Drills… Unless you were a military/fitness freak, they can wear a person’s humour down. Fast.
Yet here I am, in my second year of university battling the loopy Melbournian winter, wrestling with Marx and Weber, desperately (and unsuccessfully) trying to get that priceless (unpaid) internship somewhere, hopefully for a good cause. With days like these, one sometimes feels a bit of nostalgia for the times where one’s brain was still in cold storage “for your own safety”.
If you get the hidden message, you're too deep into social media
Back in June a friend of mine posted an entry (required reading) on the global social imperative known as Facebook. It was quite a negative spiel.
He started his Facebook account for the same reasons as I: as a social experiment. We’d sit quietly by the side as people added us to our networks and invited us to their events/other networks. We’d avoid taking any action unless invited to, or for the sake of basic socialising.
Just to see how big a social ripple we could cause.
Fast forward to today: he ends up sinking deep into the slushpool. Hard. In the space of two months his rate of activity has steadily increased, and what originally started of as a passive social experiment is giving way into something more proactive.
Don’t get me started on some of my other friends aquaintances.
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