Archive for the ‘Singapore’ Category

  • 26 Aug

    Posted by


    Category

    Singapore, Curry Day and scapegoating

    0

    Recently, a news article hit the papers. An immigrant family, new to Singapore, was complaining about the smells coming from their Indian neighbour. You see, the Indian family was cooking curry on a regular basis and the immigrant family (mainland Chinese) found the aroma objectionable.

    The Indian family would close all doors and windows before cooking their curry but it appears that wasn’t enough. So much so that the Chinese family took the Indian family to a mediation centre. The ruling was that the Indian family could only cook curry when they were sure the Chinese family wasn’t at home. (Insert eyeroll here.) You can read the article here.

    In retaliation, some Singaporeans organised Cook and Share a Pot of Curry day last Sunday (21 August) (it’s on Facebook somewhere) to show that curry is part of the Singaporean national cuisine and that it should be encouraged, not discouraged.

    Feeling warm and fuzzy yet? Not so fast.

    Five years ago, there weren’t as many mainland Chinese in Singapore. The city-state was thriving with a large white-skinned expat community. The banks were living high off the hog (still are, but there were more bank employees around then) and there were Europeans everywhere. In this environment, J and I went apartment rental hunting. And almost the first question we were asked (during our initial telephone enquiries) was whether we were Indians or if one of us was married to an Indian. Remember that the rental agencies we were talking to were run by Singaporeans.

    When we went to visit apartments, the landlord (or his/her agent) would ask what kind of food we cooked. “Er, mostly Western,” was my reply. “No curries?” they’d persist. I’d shake my head. With my big Slavic husband by my side, it was a lie they easily accepted. The landlords we met, and their agents, were all Singaporean Chinese.

    At one complex we visited, we were told quite proudly by the agent that there were “no Indians” living in the block.

    By now, J and I were completely stumped. “What’s wrong with Indians?” we asked.

    “Their food is very smelly,” was the reply. “We don’t like renting to Indians.”

    Every single one of these comments came from Singaporean Chinese. It seems to be a well-known fact that the moment an agent gets an Indian family looking to rent a place, they get shunted to the less salubrious properties with less discriminating landlords. NIMBY* for curry.

    Yeah sure, mainland Chinese are bigoted. They make a big show of belonging to an older culture and thus are “superior” to everyone else. They have paler skins than the south-east Asian Chinese and make a big deal out of that as well. (Malaysian Chinese we’ve met have a particular antipathy towards mainland Chinese, calling them arrogant peasants.) Mainlanders also have singularly undeveloped senses of humour. (We know, we’ve worked with a few of them.)

    BUT…don’t blame them for an already existing problem. Singaporean Chinese were discriminating against Indians and complaining about the smell of their food long before one million mainlanders flooded the country. But I do applaud them for a neat sleight of hand. Now none of this is their fault At All. Well played, Singaporean Chinese. Well played.

    (*) NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard

    POSTSCRIPT: J reminds me that we also had to confirm that we weren’t mainland Chinese when we were apartment hunting. You see, the Indians may stink out the place (snort), but those same agents told us that mainlanders trash apartments. If you can see a bigger problem looming beneath this little feel-good band-aid, you’d be right.

  • 21 Feb

    Posted by


    Category

    Singapore stomach

    2

    I’m not sure what to make of the case I’m about to relate to you, so I’ll just tell you what happened.

    A few months ago, there was a celebratory event at a club. The people invited included locals and expats. The buffet lunch was provided by an external caterer. At that lunch was an Austrian friend of ours. Let’s call him…Karl.

    Karl and the other attendees didn’t eat as much of the food as the organisers anticipated so, at the end of the event, the organisers told everyone that they could take the remainder of the food home. Karl, newish to Singapore and still struck by the “exotic” food, came forward and got duly given some packages to take home.

    When he got home, he immediately asked his family to partake of the meal. “His family” consisted of a Singaporean fiancée and his parents, who were visiting from Austria.

    Later that night, all four people fell ill and were taken to hospital. Karl was sent home that night with some medication; his fiancée was discharged the next day; his mother was hospitalised for three days; his father stayed for five days.

    The Singaporean authorities leapt into action from the moment of admission. How did his family get sick? Where was he? Where did the food come from? Emails zinged back and forth as Karl tried to contact other attendees to find out who the catering company was.

    (For the record, J also suffered symptoms of very mild food poisoning from the same event.)

    Karl provided all the details he gathered to the Singapore authorities…and was told one week later that no action would be taken because he and his family did not contract food poisoning from a restaurant. Since it was an external caterer, he was told, there was no legislation in place to prosecute the offending company. This lack of legislation, he was additionally informed, also applied to hawker stalls.

    Karl was a bit nonplussed by this consequence and so was J. So, albeit almost half a year later, I did a bit of digging. In addition to finding out that there are more food poisoning cases in Singapore than anyone (i.e. Singapore) would like to admit, I came across the following:

    By the looks of things, hawker stands can be prosecuted by Singapore authorities. The case I’ve linked to is from 2009, involving the “Rojak Geylang Serai” food stall. The food stall was subsequently closed and a 13 April update says:

    Following the closure of ‘Rojak Geylang Serai’ at Geylang Serai Temporary Market on 4th April, transmission of food poisoning cases linked to the food stall had ceased. Since 9th April, there were no further notified cases to MOH [Ministry of Health]. The total number of food poisoning cases remains the same at 154, with 48 cases hospitalised.

    It also appears that catering companies can also be, at the very least, investigated:

    The Ministry of Health (MOH) and National Environment Agency (NEA) are investigating into a food poisoning incident involving a licensed caterer, ISS Catering Services Pte Ltd operating at Singapore Sports School, that was notified to the authorities on 4 November.

    To date, a total of 106 cases have been notified to MOH. All the cases, including 11 who needed outpatient treatment, have since recovered. None of the affected cases required hospitalisation….

    As a precautionary measure, the canteen operator, ISS Catering Services Pte Ltd, was required to clean up the food preparation and refreshment areas of the canteen. MOH has advised the school to be alert to new cases and to ensure high standards of hygiene among students, staff and food handlers. NEA will continue to work with the school to monitor the hygiene situation at the canteen closely.

    So what’s happening here? Is it the public that’s getting snowed by the Singaporean authorities (we are doing something), or was it Karl (we can’t do anything)? Maybe the authorities weren’t interested in pursuing the case because only three people were hospitalised and, out of those three, two of them are going back to Europe soon anyway and the third is a local?

    The only other viable explanation is that Karl is lying about what he was told but why would he? Up to this point, he’s enjoyed Singapore, even if he’s confused about why everyone is so obsessed over having white skin.

    So what’s going on here? Who knows. If you visit Singapore, just be aware that this is a tropical country and that food hygiene is not always the best.

    My personal recommendation is that you stalk Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore Minister of Community Development, Youth and Sports, and only eat where he eats. You see, there was a scare at the Youth Olympic Games last year, with 21 volunteers suffering food poisoning. Fearlessly, Dr Balakrishnan stepped up to the plate by admitting that HE is the quality control process:

    “I’ve made it a point every day to chat and have my meal with the volunteers. So that is my way of ensuring quality control [my emphasis --kaz], that the food for the volunteers is the same food that I eat.”

    There you go. No delusions of godhood or even due process here. Who needs a rigorous food hygiene regulatory framework when you have good ole Viv?

    POSTSCRIPT: If you follow the link about the Youth Olympics outbreak, you’ll notice that one of the volunteers who suffered food poisoning “wanted to be known only as Mr Tan.” This is how scared the average Singaporean is. You volunteer for an event, giving of yourself and your time. Something is mismanaged and you’re STILL too afraid to step forward and admit you were a victim. Pathetic.

  • 03 Feb

    Posted by


    Category

    Gong Xi Fa Cai (Kong Hee Fatt Choy)

    0

    And a happy Chinese New Year to you, stalwart reader. Today, most countries throughout south-east Asia grind to a halt as the economic engines that are Chinese small business owners take a couple of days off to eat and impress their way to the Year of the Rabbit.

    The Chinese zodiac is year, rather than month, based and, furthermore runs in a 12-year cycle, with a sub-cycle based on the five elements. According to legend, Buddha invited all the animals in the world to a feast when he was about to leave Earth, but only twelve showed up. In order, they were: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, pig. To honour them, Buddha named each of the years in the lunar cycle after them in the order in which they turned up at the meal. That’s not all, however. Each animal also runs through its own cycle based on the five elements of metal, water, wood, fire and earth. This new Chinese year, for example, is the Year of the Metal Rabbit.

    If you filter in the element as well as the animal, you will see that your particular Chinese zodiac occurrence only comes along once every 60 years.

    And why would an atheist talk about Chinese astrology? Why not? It’s fun, even if I don’t believe in it. Actually, especially if I don’t believe in it. The family are off to a lovely dinner today, which includes Yee Sang, originally a Teochew-style dish but now adopted by Chinese communities across Singapore and Malaysia.

    Personally, I think Yee Sang took off around here precisely because it’s messy and, by execution, causes great hilarity. What you do is this:

    1. Put a selection of ingredients onto a platter. The ingredients can include, but are not limited to, finely julienned carrots, capsicum, daikon radish, cucumber, pear, finely shredded kaffir lime leaves, lettuce, peanuts, orange and/or pomelo segments, lotus seeds, jellyfish, sea cucumber, pickled ginger, sesame seeds, fried rice vermicelli noodles, and so on. Really, your imagination is the only stumbling block at this point, but the keyword is grated (or finely shredded).
    2. Put a selection of sauces onto the ingredients on the platter. These sauces include plum sauce, lime juice, maybe apricot jam as well as kumquat paste, sesame oil and five-spice powder. The idea is to have a slightly sweet, piquant dressing but go easy on that five-spice powder.
    3. At this point, the next step may vary. My preference is to now have all the diners stand up and, with their chopsticks, try to toss everything as high into the air as possible, while singing out auspicious phrases.
    4. When everything is mixed and half of it is decorating the diners, chairs and table, everyone sits down, gets a portion of the salad, tops it with prawn crackers and slices of raw salmon (or mackerel) and digs in. (Most people toss the salad after the fish has been added but I never like missing out on my ration of salmon or mackerel if I can at all help it!) When finished, the rest of the meal proceeds as normal.

    I’ll let you know what was in the Yee Sang we’re going to have, so watch out for an update and Happy Chinese New Year to all! Have a great long weekend and catch you Monday.

  • 17 Jan

    Posted by


    Category

    Educate…or trip up?

    0

    Recently, I read that either Singapore or South Korea had topped the Maths rankings for students worldwide. Whichever way it was, Singapore is either #1 or #2 in the world. I was interested in this statistic because I teach the kids from a Singapore maths workbook and today I’m going to talk about something that drives me utterly batshit when teaching the kids.

    Below, you have an example of a geometry exercise from our workbook:

    Once The Wast stops panicking the moment he claps eyes on it, he’ll find it’s actually trivial to solve. That is:

    1) Let the top triangle be Triangle(1) and the bottom triangle Triangle(2).
    2) We know that all angles in a triangle add up to 180° (degrees). Therefore, x + y + z in Triangle(1) = 180°.
    3) In Triangle(2), one of the angles is a right angle (90°). Therefore c + d = 180° (the sum of all angles) – 90° (the right angle we know about) = 90°.
    4) Therefore, x + y + z + c + d = 180° (from Triangle(1)) + 90° (from Triangle(2)) = 270°.

    But note what the question is asking for. How many RIGHT ANGLES is this?

    ???????????????WHY??????????

    Are we going to do anything with those right angles? No.
    Is this question the first part in a progression that’s going to use right angles? No.
    Is there any frickin’ logical reason for asking for the answer to be couched in terms of frickin’ right frickin’ angles????? Yes. To trip students up.

    That is the ONLY reason I can think of to throw such dick-ish type questions into a workbook and hence onto an exam. And did you also note the exemplary English used in the question?

    The missing in the box is _____________________ .

    Oy, the lack of obvious English skills in a country that boasts about their impeccable English skills at the drop of a hat ::eyeroll:: You don’t know jack about the English language, okay Singapore? (I shall elucidate in future blog posts. Stand by for some real howlers.)

    My issue with this question, and the whole array that are just like this, is that it’s not teaching kids an appreciation of Maths. It’s just teaching them to look out for the “code” in the question. The answer is not the answer. There is no satisfaction to be derived from correctly deducing the correct number. No, you have to take it one step further.

    This wouldn’t be so bad if only a couple are thrown in, to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak. But no, over 50% of the questions from Ratios to Mass to Volume to Geometry have this, “oh no you don’t; the answer isn’t good enough; you’ve now got to manipulate it in an entirely meaningless way so I know you’ve suffered enough” attitude that drives me, as a lover of Maths, Up. The. Wall.

    That’s the other problem I have with education in this region: the inherent “code” in the questions and the fact that you have to interpret the “code” correctly in order to get the questions right. Take Science (Singapore again) as an example:

    Well, what’s the difference? I showed my zealous mushroom hunter of a husband (Polish, natch!). He looked puzzled and said: “They’re both mushrooms.”

    “No, they’re not,” I replied. “Wow, it’s a wonder you’re still alive! The answers in the book tell me that Organism(A) is a toadstool, whereas Organism(B) is a mushroom. Don’t you know anything?”

    “But that’s not true,” he spluttered, rushing off to get mushroom classification books so he could show me his proof.

    “Doesn’t matter,” I replied, deliberately not looking at the photos in his books. “The children have to memorise the fact that something that looks like A is supposed to be a toadstool and something that looks like B is supposed to be a mushroom and the publishers who put out these workbooks make sure that they copy the same illustrations as used in Ministry of Education exams so that students can (wink) pass the exam.”

    Note what I said. Pass the exam. Not correctly learn about the family of fungi. Pass. The. Exam.

    We seem to get a lot of Science questions wrong, now that I think about it. What is the function of a plant’s stem? The answer was “to keep the plant upright”. That’s not right, I told the kids. What about terrestrial creepers? What about seaweed? How can a Ministry of Education that is supposedly ranked so highly in the world be so blasé about frickin’ science???? (And don’t get me started on how out-of-date they are on States of Matter!)

    And the answer is, it’s not about science or maths or actually understanding concepts. It’s about unlocking the “code” of the questions and answers and then memorising the hell out of it so that a country’s exam results look good.

    You tell me if that makes for smarter kids, goddamned world rankings or no. As a Maths evangelist and an author who writes about science and scientists, I weep.

  • 07 Jul

    Posted by


    Category

    Whisper, have you lost your mind?!

    3

    The kids and I were enjoying nasi ayam (chicken rice) at the local Medan Selera (food court) recently and I chanced upon some local TV channels while we were eating. And this … this thing appeared. There were sanitary napkins in the shape of flowers receiving blue drops of rain from the sky to a happy tune. While women smiled at me from the TV screen, I was told to “Have a Happy Period”.

    WHAT???!!

    First, the facts. It appears:

    the campaign “Have a Happy Period” was created in 2005 by Ms Denise Fedowa who was a VP at Leo Burnett Chicago … According to a report in Adweek, research shows that consumers are telling the marketers to be transparent and frank in their communications.

    Now look, you can be “transparent and frank” in your communications, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be incredibly and utterly stupid as well.

    Have a Happy Period??!!

    Are they serious? While there are hormones coursing through my body telling me that decapitating yonder Perodua driver would be no great loss to the species? While there is something not usually meant to be there between my legs, rubbing against the tender flesh of my inner thighs while I walk? While — and I hate to be explicit here, but think of this and “happy” and tell me it works for you — I can feel fluids from my body being expelled on a schedule that’s sporadic and panic-inducing? While my Fallopian tubes mourn the loss of a potential life by sending aches through my bloated abdomen? While all this is going on, for DAYS at a stretch, you are telling me to Have a Happy Period, Whisper? Oh, and just for the record, it isn’t blue and it doesn’t have the consistency of spring water, m’kay?

    Sure, why don’t we also have ads about a thick armoured invertebrate burrowing through a passage and pressing a button at the end and tell men to Have a Happy Prostate Exam?? Or little elves in wee little harvesters, running down fields of mangrove roots telling men to Have a Happy Shave??

    This is beyond frankness into complete patronising bullshit. And what if we don’t have a Happy Period, Whisper? Then I suppose it’s All Our Fault, isn’t it? Why don’t men get patronised like this in commercials? This isn’t far above the ole Christmas gift suggestion of buying a new vacuum cleaner for The Little Woman. I had thought we’d moved beyond this, but evidently not. And, just to add insult to injury, we have a woman to thank for this priceless piece of inanity. Thanks Whisper, I’ll know what brand NOT to touch next time I’m at the supermarket.

    COMPETITION UPDATE: Both winners finally got back to me! Congratulations Christy M and Ted C! Your packages will be out in the mail this week.

  • 31 Mar

    Posted by


    Category

    Portuguese Eurasians in Malaysia and Singapore

    2

    If you’re interested, you’ll find a nice article on PEs (it just takes too long to type “Portuguese Eurasian” all the time) in Wikipedia, under the heading “Kristang people“.

    As I understand it from various relatives, the PEs (or Kristang, although that also describes the language) mostly stuck around Malacca/Melaka from 1516 until the Dutch tried taking over that influential sea port a few decades later in the sixteenth century. This caused a number of PEs to flee north (and some, south), where a substantial group settled in and around the capital, Kuala Lumpur, while others went further north still.

    Everything seemed to go swimmingly, until the Japanese invaded. Like the Germans, the Japanese also considered themselves a “superior race” and set about, not only subjugating the local population through ruthless brutality, but also making a special effort to seek out those of mixed blood and exterminate them. This is one of the lesser genocides of WWII that you’ll read nothing about in your Western history books. As a result of this, many PE families burnt all their papers — anything that identified them as “Eurasian” — and passed themselves off as members of other ethnic groups. I know older PEs who don’t even know their exact birthdates because of this covert destruction.

    Together with other races fleeing the Japanese advance, people ended up in Singapore but the British proved themselves to be as incompetent in this war as they were in previous ones and the population had to bear the brunt of their enemies taking over the island while our colonial so-called masters scarpered, leaving the locals, and some luckless British and Australian military personnel, to the gentle ministrations of the Japanese.

    Today, there is a lively Eurasian community in Singapore. In fact, I consider them to be the most dynamic and enthusiastic of all the Eurasian communities in the region. They are heavily involved in social programs, athletics and scholarships. It’s great to see a cultural group do so much, and I say all this as someone who isn’t a Singapore Eurasian. If you’re in Singapore and want to taste PE cooking, there is a very rare restaurant called Quentin’s at the Eurasian Community House. I say “rare” because PE recipes are closely guarded secrets and to be able to eat PE food outside a PE home is quite startling and highly unusual.

    Quentin’s is near the first floor lobby of Eurasian Community House (139 Ceylon Road) and their phone number is 6348-0327 (for reservations and opening hours). I’m not getting paid to promote the restaurant but, barring a dinner invitation from a PE, this is the closest you’re going to get to PE cooking.

    * Singapore Sizzle, in the Cougars & Cubs anthology, featuring a handsome PE stud by the name of Adrian Pereira, will be released by Total-E-Bound in May.

  • 22 Mar

    Posted by


    Category

    The despair in IT resumes

    2

    My bitch of a friend

    I was sitting having a coffee with a friend in Singapore recently. Let’s call her Gwen. Gwen is in an enviable position for someone in IT. Her company recently won a large deal and she has the responsibility to ramp up a team of developers, negotiate deliverables and deliver the first phase of a system by the end of the year. I used to live for opportunities like that. Gwen, however, was rather glum.

    “I’m going to get a reputation as a complete bitch,” she told me morosely, stirring her coffee.
    “Why?”
    “I have to build a team, right? Well, I went through about forty resumes last night.”
    “And?”
    We’re always told how high-tech Singapore is. How much more advanced it is compared to its neighbours, and how it always attracts only the best. Creative. Innovative. Fast. Tech. Dynamic. I was happy to pick Gwen’s brain because I was curious as to whether the facts lived up to the hype.
    “Most of them are useless,” she told me.
    I raised my eyebrows. “How so?”
    “I’m after C++ developers,” she said. “They have to already know their stuff because we have our first deadline in a matter of months. I don’t have time to mollycoddle anyone.”
    I nodded.
    “Well, out of the forty resumes, seven have Computing degrees.” She frowned. “What’s that work out to? About fifteen percent?”
    I shrugged. “Yeah, something like that.” I actually yearn for times when I don’t have to do any thinking and, as far as I was concerned, Gwen was going to be the one doing the heavy lifting in this conversation.
    “The rest…,” she shook her head. “All I’m getting from India are civil engineers and all I’m getting from China are chemists and mathematicians. That doesn’t mean they’re not smart, but how would they like it if I tried to build a bridge or come up with a new malaria vaccine? I wouldn’t last a week! Yet, according to them, they’re now software developers.”
    She sighed. “So what am I supposed to do now? If I employ a chemist to do programming, sure, they might be able to do some robot stuff but how will they know how to code their way out of a sticky problem? If I say to one of them, ‘okay, I want you to write a web app but what are you going to do to stop an SQL injection?’, they’re not going to know where to start.” She raised her voice. “Why are they even applying for a job which they’ve never trained for?”
    “Eighty-five percent, huh?”
    “Clueless,” she said. “In desperation, I interviewed several of them. They don’t even know what a left join is. And that’s not all. You should see the salaries they’re expecting.” She paused. “How much does it take to live in Singapore?”
    “Well, obviously more than I have which is why we don’t live in Singapore,” I quipped.
    But Gwen was impatient and waved away my feeble joke. “Right, right. But how much?”
    “For a single professional? Maybe four thousand a month for a start, and that’s only if you can find an HDB flat to rent. For a family, you can’t do much with less than seven or eight. Not if you’re a foreigner.”
    “And a good starting salary for an IT developer?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Good results at Uni. Maybe a year’s commercial experience. Six maybe for a junior?”
    “That’s what I thought.” Although my confirmation seemed to make her even unhappier.
    “Do you know how much they want?” she finally asked.
    “Who? The Indians and Chinese?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Not a clue.”
    “Two and a half to three.”
    “Thousand a month?”
    “Yep.”
    “To live in Singapore?” I gaped at her. “Are they nuts?”
    “You can see what happens, can’t you?” Gwen told me, sipping her coffee. “Some bridge builder or maths teacher comes along and says they’ll do C++ or Python or Java or whatever coding you want, and they want less than three a month for it. Who’s going to look that kind of gift horse in the mouth? It has a knock-on effect, though. Take me. What happens when it’s time to move on? There’s so much downward pressure on IT salaries that I’ll be earning less money with more experience as time goes on. And what about my project? HR only has to read over the same CVs to complain about how I’m only picking the expensive candidates.”
    She stared at her coffee. “No matter which way I look at it, I lose. If I pick only the IT-qualified guys, I’m going to get reamed for running a too-expensive project. If I pick chemists, I’ll get reamed for missing our milestones. Either way, I end up looking like an absolute, incompetent bitch.”
    I didn’t know what to say because Gwen was completely correct. All I could do was agree with her, but that would make her feel even worse.
    “I’ll get another round of coffee,” I said and temporarily escaped.

  • 03 Mar

    Posted by


    Category

    Trying to explain highly-strung Asian women

    5

    How dare you!

    J and I have had the occasional domestic dispute over the past 12 years (ahem). And in the post-dust up analysis, we’ve both come to the conclusion that we’re both “highly strung”, though me more than him. And I’ll cop to that. The thing is, after speaking with a few other friends, it appears that an awful lot of Asian women are “highly strung”. Let’s have a look at that a little bit more closely.

    What do we mean by the term? I’m just throwing out stuff that I’ve heard, and think about myself:

    • a bit on the defensive side
    • can get too focused on one thing
    • exhibits insensitivity to others when they are perceived to be in her way
    • easy to anger when perceived to be insulted/put down
    • very ambitious
    • tendency to jump to conclusions, usually to the detriment of her partner
    • high expectations (sometimes too high) of her partner
    • can be very money/status-focused
    • very analytical

    I hope you’re starting to get the picture. (And, just to repeat the implication in plainer text, men can be highly-strung too, but we’re not talking about them in this post.) Now, let me wander off a bit to an anecdote.

    J was recently at a workshop where an engineer was giving a highly technical presentation. Because the workshop was quasi-public, there were a lot of people standing around watching. An acquaintance of J’s, being short, asked him to take a photo of the engineer because she (the photographer) couldn’t see over the crowd and she (the engineer) wanted to send some photos of her presenting her workshop to her parents.

    Just as J finished relating the story to me, a piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

    “I bet she’s single,” I said.

    He nodded. “Yes. We got into a conversation afterwards, and she told she she was. But how did you know?”

    You know how you get an insight that takes many hops but coalesces in your mind in a heartbeat? That’s what happened here. I’ll try to explain it to you in fewer words than I used with J. Tell me what you think.

    What is of absolutely no doubt in Asia — at the risk of descending into stereotype — is that education is important. You may find a parent who’s inordinately happy with their son for everything he buys for them because he’s a successful, let’s say, landscaper. But no matter how proud his parents are of him, there is always some niggle that they’d be prouder of him if he had a degree. And perhaps worked in an office instead. Or had workers who toiled on his behalf. In an office. Or school of some type.

    Here’s the problem with the Asian female. One, they’re told that Education is Critical. “Nobody will love you if you’re stupid.” She gets lots of pats on the head when she tops the class in school, becomes prefect, snags a spot at a good university, and graduates, beaming out of the photo frame that sits proudly in her parents’ living room. So far, so good.

    The next obvious thing is to get a job. And that’s where the problems start. You see, the young Asian female thinks that she worked so hard, studied so hard, to get somewhere in life. The young Asian female’s parents, however, have inexplicably changed their tune. From, “So why aren’t you getting first-class honours?” it becomes, “Isn’t it time you got married?”

    Now, this will throw any reasonable human being for a loop. What?! Why did you ride me so hard if all you’re going to say when I’m 23 is, “When can I expect the grandchildren? I’m not getting any younger, you know.”

    At this point, our young lady is caught in an unfortunate case of cognitive dissonance. Of course she doesn’t want to throw it all away just to play mother, especially not if she’s smart and knows she can climb the corporate ladder. So, instead of marrying, she says to herself: “I just have to make my parents proud of me. And once they realise how important it is that I make something of myself — as a person in my own right, rather than just as a wife or mother to someone else — they’ll understand and approve of me and then we can put this marriage nonsense to the side for the time being.”

    I hope you can begin to get an inkling of where the young engineer is in this timeline? Caught in the throes of this mis-thinking, she’s well on the way to seeking approval by sending her parents tangible proof that people hang on her every word. That she is doing Something Meaningful. And it doesn’t involve a wedding ring. Pity it won’t work.

    The fact is, it never works, and the nagging grows in scope and frequency. “You’re getting so old, lah. No man will want you soon.” “Why are you so smart? Men don’t like smart women.” “You’re too big for your boots, thinking you can get this promotion/start your own business. No wonder you can’t get married.”

    And the young woman keeps on thinking that if only everything looked a bit more sparkly, a bit more meaningful, then things would come good. After all, her parents were serious when they said her education was important. She has more examples than she can poke a stick at to prove that point. So if she can’t sway them from their one-track marriage mind now, it must mean she hasn’t proven the worth of her education — of herself — to them hard enough.

    And that’s how it begins. She must be perfect. Her boyfriend must be perfect. Her apartment/house must be perfect. Her car must be perfect. Her wardrobe must be perfect. And, as I’ve said before, because the parents have completely and utterly changed their tune, it never is. The problem is not with her, it’s with them. And, because she’s Asian, that’s a verboten thought because, from Turkey to Taiwan, the authority figure in the family is Always Right.

    I am of the firm opinion that one of the biggest obstacles to female empowerment in Asia are the parents. I have seen too many worthwhile lives descend into some kind of obsessive-compulsive tail-chasing because the parents have now summarily decided that they want grandchildren and bugger what it means for their daughters. Marriages have been destroyed through the kind of desperate, serial approval seeking that starts with a conceded ceremony and continues from there till the day somebody drops. For the sake of sanity, it’s got to stop but, short of just waiting for all the ignorant old farts to die out, I’m not sure how.

  • 12 Feb

    Posted by


    Category

    Happy Valentine’s Day & Chinese New Year

    1

    Hearts and tigers!

    So, both Valentine’s Day and CNY fall on Sunday this year. This means a double celebration for all those people of Chinese descent and all those hangers on (like me!) who just like to gorge on Chinese food goodies! However, I will say that this is NOT the time to go shopping. It’s a jungle out there!

    After being solemnly informed by The Wast that J and I are not entitled to celebrate Valentine’s Day (“You’re already married, so you can’t celebrate Valentine’s Day and you only give flowers to girls you want to marry”), we probably won’t do very much. Our son’s right of course; Valentine’s Day is a day for lovers, not grumpy married couples with kids and warring domestic pets, so I hope that all lovers everywhere have a great day.

    As for Chinese New Year …. Although I’m not an adherent of things mystical, I really do hope that the new year brings a change of luck for me. The last decade hasn’t been fantastic and I could do with being thrown balls of a different spin. To everyone celebrating CNY, have a great time and do take care on the roads, won’t you?

    Monday and Tuesday are public holidays in the region, so I’m not sure if I’ll be sufficiently motivated to do a post. We’ll see.

    And, in writing news, edits for “Singapore Sizzle” have come and gone, and I’m working on the second book in the “His Bodyguard” series and having a good time. Sian Bernardine and Chris Lance are quite different to Helen Collier and Yves de Saint Nerin, and so is the setting. More on that, maybe next week.

    Have a good weekend everyone and have some fun.

  • 14 Dec

    Posted by


    Category

    Border crossings: Peter Watts and Singapore

    5

    Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts.

    BoingBoing is on fire at the moment with the case of Dr Peter Watts, a Canadian scientist and s-f writer who was held, beaten up and charged with assaulting a federal officer at the US-Canada border while on his way back to Canada after helping a USAian friend move house. For the record, he was beaten up by US guards, although Canadian authorities can be equally brutal, as the case of Robert Dziekański clearly attests.

    BoingBoing are putting together a fund to help Dr Watts’ defence, and you can contribute via Paypal if you are so inclined. As a sideline, it’s an interesting observation that the USA is a place that makes a big deal about what “rights” a person has, until the time comes to actually exercise those rights (whether medical, economic, or judicial). At that point, you find out that the person with the most “rights” happens to be the one with the deepest pockets. Nobody else need apply.

    What has been equally interesting to me have been the comments on BoingBoing, including a fair few that imply that Watts had it coming because he was probably “lippy” or “uppity”. And that got me thinking back to an incident at the Malaysia-Singapore border almost two years ago.

    Lets face it, stalwart reader, you may think that being a writer is a cool thing but writers, by and large, really don’t fit into the normal, quiet mainstream population. They may seem quite okay from the outside, but there’s always some kind of dysfunction that separates them from the rest of the herd. And that dysfunction mostly manifests itself as questions. Writers need questions the way we need air. Without questions, quite simply, we wouldn’t exist. What if human civilisation dominated our galaxy? (Stories set in the Republic.) How would a romance work between a female bodyguard and the male she’s assigned to protect? (Guarding His Body) Is it possible for me to even think of a likely steampunk story and thus jump on the latest trend? (Alas, no.)

    So, when questions are like life’s blood to us, it’s obvious that we will start asking them whenever something interesting happens. And therein lies the problem, because our Neo Dark Ages™ world doesn’t like questions. It doesn’t like anyone asking them or otherwise being lippy. Used to be that only applied to niggers, wogs, slopes, kikes, spics, etc., and women. But now, it doesn’t like anything other than silent subservience from anybody who doesn’t wear the appropriate uniform, period.

    I’m reminded of the time our family crossed from Malaysia into Singapore. There were five of us, two adults with two kids, and J’s mother, who was visiting with us at the time. And it was also the time of the Mas Selamat flap. Singapore is very proud of Mas Selamat because he is their very own Muslim terrorist, and is thus like a badge of honour Singapore can wear and be inducted into the Western nations’ Hall of Countries Who Are So Wonderful That Everyone Else Wants To Have A Piece Of Us Out Of Sheer Jealousy. Unfortunately, this short man with a noticeable limp had escaped the detention centre by climbing out the bathroom window.

    Anyway, the security at the border was pretty tight after he fleed (I believe he also threw spare rolls of toilet paper out the window before he jumped, to help cushion his fall) , and everyone had to submit thumbprints via an electronic reader, ostensibly to check against the thumbprints of Mas Selamat that Singapore had on record. They let our kids pass without any comment, but I had to wonder when they insisted that my mother-in-law submit to a scan. Yeah, I muttered to J, because Mas Selamat is so obviously hiding in the skin of an older, white woman from Europe.

    If you tell me that this was not the smartest thing to do, especially within earshot of the Immigration official, I’ll agree with you. But, you know, it’s that question thing again that I was talking about. You think, “why the hell are they fingerprinting someone who so obviously isn’t Mas Selamat?” and, before your brain has time to answer “because it’s their job, stupid, just shut up”, your mouth opens and out comes some smart comment.

    At this point, we were directed to another office, had our passports confiscated and were left watching a blank wall while the rest of the border world went on behind our backs. After twenty minutes, an officer came out, smiled, handed us our passports and told us we could go. No explanation was given, although she was very courteous. You’ll be pleased to know I kept my mouth shut that second time.

    In retrospect, and after reading what Watts and others have gone through, we got off very very lightly. Which is scary when you realise that the courtesy in newly-developed or developing countries actually currently exceeds that in fully-developed countries. We may rant and rave about lots of things, but I wouldn’t want to be in the line entering the USA, Canada or the UK. In contrast, Singapore was an absolute cakewalk, despite my overt sarcasm. Terrifying, isn’t it?

Page 1 of 3123»