Happy Belated Deepavali to my Indian friends and anyone who's Indian (including my wife, my brother, my sis in law and my upcoming daughter) who comes across this posting.
Had to go to work yesterday, despite it being Deepavali.
I dont celebrate it anyway.. not in a sense like a celebration kinda thing.. But I miss Deepavali of those yesteryears.
Sweet cakes, Thosai, Curries..
I dont have that many local Indian friends nowadays that will invite me over for Deepavali. I used to have quite a number of good friends who will invite me over for Deepavali and Chinese New Year and Christmas, and I will invite them over for Hari Raya and my mom will cook her trademark Briyani.
Somehow, besides my wife and my mom and myself in the mirror.. I dont see much of other local Indians around anymore..
Came across an Indian man, somewhere in his 50s in the lift yesterday as I was about to leave for work.. I wished him a Happy Deepavali and asked abt his celebration plans for the day..
So he told me that he was going to the temple and afterwards, heading down with his wife and kids to his parents place to celebrate.
Thatz when I realised..
I dont see or hear much abt that nowadayz..
Locals.
Somehow, I miss them.
Recently, in my futile attempt to repair and clean my Armani specs.. I removed the screws and was unable to fix it in back..
So a few days later.. when I returned to Singapore.. I headed down to Tampines Mart, to an optical shop.. to get it fixed.
So the guy working in the shop, laughed when he saw what I did and showed me how to do it.
There's a trick to fixing it in as the spring in the frame will move the alignment of the holes.. and without using a wire to hold it in place, it's impossible to fix it in.
This is a fella in his 30s, who might probably spot some Ang Kongs somewhere and his natural language is Hokkien.
I like Hokkien speaking Bengs. I have a lot of Hokkien Speaking Beng friends and I am always comfortable with them.
I might be stereotyping on the Ang Kongs.. but I know enough Hokkien speaking Bengs as I had grown up in a neighbourhood who's official language was Hokkien and Tamil.
That's Dover Rd.
How I miss that place.
It's a place where Malays and Indians and Chinese will sit together at the coffeeshop and we are all friends and we'll cover each other's back and everyone who's in a secret society will be in the same one. No matter what race u are.
Not that I was in any. My societies are all not so secret.
I was doing National Service as a policeman back then and I was rest assured that those guys would not allow anything bad to happen in the neighbourhood. In fact, I know them being very anti-drug addicts so we didnt get that kinda problems in the neighbourhood.
They just like to chill at the coffeeshops and drink their tea in the morning and beers in the afternoons till evenings.
Back to my Hokkien-speaking mentor at the shop.
In all friendliness of a Hokkien speaking sales-rep who's attempt to speak Malay to my mom was admirable, he refused payment for the services rendered to me (not that I expected him to charge as it was a trivial matter.. but it was his working time anyway.. he could have if he wanted to though it will be very weird if he would) managed to sell my mom a new pair of specs.
That's how it used to be.
Our locals who used to run the moms-and-pops neighbourhood shops knows enough to create a rapport with the ppl enough to secure their own regulars.
Back in Dover Crescent in the 1990s, there was a shop called Jumbo.
It was a 4-unit minimart ran by this middleage plump, happy looking, always smiling owner, who's known to everyone as Jumbo.
Jumbo will give discounts to everyone for about everything.
Even cigarettes have discounts.
He will waive off anything if he feels like it.
Take a drink which will cost abt 80 cents.
U take it from the fridge and go to the counter..
"Jumbo.. how much ah?"
"80 cents.. aiyah nehmind.. 60 cents sudah"
That's how it was..
Jumbo with his everything got discount.
U dont need GSS to get a sale there.
And he knows a lot of ppl by name. He greets them and was always nice. So he gets a regular stream of customers.. and when they decide to tear down the block, he moved over to the main road and bought a coffeeshop.
And his coffeeshop is the only one there so he makes a lot of money still.. just that Jumbo no longer physically need to run the place so he can just collect money now while ppl work for him.
But I doubt there's anymore discounts since he's no longer there..
So here I am, 20 years later.. whining about the loss of our locals.
Dont get me wrong. I'm not xenophobic.
Never had been. Never will be.
I'm just pissed.
As I had mentioned months and months back.. there was an incident in Coffee Bean where a PRC counter staff asked me to speak in Mandarin, while I was at one of their outlet in Forum Galleria.
If u walk around neighbourhood malls and u come across a sign looking for sales staff, u'll definitely see it with "Able to speak Mandarin"
Open up the classifieds nowadays and u'll see ads with requirements like "Able to speak Mandarin (to liase with Chinese speaking customers)" or "Effectively Bilingual"..
I came across ads nowadays to requires "Malay speaking" and not too long ago.. one which states "Tamil speaking (to liase with Tamil speaking colleagues)"..
now.. that's just weird..
What's Effectively Bilingual?
Can I tell them that I am effectively Bilingual coz I, the Indian Man, can speak English and Malay?
I am DEFINITELY, EFFECTIVELY, BILINGUAL.
But can I get the job?
Nah.. coz Effectively Bilingual means that u must be able to speak Mandarin or any other Chinese Dialects.
I think the government must put a stop to this.
Recently, while walking ard White Sands Shopping Mall in Pasir Ris, I saw an ad looking for sales staff..
Must be cheerful and pleasant.
Must be able to speak Mandarin.
Foreigners Welcomed.
So what does that mean?
It means that any PRC foreigners who wishes to come to work there, can. While I, the local, would not even be given a second thought.
And dont get me wrong..
I dont have anything against foreign talents.
If they come with talents.
But to take them for the sake of taking them? Its really eradicating all the cultures and subcultures that we Singaporeans had built through the decades and decades of assimilating ourselves.
Those childhood textbooks of ours in the 70s and 80s talks abt Ahmad, Peter, Ah Seng and Muthu.
The Olympics itself had shown us on how some ppl can just use us as a platform for themselves and create a joke out of the country. Forever in the history of the Olympics are now etched the facts that Singapore won a medal through a Beijing resident.
My mom became a Singaporean in the 80s.
She had lived in Singapore since the 40s. Grew up here, worked and went to school here, in Telok Paku and TKGS.
I dont have a problem with foreigners who comes here and WANT to be here coz they are in love with the way we are. Everyone here comes from an Immigrant root. Except for the Malay friends of ours of course, but they are mostly quiet so, me, the one who came from three immigrant sides of South Indian, Pakistani and Chinese, is whining.
Foreigners are welcomed. Just that, if u wish to stay, be, feel and think Singaporean. We had gone through so much changes as a society that if we evolve now, we'll be an open pot where ppl can just throw in any ingredients.
Throw in things that wont dissolve and all u get are individual solids that wont merge and at the end of the day, the cauldron will just explode.
So what is it abt being Effectively Bilingual?
Just to liase with Mandarin Speaking Customers?
what about those English speaking Indians and Malays and Eurasians?
Not to whine about things that appear greener on the other side, but any other countries would not tolerate these nonsense.
In Australia and UK, they depend so much on trade with other countries too..
But try to advertise some jobs as a Software Engineer and put there, "Able to speak Mandarin, to liase with Chinese speaking customers"
it doesnt mean that Australia and UK dont make money coz they dont support such a mindset.
Through Wiki.. I came across this statement..
"Australia's largest export markets are Japan, China, the US, South Korea and New Zealand"
China.
They do trade in China, but they dont advertise for jobs that requires a receptionist to be Effectively Bilingual.
How about trading with a Japanese? Shouldnt we look for Japanese Speaking employees to liase with Japanese Speaking clients?
We all know that Japanese ppl are more comfortable in speaking in their own Japanese language.
It is an offence in a lot of countries even to ask a simple question like "Do u speak Italian?" if the job dont call for that language proficiency, like being a translator or a journalist in an Italian newspaper or something like that.
But somehow, even though the government does not condone it, the private companies are taking advantage of the situation.
I miss our locals.
And those immigrants of so many years back who try to be Singaporeans.
Cultures are beautiful. U can keep ur culture while maintaining a distinct Singaporean identity.
Just be Singaporeans when u come over and not expect the rest of Singapore to change to adapt to u.
Being Multi-Racial and Multi-Cultural is nice and colourful. I dont wish Singapore to be any other way. But if we allow ourselves to accept diversity while being diversified, soon enough we'll be just like New York.
While being more talented and artistic due to foreign talents, New York has its own shares of triads which springs from different subcultures. And they have guns. Not what we need for Singapore anyway.
Aiyah.. my brother says that u give up the rights to whine when u dont do something abt the problem. But I'm just a whiner. And I'm just lamenting the loss of our own Singaporean culture.
and I'm still Effectively Bilingual.
Mariska Hargitay!
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