Let's do a quick check. Where were you on
National Day? A) Swigging Newater and cheering at the parade? Ok, possibly
born-and-bred Singaporean, but also possibly Singaporean PR, or newly-minted
citizens wanting to share in the collective joy of their compatriots. B)
Clogging up hotel rooms in Kuala Lumpur - yep, definitely born-and-bred
Singaporeans.
It wasn't that long ago, pre-globalisation,
when it wasn't all that fashionable to be a Singapore citizen. Back then, our
idea of globalisation was picking up fake accents and getting a US visa to visit
Disneyland in Anaheim. Now, we're more comfortable with our own accents (or too
comfortable, as the 'Speak Good English' movement would tell you) and our
position as a well-developed Asian city - heck we even dislike 'bananas', ie
foreign-born Chinese who come over with their assorted accents.
Maybe our new-found 'self-confidence' could
be one of the reasons why 'foreign' talent has become an off-and-on prickly
issue, most recently with the China-born table tennis players who won medals for
Singapore at the Commonwealth Games. Singaporeans (the born and bred ones, that
is) are becoming extremely picky about who gets to call themselves Singaporean,
much less represent the country. One such person even likened it to 'buying'
medals to put Singapore on the sporting map, and was quickly chastened for being
narrow-minded and insecure.
Well, probably. Then again, 'narrow-minded'
and 'insecure' are inherently Singaporean traits which aren't easy to get rid of
regardless of how globalised or sophisticated we think we are. Don't forget,
we're still only just learning to be 'gracious' and 'magnanimous'.
But maybe what these so-called narrow-minded
Singaporeans are trying to say is that - you can't be truly Singaporean unless
you were born here, and were put through the Singapore system - both educational
and social. That includes National Service, parental pressures and the stigma of
failure. The products of the 'system' as it were, are the Singaporeans we have
now, warts, complaints and all. We may well be producing a new, gentler breed of
Singaporeans, but those models are not quite ready yet.
So, when someone else comes into the country
without going through this system, and wins glory for us, the instinctive
Singaporean reaction is this: It's not real because you are not a Singapore
product, you achieved this based on values you picked up from your birth
country, and so this is not an authentic Singapore victory. It's only real if
you could have achieved this despite having gone through the Singapore system.
All that said then, how do you tell a real,
real Singaporean then?
Real Singaporeans complain about other
Singaporeans, but get angry when foreigners complain about Singaporeans.
- Real Singaporeans never say anything good
about the government. New Singaporeans do.
- Real Singaporeans like to shop - in
Malaysia.
- New Singaporeans marvel at Singapore's
clean and green state. Real Singaporeans mess up rubbish chute areas and
complain to the town councils about inefficient cleaners.
- Real Singaporeans have a natural queuing
instinct. Where more than two or three gather, there will be more following.
What they are queuing for is a secondary matter because Singaporeans are
bred to instinctively believe that the longer the wait, the better the stuff
will be.
- We are what we are. And maybe that's why
we're still here?
By Jamie Ee
Singapore
Business Times 16
August 2002
