| Satisfied with a pink card (aka why I am proud to be a Singaporean) |
| Frankly speaking, I believe that those who feel confused about their identity ought to be shot. After so many years of breathing Temasek air, they decided to join in the crowd and echo for the need for an identity. You mean local Hainanese Chicken Rice and Chinese New Year Yusheng coupled with Indian curry and Malay Nasi Goreng isn't enough to make one feel that he belongs to Singapore? I firmly believe that Singaporeans have a strong identity of our own, something that we had fostered for ourselves and the next generations to come, except that it has become so commonplace that we treat it as the norm and begin the unnecessary search. Look around you. Do you see people of all races strolling along Raffles Place? Or Malays and Chinese congregating, in the same group, in pubs for drinks? If you bother scrutinising, don't you see several mixed-raced couples embracing each other in bouts of PDA? "yes" is the answer to the obvious. So why aren't these characteristics considered part of our identity? Perpetually nowhere else in the world can we actually see people of different races co-existing in peace and harmony. Look at Israel; a country torn apart by civil war where the Palestinians fight out the Israelis; Bosnia where ambitious Milosovich tried to oust the unwanted, to make his a pure Serb country; even the all-great America where the blacks stick to their streets on the West End, New Jersey, the whites conquer Manhatten city and the Asians relegated to living in shabby, mob-controlled Chinatown. So, my dear countrymen, it seems that mulit-racialism, something which we have taken for granted over the past peaceful decades, is a special trait of our homeland. Just like the polite New Zealanders, we have established for ourselves an identity of our own, a place where all races are treated equally. Remember the recent great Indian earthquake? Or even the various disasters before that? When urged for donations, many would donate in terms of cash, ckithes, food and whatever else that is needed. An anonymous couple donated 1,000kg of rice to the abovementioned earthquake victims, as reported in the newspapers while there was a lady who sold her flat for charity. All these heart-warming acts performed by our fellow countrymen are something that we should be proud of, aren't they? When Singaporeans get insulted by foreigners, letters pour into the newsoffice to speak up for the entire race or for the accused group, showing that we are not a force to be reckoned with when we unite against the unwelcoming forces. Isn't this attitude something that we too can be proud of, this "United we stand" theorem, understood so well by everyone of us on Singapore soil? An undergraduate recently commented that he ponders if he can still be called Singaporean because he "eats sushi and steak, watch the English Premier League instead of the 'S' League and chats to his friends in Hongkong through the internet" (Quoted from the paper Streats). I would not call this a case of lost identity. Rather I would term him a "globalised Singaporean, the Singaporean who represent the future". With globalisation (and Singapore firmly etched in favour of this phenomenon), there would be many things that we would import from abroad; cultural imports, material imports just to name a few. We see traces of Japanese and Korean culture assimiliating a following in Singapore as more teenagers follow them in many aspects of their lives. Eating sushi isn't such a big deal anymore; neither is eating Western food or incorporating the Zen of living into interior decoration. All these simply point to the exposure of our fellow countrymen to the world out there. So what's so bad about that? It simply makes the average Singaporean more learned and wise to the ways of the world. If we are losing our identity, why isn't the government embarking on a "Get-our-identity-back" campaign? They felt strong enough about youngsters not knowing enought Singapore history and launched the "National Education" program with many follow-ups, so why not this? Has it ever struck you that the government itself feels that Singaporeans are doing just fine? Loving Man United and not SAF FC is a matter of personal interest. Talking more often to friends abroad is a matter of common interest. Why these all would boil down to "not feeling Singaporean enough" is indeed puzzling. Loving sushi more than char kway teow might mean that you like less oily foods. And so on. All in all, all that matters is whether your heart belongs to Singapore. There are so many visible elements, with the strongest as multi-racialism, that makes Singapore a unique place. (and I won't even go into the political and economic aspect of it all) In fact there are so many factors that I believe that the Government feels no need in answering this question that puzzles the young. Perhaps they do really feel that the answer's just too obvious and the youngsters themselves should do some digging and reflecting, getting the answers themselves than to be spoon-fed (again) into what they should think and feel. But what the government should do, is to try lead the young onto the correct path and from there let them discover on their own. The still muddled ones should look around to see the beautiful country we possess and be proud of. Stop looking for elements to show off to your foreign friends, trying to pit Victoria Theatre and the Esplanade against theatre 'guru' Sir Broadway, NY. Instead, look for those factors that really touch your heart, make you feel Singaporean, and boast them to your friends. You would feel even closer to your homeland that way. At the end of it all, you know that at the end of the day, you will always have a home to come home to, and a country full of warm and loving countrymen who will stick by you in dire states. |