Uncovering Singaporean Traits
If you keep your eyes and ears open long enough, something juicy will undoubtedly turn up. The past 72 hours has been very illuminating about specific Singaporean traits. However, I must stress that the tendencies are not to be generalised and applied to all Singaporeans. Here’s an overview (again, it’s not a short read)
First up would be the post-65 generation (65 as in 1965, post-S’porean Independence) Q&A by Straits Times staff that covered the ’06 General Elections. Coincidentally, I was in Singapore briefly during the campaigning period so I wasn’t totally out of the loop. But, I would appreciate it very much if somebody, anybody who could shed some light on who Mr. Brown is! The only politician with the name Brown I have heard before is the Chancellor of the Exchequer (and possibly future UK PM). Yes, Singaporeans are very interested in the ‘New Media’ phenomenon. It is very likely that most of us Malaysians would not have heard of this, since we’re ‘technologically backward’. Personally, I know roughly what is it all about from political developments in the States but I was quite surprised that it is a well known concept here in Singapore.
To shed some light to the uninitiated, New Media in general refers to the birth of new media outlets on the Internet or telephony platforms (PolSci or MassComm people please correct me if I’m wrong). And in case you’re wondering, yes it includes the blogsphere too. My mistake was in forgetting about Singapore’s connectedness to the world, and its citizens desperate want for an alternative news outlet from the usual government controlled sources. This was aided by the fact that the Singaporean government would not censor the New Media (they can’t build their own Great Firewall of China). Here, I must point out that our tech-savvy Pak Lah has announced that he will crackdown on blogs that are slanderous (and IMO, airing sensitive issues). I say, bring it on! I will not hesitate to say this again and again. We Chinese, Indian and Malays are bumiputras in the literal sense of the word, yet some of us are treated like ‘squatters’. Until we have equal playing field, truer meritocracy, freedom to discuss things in public with intelligent discourse and racial issues cease to be used for political gains, we will never be fully multi-racial.
Anyways, in the Q&A sessions, they were again asking the ‘on-the-surface’ questions. They seem to think that with all these blogs, Straits Times will go bust and the Opposition might be able to find equality against the PAP. They may be ‘in the flow’ with the States but their questions have been answered some time ago, just that they didn’t bother finding out the answers themselves. I’ll answer these two questions while giving a message to my fellow politics oriented bloggers. Keep an eye on the US mid-term elections. Developments in Connecticut seem to suggest that political blogs and sites have started to make a difference in the political climate there. If true, we could be witnessing the birth of a powerful political tool. For those who want to make a difference in Malaysia, we might finally get a platform to bypass government media. But is TV and newspapers really coming to their end? I don’t think so. Newspapers, radio and TV came into existence, each threatening their predecessor’s existence. However, as we can see they all survived in their individual forms till present day. Their reach and relevance may seem to diminish with the arrival of New Media, but we must not forget their authority and credibility in providing news. Some will undoubtedly perish, but some will adapt and continue going on. As it stands, they have their own niches to fill, so they will never go extinct just yet.
All right, I’ll put that media issue to rest for the moment. Now, I should move on to a very well known topic: Kiasuism!
I might finally get my hands on a kiasu to study in close detail at last! He’s not Chinese, but he’s nerdish (this description coming from me would definitely raise some eyebrows, I’d bet) and extremely extrovert. Would these characterise him as kiasu? Not necessarily. However, his actions seem to support my current conjecture. See, during project work he nearly took on a group work assignment by himself. I tried to help, but he was literally on top of me and smothering me with bad breath. I admit, I’m the newcomer to the module (I came in on the 4th seminar and they’ve been there since the start) but he was probably so engaged in excelling and taking charge that I just resigned myself to sitting down and waiting till he’s finally satisfied. He was also practically the only guy giving answers to the lecturer when he wanted some input from the class (again, give a chance to other people to come up with something? You do gain from keeping quiet occasionally). Then, when handing up a writing assignment, he complained about the ‘suckiness’ of his work, his problem of ‘thinking and writing too much’, then showing how ‘much’ he wrote (true, since it’s 1.25 pages for 2 short questions), all without prompting! I know, most successful people do have some of these qualities, but I rarely observed them all being displayed in such quick succession and from the same person! And yes, we do bitch about our work and ‘boast/complain’ about it, but to do it without anyone trying to compare with you? It might just be the competitive streak, jealous/envy at the effort he’s showing, intimidation within me that’s at work but IMHO: There is a fine line between being brilliant and kiasu, but this is definitely Kiasuland material. I’ll just continue with my ‘observations’ and see if I got the bona fide kiasu or not.
The last thing is the Singaporean preoccupation with mugging! Nope, I am not referring to the act of robbing somebody! It’s the S’porean term for rote-studying. Today, we were arguing in Chemistry on the marking breakdown (we’re in a new course, so we get flexibility). The breakdown is as follows: Mid-Term Test (20%), Project+Attendance (20%+10%), Final Exam (50%). The entire course split into roughly 3 major factions: 1) those who want more project marks, 2) those who want greater Final Exam weightage and 3) people who just kept silent.
Personally, I hate rote-learning and exams as it’s dull and monotonous as compared to project work. Plus, we had A-Levels in 2 sections and I have to say I liked the system very much as it allows for better margins at good grades and flexibility. However, some S’porean students in effect declared their intention to flunk project work and aim to score for the module by mugging for the Finals and it had quite a lot of support from other students (you see, we’re dominated by S’porean and M’sian STPM students). While arguing, I was totally surprised and enraged at the statement somebody came up with that ‘projects and presentations are for Business students’ (Note: The quote may not be verbatim). While I am being as accommodating as possible to our host country and its people, I have to say that I think it is BULLSHIT! Of course, I didn’t say that out loud, but I find that notion completely revolting. That was really an eye opener for me, to finally see their respective study styles exposed. I have to say that I’m really happy to have ended up with the USP students, rather than those mindless drones that just come to NUS just to get a degree. I just hope that they’re not ‘true blue muggers’ as I thought, or else this is going to be very boring indeed.
Since it was a stalemate at best (we couldn’t even obtain a simple majority) we gave up for the day and stuck with the current formula. Post ‘voting’ analysis, A called its fellow Singaporeans stupid (I was thinking of the word rigid). A’s view on the situation was quite frightening. A noticed that the PRC students just kept quiet and didn’t vote at all (I was busy thinking of compromise and counter-arguments at that time). The assumption is that they would be happy at more marks allocated to memorising. Since we know that they are very capable at memorising a huge amount of information, the claim was that everyone played right into the PRC’s advantage. From strategic thinking, we’re screwed up. IMHO, they are very capable of grinding us to dust, if it was not for their lack of familiarity with the English language. So, it shows the total opposite of two Singaporean schools of thought. One thinks for itself (mug the way through), and the other one thinks about the big picture. Me? I was just planning to have fun in doing projects! However, given the 2 differing opinion, I sided with the latter. As for how the final weightages are going to be distributed, we’ll just see how it all ends up.
