What’s going on?

On June 16, 2008 · 5 Comments · In Living

It’s like we’ve been in hid­ing with all this mov­ing shit. We’ve hardly read the news, and although we know about the major calami­ties that have struck, it still feels a bit strange that when we’ve started ven­tur­ing out­side of our apart­ment (both old and new), the coun­try seems to have changed a fair bit.

First, every sec­ond 7-Eleven and petrol sta­tion cashier / pump atten­dant seems to sport a PRC (Main­land or what­ever you call them) accent, and every sec­ond waiter / super­mar­ket cashier sports a Flipino accent.

Mul­ti­ply that by the num­ber of petrol sta­tions, super­mar­kets and cafes in Sin­ga­pore and you’ll have come up with a very rough but very large num­ber of PRC (Main­land Chi­nese) and Fil­ipinos work­ing in Singapore.

I don’t know about you, but I feel it wasn’t like that, say, six months ago?

Maybe that’s why there was an appar­ent recent push to un-Pinyinise Chi­nese names in schools. We don’t want our kids to be mis­taken for Main­land Chi­nese work­ing at petrol sta­tions and Chi­nese restau­rants, do we?

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  • yanyanyanyanyan

    Cam­paign Un-Pinyinisation wasn’t so recent…it was, like, 14 years ago? must be the amaz­ing fore­sight of the government.

  • LcT

    that ‘recent’ push hap­pened in 1991 or 1992, i think. i know our gov­ern­ment prides itself for hav­ing fore­sight, but i never thought they’ll have THAT much of it! =O

  • http://thisauntieblogstoo.wordpress.com/ aun­tieblog

    Each time I get on a bus in my area, 80% of the pas­sen­gers are for­eign­ers — Indian and PRC Chi­nese ‘tal­ents’, Japan­ese and Cau­casian stu­dents and other for­eign stu­dents liv­ing in the U hos­tels across the roads. I’ve got calls from banks and other cus­tomer ser­vice peo­ple with Fil­ipino and Indian accents. I guess we’ve been surrounded!

  • http://military-life.blogspot.com Panzer

    Sin­ga­pore is a global city. We need these for­eign tal­ent to keep­ing Sin­ga­pore Inc. purring along. More good years, Swiss Stan­dard of liv­ing and other sim­i­lar slo­gans come to mind.

    Of course, they “don’t” have to serve NS.

    Majul­lah Singapura.

  • http://military-life.blogspot.com Panzer

    Sin­ga­pore is a global city. We need these for­eign tal­ent to keep­ing Sin­ga­pore Inc. purring along. More good years, Swiss Stan­dard of liv­ing and other sim­i­lar slo­gans come to mind.

    Of course, they “don’t” have to serve NS.

    Majul­lah Singapura.

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