Has Korea lost its soul?

Straits Times columnist Andy Ho’s article “Seoul cool to copy?” caught my eye just as I was leaving to school yesterday. And I couldn’t help but give it a quick read before I zipped out of the house. Ho seems to argue that culture of a country can be created and is not entirely reliant on the donkey-years of tradition or history that a country has. It’s an intriguing read – one that I’m quite sure some of our interviewees won’t agree. Tradition still seems to be that element that roots them back to Singapore, or at least Asia.

I wonder what will be the test of Ho’s argument?

For now, it seems that it is tradition that roots overseas Singaporeans back home. Not culture. Quite frankly, I don’t even know what culture is there is for Singapore to talk about. Five-foot ways, childhood memories, Cathay building, Char Kuay Teow: those are words that Returning Singaporeans bring up. I think that’s tradition, not some newly constructed culture.

Even if culture were to be constructed, surely it needs a starting point. Where does Singapore start? From Tomorrow or from tradition? Even Korea’s drama serials consist of its tradition – think Yi San – King Jeong Jo, The King and I, Da Jang Geum. What it seems to me is that Korea has created a very marketable culture, but surely it has not lost its tradition. I can’t really recall when was it we had a drama about our tradition. Price of Peace? But it’s a serial I remember the very clearly though. I loved it.

I do think we need a culture badly. But what sort needs to be more closely examined. Do we want a culture of coolness like Seoul, as Ho asserts? Or do we want something that roots us home? It is an important factor to consider, I think, to draw Singaporeans back. It builds a sense of, maybe not so much patriotism, but at least one of belonging. I wonder if Korea has lost its soul in trying to propagate this new funky culture it has? With its hundreds of years of history, I think people still embrace tradition. Singapore but only has 40 over years of nation building history, we’ve not even hit mid-life crisis yet, or have we?

Ho’s article can be found here.

Nine-eleven

It’s a date that no one in this generation will forget. Sept. 11. It’s a date that changed the lives of many, including many of those we have been interviewing for this project. It’s hard to believe some Singaporeans were actually so close to the tragedy. It’s been facinating talking to them. Others have been affected by the ripples the attack caused.

If there’s one thing good that came out from that day is that it made many rethink about life, and perhaps just as important, rethink about home. It did drive two of our interviewees back to Singapore. Among them is Amy Hwang, who had been doing summer school in Boston that year. Recalling the incident over coffee today, she told us that she should have been on the flight – United Airlines Flight 175 – from Logan International Airport in Boston to Los Angeles International. She had been planning to visit a good friend in LA after finishing summer school.

For some reason, her seat on that flight scheduled for the 11th of September was cancelled. “My seat just magically got cancelled,” she exclaimed. “I just couldnt find that same flight again. Instead of leaving on the 11th I had to leave on the 10th.”

Scared “chicken shit” for the next couple of weeks, Amy found herself unable to sleep with the lights off.

“It changed my perspective. Everything could have just ended there and then,” she said. “Thats when I came back. After that happened I didn’t think I want to go back. i just wanted to go home.”

She recalls being frightened by the sligtest bit of turbulence on her flight back from LA to Singapore. “I had a really bad reaction when I was flying back… after that you just didn’t want to get on the plane,” she said. “My mum said come back, come back.”

Just to put things into perspective, Amy’s one of those who has tried to relocate back to Singapore three times now. Each time finding herself unable to truly adapt back to the Singapore way of life. She’s tells us that she’s back to pay her dues, to her parents.

Sept. 11, she said, triggered that.

Today – she did return to Australia in 2002 to 2005 to help out in the family business – she’s back in Singapore to complete the family. It’s been a long time since her mum had her four kids together in the same country.

“My dad is in his 60s and I want to be around them. You don’t know what will happen,” she said. Despite being unable to quite settle down, “it doesnt kill me,” she said.

“So I try to get out of Singapore every quarter. Everytime I get out and come back, I find I can stay abit longer.”

Missed the people; hardly the life,the country

What about Singapore do you miss most when you’re overseas?

It’s a question we have asked many of our interviewees while working on this project. I decided to turn the question to fellow project mate Gracia Chiang, who spent 5 months in San Diego, USA for an exchange program under NTU. “I missed my family and friends. So I didn’t really miss the life in Singapore much,” she told me. “But it was mainly the place I used to go, and the company of my friends and family.” Here is a 5-minute podcast of the conversation we had.

Reflecting on it later, I think I share the same sentiments. I truly missed my family and friends when I was on exchange too. It didn’t help that I was the only Singaporean exchange student in Missouri. I’m not sure if I can put a finger to why I didn’t really miss Singapore. I know I’m Singaporean, but I’m not sure what I can hold on to that makes me Singaporean.

It’s a problem 56-year-old Josephine Chia feels very strongly too. She suggested that it’s because we younger Singaporeans have lost our sense of belonging and identity. “I see young people as in between worlds,” she tells me at an interview. “You’re in between the Asian and Western world, you’re not true Asian, but you’re not true Western. That is the problem.”

Her words are not surprising, and I think they correctly reflect the current situation today. What are we?

What’s different between us – the younger generation – and Josephine is that she can say that she’s Singaporean with real conviction. The irony of it all, she is a British citizen. Having left Singapore some 20 years ago to follow her husband back to England, she had to renounce her Singapore citizenship. But all the while in England, she’s never lost her “Singaporea-ness”, the peranakan says. She keeps them locked not only in her mind, but also in the award-winning books that she writes.

“I find that when I write, my life in Singapore comes out,” she says. “And I think your childhood days or even up to the teenage years are the important ones you will remember, no matter where you are in the world.”

I’m not sure if my childhood reminds me that I’m Singapore. I guess for people like her, in that generation, feel more so because they were truly the part of Singapore’s nation-building generation. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that I am part of nation building. No one told me so, and I wasn’t brought up to think so.

Josephine also gives talks about colonial Singapore to Britons in schools and public libraries.
“They love listening to the old traditions which I said I would more than like to talk about because I think they form part of your culture. So if I say to you now, what does it mean to be a Singaporean? Food courts?” she said. “I think that should come from the learning of your own culture whether you are Chinese or Malay, that there are certain cultural things that you should know from young, so it’s part of you, so that even if you live in the United States for the next 100 years, you will still feel that you are Singaporean.”

Is that our fault that we don’t feel Singaporean through and through, I asked.

Josephine caught me on my defense mode and quickly said: “No no, (but) if I return I will have to tell the government we must start something to make Singaporeans feel more Singaporean, then you have an identity, a very strong identity.”

Yes, I think what we lack is an identity. That oneness that we can pin point and say that we’re proud of and we therefore want to contribute to this one thing. For now, it seems, this “thing” seems absent.

Number of Overseas Singaporeans

Again, these numbers are “Guesstimates” as given to us by the Overseas Singaporean Unit.

There aren’t any official numbers apparently, but I’m sure someon, somewhere knows.
Just thought I’d try some simple infographics, not that I’ve a lot of data – complicated ones for the matter – to present. But am trying to add more kick into the posts. Will be trying to put up some more infographics kind of diagrams to show timeline and maps in the next couple of posts. Will try to also upload some audio from the interviews.

Hard

“It’s hard to severe ties with Singapore,” said Amy (Above right), at her first meeting with R.O.S.S., which stands for Returned Overseas Singaporeans. It’s her third time trying to resettle back in Singapore, after being away for more than 10 years in Australia and the U.S.. She said she failed the first two times because there were too many little things that she just “couldn’t stand it”. She didn’t want to give us further details. This time has been her longest back home, some two years have passed and she says she’s slowly getting adjusted back home.

After a long wait, we finally get to meet the people from R.O.S.S.. It’s an informal group set up by San Choo and Don. They hope this will be a platform to gather Singaporeans who have away for a while to share their experiences and to also help each other with issues settling back in Singapore.It was rather overwhelming trying to interview the various people, each with their very interesting and unique stories, while also being conscious that we were not hijacking their social time with the group. Some of them have such complex personalities and stories that it was truly difficult to even try and grasps their thoughts and ideas. Michael was one of them. More on him later.

There was a common observation we made though: the majority reason these people came back seemed to be because of family. Either to fulfill family obligations, or to be just closer to mum and dad. “Don’t want to live to regret” not being with them as you see them age, Amy said. Michael too, came back to be with his father in his twilight years. Bernadette, who has just started work at CGH and is among the 39 doctors who returned to Singapore, too said she returned largely because of her parents.

As I left the place, I thought to myself: So what’s making these people stay then and how then are they adjusting back to life here?

What magnet could attract the Pol-ish back?

German magazine Spiegel reporting that Poland’s offering better work conditions and wages to stop it’s brain drain too.

Poland Tries to Woo Its Young Back Home

Young Polish workers have flocked in the hundreds of thousands to the UK, Ireland and Sweden to find work since Poland’s EU entry in 2004. Now Poland is faced with a serious lack of skilled workers and Warsaw wants to entice them back home.

One of Poland’s biggest exports since joining the European Union has been its own people. But now Warsaw has decided the brain drain needs to be reversed and the government has launched a campaign to entice the migrants to come back home.In one of the biggest exoduses in post-war Europe, between 1.2 and 2 million of Poland’s 38 million people have opted to leave home and seek their fortunes (more…) in the booming economies of the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as Sweden. These three countries were the only EU member states to welcome the new Eastern European workforce with open arms in 2004, and it has paid off. The host nations estimate the labor injection has helped to keep inflation and wages in check and further boosted the economy. But while many of the young Poles are enjoying their new lives so much they want to put down roots, their native Poland has now decided it needs them back.

“Guess-timates” and Pyjamas

Wished I had the time and energy to always blog after every interview. But I don’t. So Here’s a 2-in-1 post.

We had a delightful meeting with officers from the Overseas Singaporean Unit on Friday. Despite having covered parliament and other government matters before, I must admit I was a little nervous as my group and I boarded lift to the 14th floor of the Ministry of National Development building. The OSU is afterall part of the Prime Minister’s Office. Lee Hsien Loong’s office leh!

My nerves were set at ease quite immediately when we met with the two ladies. They’re awfully nice, and I’m not saying this just because I want to get in their good books. They ARE nice and were very forthcoming with sharing information, some of which aren’t even exactly very official yet. We had a list of questions for them, they answered everyone of them. Among the most pertinent question was what exactly is the role of the Overseas Singaporean Unit. Yar, we know they help to keep Singaporeans overseas connected with each other and with other Singaporeans back home, but how do they do it, and what’s a day in the life of a OSU officer like?

So here 10 interesting things we found about them. (BTW, if you think I got this from a corporate brochure, you’re wrong. They don’t even have one. There hasn’t been time to do one they say, it’s barely 2 years since they “opened shop”):

• The Overseas Singaporean Unit is a secretariat. It does more coordination work than anything else. They engage with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Manpower and such.
• It is part of the PMO’s National Population Secretariat branch.
• One of their aims is to also bridge gaps that exist between the ministries Overseas Singaporeans would have to deal with. In simpler words, they are the one-stop center for information for Singaporeans who are preparing to return. They can help to coordinate between the Ministry of Education and say Immigration Authorities too.
• They are not a consular. Rather, they’re a counselor. (Sorry for that cheesey comparison, that popped in my head during the meeting). They provide the advice to help Singaporeans relocate when there a request for it.
• They don’t actively seek out Singaporeans overseas and try to persuade (or threaten) them to return home . They merely maintain links and act as a contact point.
• They don’t have official figures of how many Singaporeans there are overseas. There are only… guesstimates, as put by one of the officers. (You can imagine, I was straining my ears real hard to catch what she said. Guessti… what?) And then she went to explain: “We only have anecdotal evidence.” Numbers are only available when Singaporeans register themselves online on the e-register of a change in address. The Singapore Day in New York was a good example. Based on whatever data they had, they had only expected 600 people to turn up. 6000 turned up instead.
• They have no affiliation with any Singaporean Clubs overseas although they maintain good links with them.
• Officers at the OSU also go on ministerial visits.
• There are only 7 staff members at the OSU.
• The Overseas Singaporean Portal is not their corporate website. Their corporate info can be found here (and it sucks isn’t very informative)

So, indeed, it was a very fruitful meeting and e-mails flew that evening itself. We were put in touch with this guy called San Choo, who actually organises activities for this club we should have known existed. It’s called R.O.S.S. – Returned Overseas Singaporeans in Singapore! The only disappointing thing came out from the meeting was that the OSU couldn’t fund us. Admittedly, we weren’t quite expecting them to be able to anyway.

___________________

On Thursday, we met up with Jimmy Yap, a motivational speaker cum financial planner who had been in the UK for a long long long while (he left in the 1960s on an airline I never knew existed – British Caledonian – with merely 60 pounds in his socks) but eventually came back to Singapore, and boy was he an interesting character.

One statement he said gave me the quivers. “I don’t let the environment decide your fate, you be environment.”

Ice Cream Chefs

Darren and Jeremy. Two awesome Singaporeans who have imported a very novel idea – ice cream mix ins – from Down Under.
Photos first, words later.

The Chinese Teacher who never really left

Three interviews, two days in a row. Here’s highlights from the first one.

There was a sense of anticipation as we went to meet our first interviewee – Esther Goh, a chinese teacher (and my mum’s colleague) who had spent 8 years in Canada but decided to return to Singapore to teach. I had stayed with her in Canada for almost 3 weeks while in Victoria for holiday with my parents but never really got to know her as a person too well.

So the interview was refreshing and heart warming.Coming back to Singapore and staying on was quite an accident she tells us. The plan was to only be back to attend a nephew’s wedding. While meeting up with some ex-colleagues, word came around that Singapore was in dire need of Chinese teachers. She playfully applied, not knowing that it would come to pass. So she left home in Canada, closing a cafe that she had opened earlier.

“My children knew I liked teaching, so they encouraged me to go back. They said they are big already and can take care of themselves,” Esther says. Esther has been home for almost 10 years since.Quite unlike the typical RS who’s eager to share their overseas experience, Esther says she doesn’t quite talk about her time in Canada unless being asked.”I won’t go eh my Canada how good ah, how bad…,” she says. She does inject some of her stories in her lessons to make them more lively though.

“I’ve not felt that people thought of me of hao lian. I think it’s the tone that you speak to people too,” she says. “If you go like oh, I’ve from Canda, and I’m smart then of course people will think that you are arrogant.”