Disneyland

“The irony of Singapore is that the authentic bits

that are left — eg Clarke Quay and parts of Chinatown — feel like

they were actually created by Disney.”

- Andrew Wood, 2007.

Soundtrack

If we could have a song track for our FYP, think these few would make the cut.

Club Singapore

It’s not an embassy, instead, it’s a place to head to when you feel home sick or need help to prepare to return home. Called Overseas Singaporean Club, the setup is OSU’s latest initiative to help keep Singaporeans connected while overseas.

The club will first open its doors in Sydney and Melbourne on 29 September 2007 before making its way to other key cities.

Tucked inside Singapore-owned hotels and properties in major cities across the world, the various OS clubs will be true watering holes for all homesick Overseas Singaporeans.

Check out the website which describes the club as such: Here, you can catch up with fellow Singaporeans as you chill out over drinks and grub during Happy Hour Singapore-style. If you’re missing the news from home, just get your hands on copies of The Straits Times and other Singapore newspapers and magazines at the Club.

Chinese post-grad scholars must return

Come home, uphold the reputation of the motherland or be fined, China tells its postgrad students on state-funded scholarships.

What’s execrably interesting is that these scholars are also banned from engaging in activities that will “damage China’s interest and security”. Has someone done something wrong recently?

Sep 29, 2007
Postgrads on scholarships ‘must return’

BEIJING – STUDENTS who obtain postgraduate degrees abroad on state-funded scholarships must return to China and are required to work domestically for two years, China’s Education Ministry said.

Scholarship recipients must sign a contract with strict regulations, including banning activities that ‘will damage China’s interests and security’ and requiring them to ‘uphold the reputation of the motherland’, according to documents posted on the ministry’s website.

The rules cover students working towards their master’s degrees or PhDs, as well as PhD students who conduct research overseas.

State-funded scholarships are generally awarded to researchers at government institutes, civil servants and teachers.

‘After finishing his studies, the student must work in China for at least two years,’ the ministry said.

Those who violate the rules are subject to fines.

The regulations were issued yesterday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The policy announcement was dated July 16 but it is common for government notices to be posted days or weeks after they were written.

Between 1996 and September last year, more than 26,000 government-funded students went abroad and about 97 per cent returned on time, the State Scholarship Council said.

But figures show that China suffers from severe brain drain. Of the 1.06 million Chinese students who have studied overseas since 1978, only about 280,000 have returned.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sing-a-foreign

The Straits Times today reported that that the number of foreigners here in Singapore has reached its 1 million mark. (Sounded a bit like Apple selling 1 million iPods.) I wonder if it’s something to be proud of? I wonder if it’s something the government is proud of? Are we coming full circle again? We asked the foreigners to leave in colonial days because we didn’t want to rely on them. Today almost a quarter of our population is made up of them. Sure, we’re are not relying on them to govern the country, but we are relying on them to drive the economy. Is it not as bad? Would getting Singaporeans to return home be a better idea?

Sep 28, 2007
Foreign population in S’pore crosses 1m mark

Highest jump in at least seven years helps lift total population here to 4.68 million
By Goh Chin Lian & Keith Lin

FOREIGNERS are coming here in unprecedented numbers, contributing to the largest swell in Singapore’s population in more than two decades.

The foreign population, which includes professionals, workers, students and their family members, was an estimated 1,005,500 in June this year – crossing the one million mark for the first time.
This is a 14.9 per cent rise over a year ago and represents the highest jump in at least seven years, according to the Department of Statistics.
The previous year’s increase was 9.7 per cent.
The number of Singaporeans and permanent residents here also grew 1.8 per cent, the same as the previous year.
These increases lifted Singapore’s total population to 4,680,600 as of June this year – a 4.4 per cent rise over the previous year.
This is also the largest increase since 1982’s 4.5 per cent.
The figures, from the Department’s annual report on population trends released yesterday, also covered statistics for marriages, divorces, births and deaths.
Economist Song Seng Wun said the surge in the number of foreigners reflects the nation’s broad- based economic recovery.
‘Foreigners are lapping up job opportunities for sectors across the board, from financial services to teaching to construction,’ he said.
External factors figure too.
‘Many neighbouring countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, have been on a strong growth path, so their companies have been setting up shop here as a base for regional expansion,’ he added.
Liberal immigration policies also play a part, said consultant demographer G. Shantakumar.
‘We are attracting not just workers, but also students, in the hope of getting more foreigners to settle down here,’ he noted.
One newly-arrived professional is 36-year-old China national Hu Yen. The accountant said career prospects are better here and he is hoping his wife and son can join him.
‘My wife’s an accountant too, so she can find a job here. And my son will benefit from the education system,’ said Mr Hu, who arrived two weeks ago.
Singaporean Thomas Gan, 56, an operations officer, said there is no harm having more foreigners if jobs are aplenty, especially those that locals do not want to take up. ‘But the aged and uneducated who compete with foreigners for jobs will feel the pinch.’
Asked about the effects that an influx of foreigners might have on social cohesiveness, sociologist Paulin Straughan said she did not see an adverse impact.
But she cautioned against negative stereotyping, such as saying foreigners usurp high-paying jobs, as this could lead to a less cohesive society.
‘We need to be careful, and not grow a culture of resentment among locals,’ she said.
The annual report also showed that the total fertility rate rose a notch to 1.26 last year. While this is up from 1.25 a year earlier, it is still far below the 2.1 figure needed to replace the population.

Why must accent?

Thought this was quite an interesting post by this guy called ian. See his post here.

I don’t get it. I really don’t.

You live in Singapore for 18 years of your life, you go overseas for 4 years and after that, all the good work is gone. You come back and start speaking with a foreign accent. I understand that you have been living in a foreign country for the last 4 years surrounded by people who speak like that so maybe it is normal for you to be slightly affected. But if the environment plays such a part, then why, tell me why after returning to Singapore and spending the next six years of your life, you don’t lose the foreign accent and gain back the Singaporean one. How come those ang mohs or foreign talents from whatever other country doesn’t gain a Singaporean accent after living here for a long time. Sure, they pick up a bit of Singlish and our slangs but do they lose their accent from home. I haven’t met one yet. In fact, they need to make an effort to talk like us. It isn’t natural.

I’m not against speaking good proper English. But you can do that without an accent.

S’pore, a country built for others?

Not quite sure what the question is from reading the CNA report. Is it a question of not being able to cope with a prospering society or if Singapore is shaping itself for the foreigners? Here’s an extract of the report which has the question asked by the NUS student to PM Lee at a ministerial forum yesterday.

And this has led to the country attracting a lot of foreign talent.

But, is Singapore becoming a place for the wealthy? asked one law undergraduate asked during the dialogue.

“Singapore seems to be built not for us but for foreigners. Sincerely, I am afraid that as a middle income person, I am not able to make that jump in social, economic class. My question is this, is this land, Singapore, a place for the rich?” asked the student.

Mr Lee replied that Singapore cannot be a place for the rich, because if that was the case, the government would lose the elections.

“Singapore has to be a place where the majority of Singaporeans, a vast majority of Singaporeans, will enjoy a high quality of life and be able to have jobs where you can earn well and do well for yourself,” he said.

“You may not be able to do as well as the top most successful banker, lawyer or property developer. But you do well for yourself, your career. You have good schools for your children, good healthcare for your parents, good leisure for your family, good opportunities for your future, that’s for everybody,” Mr Lee added.

“To have a society where everybody is equal, that’s a recipe for poverty, it doesn’t work. There will be inequalities in society but we must make sure that the majority of people have a good standard of living and improving standards from year to year,” he said.

Doctors coming home

Something’s working out somewhere!
From the Straits Times on 21 Sep 2007

MORE foreign-trained doctors are flocking to Singapore, now that their medical degrees are recognised here.

Last year, it attracted 190 such doctors, including 39 Singaporeans returning here to work. This is a third more than the 138 who came here to work in 2005.

What’s home?

It’s a question we’ve been asking ourselves since the start of the project. I found one person’s perspective here. Well written. Can’t seem to figure out who the author is though. Here’s an excerpt of it:

To me what really endures is the opposite of national pride, what my friend Yakov referred endearing too as “local or neighborhood” pride – it’s the small diorama of everyday life which all of us are so familiar with. The little people who we come across day in and day out – the prata man who just knows I just like it crispy & crusty. The tea aunty who always makes it a point to ladle an extra scoop of sugar because she knows I have a sweet tooth. The girl next door who always manages a friendly smile because she knows that will make my day. The distant memory of my youth during NS, when I looked into the face of a boy officer who I just knew was as scared as me. We were lost and flailing yet, we were in it together, through thick and thin – and that was all that really mattered – it’s the small stuff that always sticks to me whenever I conjure the word “home”: what I call the “neighborhood pride” stuff where one person just rubs against another and it leaves enough residue to say, I am as much a part of you are a part of me and all that just adds up to make up a place where a man nurtures his sense of place and belonging to a community –that I guess is home, for me at least.

I am a Asian, Catholic, Chinese, a Singaporean, ACS boy who hails for the South and I live in a street where old people still call me “Ah Tee” and still expect me paint their rusty gates for $1 and a glass of Ribena, while they spend the evenings reminiscing about the past – and I am proud to belong to all these small little fragments of memories which really don’t add up too much – only they are very much part my identity as they are part of who I am before, now and probably tomorrow.

Craving out a place one called “home” is a way of making sense of where we are in relation to the broader community: a means of even validating the condition of what it means to be human: to the people we have known, to the events which have shaped our lives, and to shared memory. I am reminded when a sense of belonging is absent, our humanity diminishes and this is often followed by a sense of estrangement.

Here are a couple more entries about home:

Home, Where My Singapore is

Why I wish to come back

Discovered

Here’s an article from TODAY:

S’porean diaspora gathers in cyberspace

OS Portal has 9,000 users a year after launch

Friday • August 10, 2007

Derrick A Paulo
derrick@mediacorp.com.sg

THERE are hardly any Singaporeans in the faraway city of Bogota, Colombia.

Yet, Ms Kemmy Lim, the head of secondary at Colegio Gran Bretaña, an international school, managed to contact a fellow citizen there whom she never knew.

The first time they met, after chatting on the phone and online, Ms Lim went to her new friend’s place and was served four types of Singaporean curry: Egg curry, vegetarian curry, prawn curry and fish curry.

“Who could have asked for more??!!” she blogged, and decided to be the next host.

Stories like this are being repeated in both far-flung destinations and big, cosmopolitan cities as more Singaporeans live overseas.

The ripples of connections have grown, especially recently, due to a cyber hub that is making a splash.

The Overseas Singaporean Portal (OS Portal; at www.overseassingaporean.sg) is how Ms Lim and thousands of others are being “discovered”, wherever they are.