The raging fires of xenophobia
One in 4.5 people in Singapore is a foreigner. Being a foreigner myself elsewhere, you'd expect me to be sympathetic to 'these people'. Foreigners do all the jobs that Singaporeans don't want to do - and more. They build our houses and skyscrapers, look after our children, serve our tables, sell us things, own offices, design advertisements, bank our money, play our football, cook our meals, marry the men (mostly it's men), steal the husbands - again mostly its husbands, - the list goes on. This is mostly because the economy is doing so well that there are too many jobs. Can you imagine a problem like that? There are so many jobs in fact that service staff are simply shite because they know they can't be fired. Anyway, the point is that they are everywhere - and they are in Singapore for one reason and one reason alone - to make money. For those in the lowest income brackets possibly a quality of life too - but those in the middle and higher income brackets, definitely the quality of life is a big draw. The swimming clubs, restaurants, the cars and flats - it's a capitalists paradise. Capitalism gone right, possibly.
Anyhow, yesterday, as i was in Serangoon Road, i was being served by an Indian woman. I say Indian, i'm not really sure. She could be from Pakistan or Sri Lanka - in any case, it wasn't Singapore. I think that because she couldn't speak English. Most Singaporeans can speak some kind of English, unless they are Chinese who expect that everyone should speak some kind of Chinese - but don't get me started on that one - and she clearly didn't understand what i was trying to say. But she was really, really trying. And i was really really trying as well. I must have been here for too long because something inside me went - ping!- and i sighed thinking, there are too many foreigners in Singapore. I was struck with horror at that thought, of course. But what was it that made me go that way? Why did i think that? I have no right to be so xenophobic on every count. I'm no longer here, i'm a foreigner elsewhere - an immigrant - i should see this as an exhilirating phase and development...what made me go ping?
It's just that, what do Singaporeans share with each other now? What binds us apart from economic endeavour? What are we, if not increasingly atomised? If it is the economy that binds us, then what are we beyond the digit, the widget? What about a common langauge? A common understanding? When we were forming ourselves once, we are slowly unforming?
And these huge schools have started popping up all over the place. Australian School, Lycee Francis, etc. They ae incredibly well heeled and pretty. Something between our really good schools and the less good ones. Now i bear these schools no ill will, but then i came from a pretty lovely school. What if someone comes from a third generation not so great school and you see all these foreigners having it so bloody good. and of course there is no recourse to another vision. So you just trudge along. You just count your beans and hope for a better day? I don't know, is that what people do?
About the start of amy arrival, a friend, the sweetest person in the world said to me that she had begun to feel resentful of there being so many foreigners. I was pretty shocked then at her sentiment but then understand her a little now. I'm still shocked at myself. If someone gives up home and family to come here and work, to make a few bucks - and i mean a few - i have no right to be to rude about it. But, but but...
Perhaps that is partly why i do feel so out of place. That Singapore doesn't feel like the Singapore i used to know. That every other person isn't Singaporean. I have no shared experiences with these other people. Nothing i can count on to be ours. It's stupid anyway because i don't have these shared experiences, coming from a ten year sojourn abord. It's good that i stayed this long because i think that at least now i know that the Singapore i used to know isn't the Singapore of now. It's changed in many many ways - an the most fundamental being the dilution in the numbers of Singapore born people who live and work here now. If i thought we were a floating poeple once, nomads really, it has become even more so now. If i were younger i may have embraced this with exhiliration - but now...
It might also be that because of them i fell less Singaporean. It's like having an adopted child in the family and now the adopted child is more a part of your family than you are. So i think that's what it is, my nose is slightly out out of joint. However, i suppose i gave up that right having moved away, but it would have been nice to know that your family still thought of you as one of their own and didn't go about replacing you like that. Possibly, possibly that's what's beneath it all. The knowledge that on the most fundamental level, no one is indispensible. Including me, to this country.
This is becoming less and less my home. And one day, it will no longer be my home. There will be nothing here that will tie me to this place. Not place, not memory, not people. My idea of being Singaporean will no longer be Singapore's idea of being Singaporean. I must get used to this. If i ever did return it would not be to the Singapore i remembered. I would not be to my Singapore.
This isn't my country
This isn't my home
These aren't my people
This isn't my life
These aren't my family
These aren't my friends
I'm am no longer a Singapore, Singaporean
