A Tale of Two Countries
Published Thursday, August 24, 2006 by Robin | E-mail this post
Was listening to the Prime Minister’s national day rally on channelnewsasia.com while replying to my mum’s email yesterday evening (she wrote an email to scold me for not writing to her). If not for talkingcock.com and mrbrown, I would not have come to know about the PM’s rally. I really don’t see why the press holdings should charge people (penniless students, in particular) for access to the Straits Times Interactive. SPH is after all the owner of Paragon and Mediacorp and they are one of Singapore’s most profitable companies. The Establishment really cannot blame people reading blogs for news when SPH is happily making people pay for the sole source of mainstream Singapore news online. Maybe I should write a complaint to the Straits Times forum, after all the Prime Minister was exhorting overseas Singaporeans to stay involved.
There are 11 Singaporeans in this year’s cohort; I’m not sure if that figure includes this guy who gave up his PR status when it was his time to enlist for NS. Singaporeans are not very difficult to spot: the military scholars walk around in their unit T-shirts, some of the rest are still wearing SAF-issue New Balance sneakers, and a number of us still go to sleep in army singlet.
For the first couple of days, I felt a little weird, a little out-of-sorts, a little repelled by the sticky-ness between fellow Singaporeans, even though I am probably the only one with a Singapore flag in his room. Actually, I’m still a little sensitive to it now. After all, one of the reasons all of us have chosen an overseas education for ourselves is exposure. It might have to do with the fact that I’m one of the few who are not on scholarship; perhaps it is because of this that I did not join a bunch of them for their breakfasts, dinners and the many meals they ate out together. But there is also something very weird, out-of-sorts and repelling when Team Singapore, when the Majulah Connection becomes some sort of tribal herd instinct.
However, in terms of sticky-ness, we are no where near the Koreans. They make up half the international students population, and that does not include Koreans raised in the United States. They stick to themselves and speak Korean. I left an Asian fraternity party a couple of days back because I felt like I have walked into the set of ‘Winter Sonata’. Very soon, the fraternities and sonorities will be replacing their Greek with Korean. In general (yes, I’m generalizing) the Asians raised in the United States are very pretty, they are very chio but also very hiao. It’s like they’re rushing off to some garden kimchi party 24/7.
Orientation is going on pretty okay so far, no tau-poks, mass dances or Eusoff- Hall-oleh-oleh-ah-ah. Mostly ice-breaker games and lectures about academics and student life. Meeting a lot of people these days and even though the school is not very big, it is still very tough trying to remember names and getting to know people beyond ‘Hello, my name is Robin’.
I just played the mrbrownshow for my roommate.
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