Adam Khoo: The expats will rule Singapore
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minnie2004:
The connotation is not \"us against the world\". The message is that as a country, we are proud to have come together to achieve what we have done so far, and we are not prepared to sit back and let ourselves be labeled as a less than civil society bent on giving our PRs a hard time.... In fact it was just a feeling I had after reading Chief's post. He used a lot of \"we Singaporeans\", \"us Singaporeans\", conveying a strong \"we against the world\" message. Not just him, the frequency these phrases appear in other media is higher than I'm used to. In real life however, I don't feel like an outsider and have no problem getting along with locals.
BTW, i hope Chief won't be mad at me and black-list me from KSP
...
Singaporean's nationalism pales when compared to the South Korean and Japanese. But it's there because we are a country, afterall, and not just and part of another country.
PS. We only terminate spammers and trolls, and we publicly list all those accounts we terminate for transparency. As you are neither, you don't have to worry about being banned. -
[quote]Actually, we don't discriminate the Chinese. But the Chinese reputation is spolit by a small number of Dragon Ladies[/quote]
I have no comments on this one. Takes two hands to clap. Reminds me of Jerk Neo.
[quote]He used a lot of \"we Singaporeans\", \"us Singaporeans\", conveying a strong \"we against the world\" message.[/quote]No problem with this one either.
[quote]as a country, we are proud to have come together to achieve what we have done so far.[/quote] -
Thanks Chief for clarifying your stance. I believe that’s the stance for the majority Singaporeans as well and I respect your nationalism and I’m not here to belittle your country.
Despite always being "just part of another country", HK’s success story was not much different from that of Singapore. We also had no natural resources and counted on the hard work of our people, many of whom, like those in Singapore, were immigrants from China. Although being a British colony before, we never really received much help from the host country except for the legal system and the clean and small government they provided. Social benefits were minimal and we were pretty much left to our own devices. So despite being a colony of a country, we belonged to no country, hence this lack of nationalism among us. Because of this, we learned to be practical, self-sufficient and highly flexible. After 1997, when everyone thought it was the end of HK, we evolved ourselves to become even more successful.
I can’t represent all HKers, but many of us (including those who carry foreign passports) are proud to call ourselves HKers, although HK is officially not a country. Despite many HKers have left HK after 1997 to escape communist China, our govt still welcomes them back to work and live with open arms, as long they’ve paid their taxes. -
minnie2004:
Thanks Chief for clarifying your stance. I believe that's the stance for the majority Singaporeans as well and I respect your nationalism and I'm not here to belittle your country...
Dear minnie2004, you are most welcome and your views on this issue of citizens vs PR carries weight because they are well-balanced and thought through. It is by such constructive exchanges that we can see the situation from each others' point of view and come to a common understanding. Hopefully, that will translate to solutions and policies that better meet the needs of both citizens and PRs. -
minnie2004:
minnie2004, it is easy to be converted if you attend enough NDP. Perhaps you can try to get the tickets for this year....... In fact it was just a feeling I had after reading Chief's post. He used a lot of \"we Singaporeans\", \"us Singaporeans\", conveying a strong \"we against the world\" message. Not just him, the frequency these phrases appear in other media is higher than I'm used to. In real life however, I don't feel like an outsider and have no problem getting along with locals.
BTW, i hope Chief won't be mad at me and black-list me from KSP ...
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ks2me:
minnie2004, it is easy to be converted if you attend enough NDP. Perhaps you can try to get the tickets for this year....minnie2004:
... In fact it was just a feeling I had after reading Chief's post. He used a lot of \"we Singaporeans\", \"us Singaporeans\", conveying a strong \"we against the world\" message. Not just him, the frequency these phrases appear in other media is higher than I'm used to. In real life however, I don't feel like an outsider and have no problem getting along with locals.
BTW, i hope Chief won't be mad at me and black-list me from KSP ...
another competitor!!!
citizens got prioity or not??
:roll:
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tree nymph:
minnie2004, it is easy to be converted if you attend enough NDP. Perhaps you can try to get the tickets for this year....ks2me:
[quote=\"minnie2004\"]... In fact it was just a feeling I had after reading Chief's post. He used a lot of \"we Singaporeans\", \"us Singaporeans\", conveying a strong \"we against the world\" message. Not just him, the frequency these phrases appear in other media is higher than I'm used to. In real life however, I don't feel like an outsider and have no problem getting along with locals.
BTW, i hope Chief won't be mad at me and black-list me from KSP ...
another competitor!!!
citizens got prioity or not??
:roll: :P[/quote]tree nymph,
You'd better clarify you are just trying to get the NDP tickets... :lol: :lol: -
Cheval:
Thanks for your insight too, it has been good to read from your balanced views here.
I'd like share some personal experiences in France, where I studied and worked for 12 years altogether. All regular foreigners have exactly the same benefits and pay the same fees as French, except the right of voting. As such, when I was a student, I could also apply for housing subsidy just as my French classmates. French universities are free (i.e., wholly subsidized by the government) and this also applies to foreign students. For health care, the government takes on charge 85% of the cost. Usually people buy a 'Mutual' policy allowing to complete the rest. At the end of my study, thinking that I was going to leave soon, I did not renew my Mutual. Unfortunately, I got a serious bicycle accident and stayed 2 days in hospital on emergency. In the end, I paid only 300 francs (about 50 euros).
I have long heard from my french colleagues that education in France is highly subsidized by the state. However, depending on which type of universities you go to, some are not free (the private business schools for instance). What is interesting to learn from you on the other hand, is that for a foreign student, the university education is also free. Must one be on some sort of scholarship? Just wondering, why don't people send their kids to France to study since it is free? -
Hi, just want to share this recent article by Thomas Friedman. I agree with his viewpoints wholeheartedly.
America’s Real Dream Team
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: March 20, 2010
Went to a big Washington dinner last week. You know the kind: Large hall; black ties; long dresses. But this was no ordinary dinner. There were 40 guests of honor. So here’s my Sunday news quiz: I’ll give you the names of most of the honorees, and you tell me what dinner I was at. Ready?
Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.
No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?
O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia.
Indeed, if you need any more convincing about the virtues of immigration, just come to the Intel science finals. I am a pro-immigration fanatic. I think keeping a constant flow of legal immigrants into our country — whether they wear blue collars or lab coats — is the key to keeping us ahead of China. Because when you mix all of these energetic, high-aspiring people with a democratic system and free markets, magic happens. If we hope to keep that magic, we need immigration reform that guarantees that we will always attract and retain, in an orderly fashion, the world’s first-round aspirational and intellectual draft choices.
This isn’t complicated. In today’s wired world, the most important economic competition is no longer between countries or companies. The most important economic competition is actually between you and your own imagination. Because what your kids imagine, they can now act on farther, faster, cheaper than ever before — as individuals. Today, just about everything is becoming a commodity, except imagination, except the ability to spark new ideas.
If I just have the spark of an idea now, I can get a designer in Taiwan to design it. I can get a factory in China to produce a prototype. I can get a factory in Vietnam to mass manufacture it. I can use Amazon.com to handle fulfillment. I can use freelancer.com to find someone to do my logo and manage my backroom. And I can do all this at incredibly low prices. The one thing that is not a commodity and never will be is that spark of an idea. And this Intel dinner was all about our best sparklers.
Before the dinner started, each contestant stood by a storyboard explaining their specific project. Namrata Anand, a 17-year-old from the Harker School in California, patiently explained to me her research, which used spectral analysis and other data to expose information about the chemical enrichment history of “Andromeda Galaxy.” I did not understand a word she said, but I sure caught the gleam in her eye.
My favorite chat, though, was with Amanda Alonzo, a 30-year-old biology teacher at Lynbrook High School in San Jose, Calif. She had taught two of the finalists. When I asked her the secret, she said it was the resources provided by her school, extremely “supportive parents” and a grant from Intel that let her spend part of each day inspiring and preparing students to enter this contest. Then she told me this: Local San Jose realtors are running ads in newspapers in China and India telling potential immigrants to “buy a home” in her Lynbrook school district because it produced “two Intel science winners.”
Seriously, ESPN or MTV should broadcast the Intel finals live. All of the 40 finalists are introduced, with little stories about their lives and aspirations. Then the winners of the nine best projects are announced. And finally, with great drama, the overall winner of the $100,000 award for the best project of the 40 is identified. This year it was Erika Alden DeBenedictis of New Mexico for developing a software navigation system that would enable spacecraft to more efficiently “travel through the solar system.” After her name was called, she was swarmed by her fellow competitor-geeks.
Gotta say, it was the most inspiring evening I’ve had in D.C. in 20 years. It left me thinking, “If we can just get a few things right — immigration, education standards, bandwidth, fiscal policy — maybe we’ll be O.K.” It left me feeling that maybe Alice Wei Zhao of North High School in Sheboygan, Wis., chosen by her fellow finalists to be their spokeswoman, was right when she told the audience: “Don’t sweat about the problems our generation will have to deal with. Believe me, our future is in good hands.”
As long as we don’t shut our doors. -
I agree with his views too. The moment this country put an offspring of an immigrant, who's also a minority, to the top post, I knew it's a country with hope, a country which can reinvent itself (from 8 bad years under an incompetent president), and that it will emerge from whatever recession it's going through. It is exactly this accommodating spirit of its people, plus a system that encourages creativity and freedom of speech, that will make the U.S. thrive in this ever-changing world in the long-run.
That's why I'm a bit skeptical when people say China will eventually take over U.S. No doubt China is going to grow faster than anyone else in the next few years. However, after playing catch up, without a democratic system and freedom of speech, I think China will eventually be tied down by a lot of problems - corruption, aging, boy/girl ratio, human rights - just to name a few.
Look at the other end of the spectrum, Japan, who can't even accept 3rd generation residents as citizens, not to mention giving them voting rights. To me, there's only one way the country is headed - south.
Now you know where to put your money
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