Friday, July 22, 2005
From my ole buddy Wind’s blog, someone commented:
“do you just want the piece of paper that says you graduated from Cornell, because that's worth more on the market than a piece of paper that says you graduated from NUS? (don't forget the piece of paper isn't important in itself; it's employers' expectations of overseas grads - more independent, more initiative, etc - that are important in securing that job.)also - don't forget that it cuts both ways. if you think Americans (and not just "ang mohs" but the whole rainbow of races - "American" isn't a homogenous descriptor - and what about the Koreans, Turkish, Israeli, Nigerian, Kenyan and Indians at your school as well?) are antisocial, maybe it's because you're pushing them away by clustering as a small, segregated group of Singaporeans. it keeps you within your comfort zone, but it reflects poorly on us as a nation. is that the impression we want to give the world? that we are antisocial, arrogant and insular? i hope not”
that’s a meaningless comment. It’s not even worth a rejoinder but then, I’ve had enough of this self righteous crap.
Its certainly easy to point one’s languid fingers while safely snug in one’s own comfort zone, accusing us of being overachieving pricks more bent on maintaining a perfect GPA than being, ahem, perfect ambassadors for our country doing all the happy smiley things perfect people do, ie socializing and making shitloads of friends from all over the world and taking in their culture and playing an active role in their community yada yada blah blah splutter splutter .
Its all bullshit. Sure, I do not doubt for one moment that we are overachieving dicks- that’s what got us to where we are in the first place. To satisfy the sponsor, and to do the above mentioned? Sure, Windy might sound a little insular, but I don’t think he’s arrogant or antisocial per se.
This phenomenon of a homogeneous cluster-fuck is not uniquely Singaporean in the first place. I observe the same phenomenon happening in other international students in the lab I work in. The Chinese grad students in my lab hang out mostly with his fellow Chinese contemporaries. Same with the Indians. I would daresay the Koreans are even more close knit (and endogamous) than the Chinese. Hell, even the minorities in Madison stay together in groups. It is simply fatuous to ascribe this clustering as due to the supposed arrogance inherent in the “scholar mentality” of the sheltered well fed Singaporean scholar. Here the guy is assuming that as sponsored slaves, every one of us are extroverts, share the same worldview and even speak the same scholar-speak. Wtf?
Every sponsored kia is different. Windy is an introvert. So am I. There are other people who are extroverts and they do not necessarily share the same worldview as I or Windy. So whats wrong with being an introvert?
Why can’t we do our own thang and carve out a niche of our own? Must sponsored buggers be obliged to carry the task of merely being overt ambassadors of Singapore? Yes and No. One can if one wants to, I see this most strongly in EDB scholars. The buggers, well at least the ones I know are an extroverted bunch. And all power to them. I’m constantly amazed at the ability of almost all of them to socialize and make small talk at the drop of the hat. Of course, they are the ones with the wide network of friends. So what about the rest of us; the quiet geek archetypes who don’t value attention nor have time to spare socializing as a result of heavy academic workloads? I think that’s perfectly fine. At the end of the day its a matter of finding one’s niche. I’ve found my niche, and so does Wind. I work in a lab where I’m the only Singaporean around. I have a sprinkling of angmoh/ABC friends, mostly through work. They know me as a person and they know about Singapore- well at least its not part of China. I am comfortable. They are comfortable. And in Wind’s case, he does spare some time to play table tennis and he also has some foreign friends.
So what the hell is wrong with that? Must we judged on the number of non Singaporean friends we have? Must we judged solely the “fun” (whats “fun” in the first place?) things we do? Must we be assessed by the amount of hours spent contributing to the community?
Why not see us normal individuals trying to cope with life in a foreign land, and adjust one’s expectations accordingly? Hell, why judge in the first place?
Even if all of us were cast from one perfect scholar mould and released to the various universities, I can safely say that results will still vary widely. As what the commenter said it “works both ways”. Is the Singaporean community at say, LSE or UCL exactly the same in number, make up and composition as the community in Cornell , Madison or Ann Arbor? More importantly, is the school and the zeitgeist of the particular school uniform in all places? Obviously not. When taken together, these factors interact and affect how each Singaporean – and various other minorities groups on each campus intergrate and participate. So can one safely say for sure that just because an individual who had so much “fun” in one school, the same individual will have the same “fun” in another school? (again, “fun”/ “enriching” to one person differs from another’s idea) And so what’s the “characteristic experience” vis-à-vis cultural integration of an overseas Singaporean student then? Is there one in the first place? Sure it looks the same from the outside; will it look the same from the inside?
“do you just want the piece of paper that says you graduated from Cornell, because that's worth more on the market than a piece of paper that says you graduated from NUS? (don't forget the piece of paper isn't important in itself; it's employers' expectations of overseas grads - more independent, more initiative, etc - that are important in securing that job.)also - don't forget that it cuts both ways. if you think Americans (and not just "ang mohs" but the whole rainbow of races - "American" isn't a homogenous descriptor - and what about the Koreans, Turkish, Israeli, Nigerian, Kenyan and Indians at your school as well?) are antisocial, maybe it's because you're pushing them away by clustering as a small, segregated group of Singaporeans. it keeps you within your comfort zone, but it reflects poorly on us as a nation. is that the impression we want to give the world? that we are antisocial, arrogant and insular? i hope not”
that’s a meaningless comment. It’s not even worth a rejoinder but then, I’ve had enough of this self righteous crap.
Its certainly easy to point one’s languid fingers while safely snug in one’s own comfort zone, accusing us of being overachieving pricks more bent on maintaining a perfect GPA than being, ahem, perfect ambassadors for our country doing all the happy smiley things perfect people do, ie socializing and making shitloads of friends from all over the world and taking in their culture and playing an active role in their community yada yada blah blah splutter splutter .
Its all bullshit. Sure, I do not doubt for one moment that we are overachieving dicks- that’s what got us to where we are in the first place. To satisfy the sponsor, and to do the above mentioned? Sure, Windy might sound a little insular, but I don’t think he’s arrogant or antisocial per se.
This phenomenon of a homogeneous cluster-fuck is not uniquely Singaporean in the first place. I observe the same phenomenon happening in other international students in the lab I work in. The Chinese grad students in my lab hang out mostly with his fellow Chinese contemporaries. Same with the Indians. I would daresay the Koreans are even more close knit (and endogamous) than the Chinese. Hell, even the minorities in Madison stay together in groups. It is simply fatuous to ascribe this clustering as due to the supposed arrogance inherent in the “scholar mentality” of the sheltered well fed Singaporean scholar. Here the guy is assuming that as sponsored slaves, every one of us are extroverts, share the same worldview and even speak the same scholar-speak. Wtf?
Every sponsored kia is different. Windy is an introvert. So am I. There are other people who are extroverts and they do not necessarily share the same worldview as I or Windy. So whats wrong with being an introvert?
Why can’t we do our own thang and carve out a niche of our own? Must sponsored buggers be obliged to carry the task of merely being overt ambassadors of Singapore? Yes and No. One can if one wants to, I see this most strongly in EDB scholars. The buggers, well at least the ones I know are an extroverted bunch. And all power to them. I’m constantly amazed at the ability of almost all of them to socialize and make small talk at the drop of the hat. Of course, they are the ones with the wide network of friends. So what about the rest of us; the quiet geek archetypes who don’t value attention nor have time to spare socializing as a result of heavy academic workloads? I think that’s perfectly fine. At the end of the day its a matter of finding one’s niche. I’ve found my niche, and so does Wind. I work in a lab where I’m the only Singaporean around. I have a sprinkling of angmoh/ABC friends, mostly through work. They know me as a person and they know about Singapore- well at least its not part of China. I am comfortable. They are comfortable. And in Wind’s case, he does spare some time to play table tennis and he also has some foreign friends.
So what the hell is wrong with that? Must we judged on the number of non Singaporean friends we have? Must we judged solely the “fun” (whats “fun” in the first place?) things we do? Must we be assessed by the amount of hours spent contributing to the community?
Why not see us normal individuals trying to cope with life in a foreign land, and adjust one’s expectations accordingly? Hell, why judge in the first place?
Even if all of us were cast from one perfect scholar mould and released to the various universities, I can safely say that results will still vary widely. As what the commenter said it “works both ways”. Is the Singaporean community at say, LSE or UCL exactly the same in number, make up and composition as the community in Cornell , Madison or Ann Arbor? More importantly, is the school and the zeitgeist of the particular school uniform in all places? Obviously not. When taken together, these factors interact and affect how each Singaporean – and various other minorities groups on each campus intergrate and participate. So can one safely say for sure that just because an individual who had so much “fun” in one school, the same individual will have the same “fun” in another school? (again, “fun”/ “enriching” to one person differs from another’s idea) And so what’s the “characteristic experience” vis-à-vis cultural integration of an overseas Singaporean student then? Is there one in the first place? Sure it looks the same from the outside; will it look the same from the inside?
