The Last Entry
Even though I still have a few weeks left in NY I feel that this is the right time to end this blog. Therefore this shall be my last entry. I would probably not blog again when I go back to Singapore. I am using “probably” because you can never be certain with things. Nonetheless I would like thank you for reading, and those who have been commenting.
How do I feel right now? Mixed feelings actually. When I first came I mentioned that this is like a fairyland to me because there are so many things that are so different--- the people, the colossal architecture, the culture. 6 months later it still feels like a fairyland. I am certain that when I reach Singapore and lay in my bed for the first time, it would seem as if I have woken up from a dream and that I never truly left. And it would be a good dream. I know that I am going to miss all these guys I have worked with.
To Scott, I have said that I can never imagine you as a teacher. You are so funny when you are angry and you are angry all the time.
To Santiago, I admire you because you are the badboy I have always wanted to be but I know I can never be.
To Ning, someday I am going to come back and beat you in one of the sports. I will wait till you are old. That is evil but it’s the only way I would win you.
To Jeff, you never fail to light up my spirits haha. It’s terrific to have someone who can appreciate soccer as much as me, especially in this country. See you in England for Arsenal Vs Liverpool!
To Brett, why do you hate soccer?
To Joe, all the best for your campaign to trim down. I would swap places with you. Anytime. Sometimes I feel that I am getting so thin I would become smaller and smaller and suddenly disappear from this world.
To Ellen, once again I have to say that you are the probably the grandmother with the most knowledge in IT.
To Govind, how come I don’t see you regularly at the Toastmasters? Hahaha, just kidding.
To Ajay, it’s nice to meet someone who topped the schools in India. You are one of the smartest guys I have met. You would make a good project manager.
To Brian, any moments with you is never boring. You are funny when you are relaxed and you are funny when you are stressed too. You earned my respect because I know you have the toughest job in this department.
To David, I can’t think of having a better manager to start my career with. You are a passionate manager who is articulate, driven and conscientious. Sometimes I think you have Confucian values but it’s probably due to your upbringing than the influence of Yuan. You could have easily said no to having foreign interns because no one would want to manage people who would complain to you about the weather, the food and their landlords. But you didn’t. Thanks for giving Weng Chew and me the chance to work here and I hope you can continue extending that invite to more young Singaporeans.
May all the nice memories, never go fuzzy with this blog.
American English
Here is a lesson or two in American English
1) The "ti" in anti-social, multi-language is commonly pronounced "tie".
2) When someone tells you to "sleep on it", it means give yourself some time to think about the issue.
3) They pretty much use past tense for every sentence. "Do you want to have lunch" becomes "Did you want to have lunch" and that often made me ponder whether I wanted to have lunch before. "Can you do this for me" becomes "Could you do this for me", which isn't exactly wrong because 'could' is used here for politeness.
4) Some people say "take it easy" when bidding farewell. When they say that to you it doesn't mean that they think you have a big problem you can't get around with. "Take it easy" is almost like a "bye bye".
5) "My folks" refers to parents. I will try calling my parents that when I get home.
6) "If I was.." is used instead of "If I were...".
I think I will still stick to British English.
Staying Connected
When Aunt Jenny came here almost 20 years ago it wasn’t easy, for the only source of information she had was the embassy itself. Calls to US were also costly. She somewhat survived through all of that. In comparison technology advancements allowed me to gather information via ways which would have been unthinkable in Aunt Jenny’s days. I booked my flight ticket online, mapped my route from the JFK to the Grand Central and then to my house and workplace through various websites and even had a bird’s eye view of the locations via satellite images. I knew beforehand that the bus would only be one block away, and that there would be eateries and barber around the corner. I could also see the pictures of the house and the room that I would be living in. The bottom-line: there were absolutely no question marks in my passage here. Auto-roaming makes me reachable at all times and I can call my family and friends at anytime and talk to them for as long as I want because VOIP is so inexpensive.
With all these technology in place one would have thought that it would be easy to stay in touch with Singapore. I realized that it is not. First and foremost, when I tried to listen to Mediacorp’s radio channels via the web browser, it detected that I have a foreign IP (for the non-tech pple, an IP is like an address) and it wouldn’t allow me to stream the radio. Disappointed, I registered with Mobtv. I was willing to pay a subscription fee to download the local drama series, yet again it slammed the door on me with a “We are sorry to inform you that we do not provide the service to foreign IP at this point in time. Thank you for your interest.”
I was desperate to get anything on Singapore and I could by reading the news from the web, but The Straits Times required a subscription fee to read the news and their feeds as well. (A news feed is brief textual news which you can subscribe to very much like you do for a magazine). The Straits Times implemented that a few years ago after realizing that people used its online news as a free substitute for the physical paper. I disapprove of such practice because online news should be provided to anyone, even if they are brief ones like feeds. By keeping all its internet news strictly to a subscription based model, The Straits Times is effectively shutting out traffic of netizens, and I have no doubt that this impacts its revenue from online advertisements too. It is, therefore, not surprising that ChannelNewsAsia and Zaobao are able to garner awards for being the websites with the most hits. Perhaps it is time that The Straits Times revises its business model and offers bits and pieces of news for free again. Every newspaper has a social responsibility to keep its citizens well-informed. A subscription fee only serves to divert netizens to other news sites and it doesn’t help that netizens are used to having free things (think Gmail, Blogger, Yahoo Photos, Wikipedia and YouTube). Having said that, poor Singaporeans do not have that many newspapers to turn to (I wouldn’t consider The New Paper to be one).
In April, the Singapore Government is collaborating with NYSA to host a Singapore Day in Bryant Park in NYC. The Singaporeans in New York can catch up with their homeland while enjoying Singapore’s entertainment and food. In order to reach out to everyone here the website awards an air ticket to New York for those who provide contacts of Singaporeans here. I provided my own contact on their website and I wonder whether that makes me eligible for that air ticket? Allow me to daydream a little bit. Anyhow the country recognizes the problem of Singaporeans forgetting their roots after working for a few years abroad and they have also set up a website for overseas Singaporeans. Thumbs up for their efforts but I think more can be done. If you want Singaporeans to desire to come back an annual one day event wouldn’t do. More needs to be done to evoke their feelings and it is easier to do that today with technology. The web portal for Singaporeans is more of a pull strategy so those who bother to browse the website are those who bother to come back so it is, in fact, still not reaching out to the “quitters”. In my opinion these are what OSU can do:
• Obtain the emails of all Singaporeans who would be going away for 6 months or more, this on a voluntarily basis of course.
• Sign them up automatically for newsletters from the respective overseas Singapore Association.
• Email each of them a “Goodie Bag” which contains a free subscription to Mobtv, Straits Times Interactive and a
Singapore Widget sitting pretty on their desktop pushing news and radio content to them.
• Have a web service that streams news in video
• Remove all foreign IP restrictions. Rave up the server bandwidth and make them sign in with their Sing pass if necessary.
It is time to truly stay connected.
(uploaded album "Niagara Falls")
