My Chat with an Indian Tourist

Dear All

Tonight was a night of revelations and "insults". As I was at the bench at our condo's playground keeping an eye on Felicia around 9:30pm, an India lady sat down next to me. She was keeping an eye on her niece and started to talk. As we talked, I came to know that she's on 26 days holiday in Singapore and currently stays with her sister at this condo. She's a broadcast journalist with aajwat - according to her, the top India news channel in India, Delhi. I couldn't help feeling that she likes to boast a little. So I let her talk. She's works in crime news and legal/court stories and asked if I know where posh district is? As I didn't, she told me it's where the most expensive properties are in India and she stays there with her parents. (So there, wasn't I right in my feelings?).

I must say I couldn't argue with her insults to us Singaporeans, as what she say are actually quite true.

Insult Number 1: Our standard of English is quite bad considering that it's our 1st language and daily usage as compared to Indians. Sadly, I cannot argue with that. We sometimes don't speak well and hence, we tend to write how we speak it. We don't read widely, and hence, our vocabulary is quite limited. She pointedly asked me if I know what's a creche. Sounds quite condescending to me, but of course I know the meaning of that word. We just don't call it that nowadays. It's now called childcare. Anyway, it came up by the way in our conversation as you will see in Insult Num. 2

Insult Num 2: Singaporeans complain of long hours of work. She says we speak very slow compared to Indians, and she claims people in India work 6x faster than Singaporeans. I told her in journalism, I would expect hours to be long so it's not a fair comparison. So she said that's true as she sometimes don't finish work till 2am. But she said her friends in corporates to our corporates work longer hours. Her observation is in Singapore, people are able to come home at 9pm and still squeeze in a swim or a run. For them, official hours are 10am to 6pm but they come home later. That led me to ask who then takes care of the kids as they are becoming more nuclear in families too. Same as us, they depend on creches or maids or become stay at home mums.

Insult Num 3: We Chinese Singaporeans don't eat healthy. She's vegetarian and as India has large agricultural land, Delhi gets milk direct from cows and fresh produce everyday unlike here. India cuisines are healthier as they eat lots of yohurt and fruits like tomatoes. Her mum makes her own ghee which is the top layer of boiled milk. I looked at her - she's apparantly single but her hips are big. As I looked at the India ladies around the playground, they all look fat to me! I figured she's be all defensive if I pointed this out (anyway, ghee is oil and oil being oil, it's still fattening) so I kept that thought to myself and put on a polite smile.

I must say that they are some truths in what she said. We do need to incorporate more vegetables and fruits in our diet. We just have too much meat. A point taken is, our Singaporean signature dish is the Chicken rice....it's full of chicken meat and oily rice, right?

Also, I am sad to agree with her that our standard of English usage when spoken, needs to be improved. Take Felicia for instance. I was surprised that she keeps getting her noun-verb agreement mixed up... I then caught myself speaking wrongly (is that singlish?) but since I'm understood, I used to let it go. Now, I try to speak in full and grammatically correct sentences to Felicia. I must say, I put on my best English front when I spoke to her and to Felicia when her insult on our English standard was made!

Regarding her insult on who works faster or more, I take it with a big pinch of salt. I guess we speak slowly to Indians as we can't understand their accent so we slow down and articulate more so that they can understand us. Hence, we appear dense to them!! So dear fellow Singaporeans, forget about being sensitive and courteous to our Indian counterparts and just speak our normal speed.

Insult Num 4: Our nuclear families are very different from Indian nuclear families. In India, the community is very strong. 1 person can have 200-300 friends, whereas here, Singaporeans tend to have 20 - 30 very close friends. I tend to disagree with her here. But as I am myself quite an introvert, my numbers seem to tally with her numbers. But I believe most Singaporeans have a higher number than 20 - 30. Anyway, I don't see any Indian friends helping another Indian neighbour who gave birth 2 years ago. She was so desperate she longed for my friendship so I dropped by now and then to give her Felicia's old pampers as an underlying mat as her baby kept on urinating directly on the bed. I also gave her some advice and companionship till she went back to her mum in India for a few months. I don't see any so called Indian friends coming over to help her. Anyway, 200-300 seems more like acquaintants to me rather than friends. For me, a few good and close friends are better than knowing the whole world or hi-and-bye friends. I guess most Singaporeans know that. Anyway, if we are so bad, how come her sis and bro-in-law wants to be PRs, and she herself, just 5 days ago, is thinking of relocating and working in Singapore? Action speaks LOUDER than words, yah?

Love
Theresa