Wearing Abercrombie and Fitch in Singapore - How declasse

One of the things I've written about in the past is on how as mass immigration has enlarged our working and spending population in Singapore, international brands are increasingly finding it attractive to locate flagship stores here to capitalize on a lucrative market.

Hence, Singaporeans no longer need to venture out of the country for their togs from the likes of say,  Topshop, Gap, Banana Republic, H&M and Abercrombie and Fitch.

The irony is that now that the clothes are widely and easily available here, they've noticeably lost their edginess and exclusivity. It was one thing to wear Gap when it was not available here, it's quite another when it is now easily available and no longer exclusive.

[Sidenote: Up until several years ago, Gap in fact manufactured some of its clothes in Singapore. This was before it started distributing its clothes here.]

Worse, unbeknownst to many, some brands have become totally uncool in their home countries, like Abercrombie and Fitch for instance.

Disclaimer: I am not a fashionista. I hate shopping for clothes. In fact, I hate shopping period. So, don't take what I write as fashion criticism, cuz it's not. This post is a meditation on how ironic it is that the people who think that they're being fashionable wearing A&F are in fact the height of uncool.

Frankly, I'm amazed every time I see an otherwise well-groomed person on the street wear Abercrombie and Fitch (or Hollister). If I meet someone new for the first time, and they're wearing Abercrombie and Fitch, I automatically dial down my impression of that person.

Don't these people know what the brand stands for?

Abercrombie has carefully cultivated the youthful preppy WASPish look, and coupled it with its racy catalogs adorned with half-dressed models. I have nothing against the latter, except that it's boring and unremarkable in today's increasingly porned world (see The Porning of America in my reading list), but the former is certainly something I reject completely.

This is a company that has been subject to lawsuits for racial and sexual discrimination. A simple Google search would throw up the results for anyone curious enough to find out more.

Just a few months ago, controversy struck in South Korea over the bad behavior of its models at a store opening.

For most Singaporeans who are ethnic Asians, to aspire to wear the vaguely white supremacist label of A&F is, in a word, bizarre. And if you're a straight male, a little weird too, seeing as how the advertising for the brand is famously homoerotic.

But all this is probably intellectual claptrap for the trendy wannabe fashionista in Singapore still wearing A&F.

Problem is...the brand itself is rapidly losing cachet among its target demographic in the United States, as well as among youth fashion tastemakers. It's "passe", according to a group of high school students in the US, who were unanimous in their dismissal. That's the true fashion death sentence.

The sex-soaked marketing campaigns are looking dated, and it's not just me saying that. One article here and one article here for reference. The money quote from the second article, from Bloomberg Businessweek:

“Abercrombie is still running an offense which is a huge banner of a bare-chested guy with a cute girl who’s not wearing enough clothing,” says David Maddocks, a former chief marketing officer for Nike’s Converse label who now runs a brand consulting firm. “It’s vacuous, there’s no core idea there anymore.”

A&F is an object lesson in how NOT to market to Millenials. They're dropping the ball on reaching out to this key demographic. And the final flourish at the end of the article:

So far, Abercrombie’s woes at home haven’t hurt its popularity in untapped markets. Its Hong Kong flagship, which opened in August, logged more than $1 million in sales in its first five days. Abercrombie is considering more locations in China and the Middle East. Still, in a hyperconnected world, it won’t take long for the brand’s fading cool to catch up with shoppers in Dubai and Shanghai, says Lindstrom.

"Vacuous" is an accurate description of the brand's adherents. The really cool fashionable people in Singapore wouldn't be caught dead in A&F, and that it takes an unfashionable person like me to point that out to the wannabes, well, that's just the patina on their rapidly fading cool.

PS: No moose (meese?) were harmed in writing this post.

This is Singapore, I thought everything needs money?

Overhead in the elevator at work...

Woman 1: You mean you've never been to a Ladies Nite before?

Woman 2 (in a PRC accent): No, never. I normally don't walk into bars anyway. Besides, this is Singapore, I thought everything needs money?

Never a truer word spoken...

Reflections on a retrenchment exercise

So, my company went through a restructuring this week. As part of the restructuring, 16 people were let go. 

Given that most of my working experience up until last year had been in the public sector, the retrenchment process was something new to me.

A senior manager in my own department was let go, not 2 weeks after she had given birth. It was an interesting juxtaposition of fates: here was someone who was my own age, but had chosen right from the beginning of her career to work in the industry, and as a result had climbed very high. Her salary was easily more than 3 times my own, and she managed a team of more than 10 people, all of whom were probably paid more than me.

In contrast, little old me who had to take a pay-cut to start anew in the corporate world remained employed, albeit in an unenviable position. I’m low on the food chain, and manage a small team of two aunties who, between the 2 of them, have remained in the company for more than 50 years, doing mundane but essential work.

This isn’t a post where I gloat with schadenfreude. Indeed, the retrenched manager was well-liked in the department and was known to be a high performer. However, in the words of the CEO, it is “an unfortunate reality of corporate life” that sometimes positions get made redundant.

A well-meaning colleague contacted the retrenched manager at home while she was recovering from childbirth. Despite the generous severance package and the reassurance that the retrenchment in no way had to do with her performance, she admitted feeling sad.

That got me thinking.

Here was clearly someone who was a confident and successful businesswoman. Yet, in the aftermath of being made redundant, even she took a hit to her emotional state.

Today, most people invest considerably of themselves in their careers, and derive not just money, but also a sense of identity from the work they do. It is telling that a standard question that we often ask within the first few minutes of meeting someone new is, “What do you do?” And perhaps more tellingly, nobody in this age thinks that this is strange or unusual.

In contrast to how we view our own careers, corporations largely view employees today as independent business partners who are contracted to render services under conditional terms. It is not natural for most of us to view ourselves this way, but given workplace realities, perhaps it would be wise to.

As an aside, it has not been lost on me the irony that in many job descriptions today, “passion” is often listed as a required quality. I reserve a special hatred for how that word has been co-opted by the modern corporation and how it has been cheapened and degraded beyond all recognition. Christ had passions, the suffering artist has passion, the toiling scientist at the bench has passion, the community organizer and political activist has passion…passion should not be demanded of your average corporate drone; instead, it should be unambiguously described as enthusiasm to perform unpaid overtime.

But I digress.

Because I suffered setbacks very early on in my own career, I learnt early to sever the relationship between my job and my sense of self-worth. The experience of the retrenched senior manager validates this decision I made so long ago.

Here was someone who was a noted performer and had invested much of herself in her career, and as a result of being retrenched, felt keenly the psychological impact of being let go.

This is not to say that we should not strive in our chosen career, but that it would be wise to, as I have stated in a previous post, to diversify one’s own identity.

Understand that you are more than the person who takes the MRT to your office, sits at your desk in front of the computer, and answers emails and works on spreadsheets and Powerpoint slides 10 hours a day (or more).

You can derive much satisfaction and a sense of achievement and competence from your work, but do not allow yourself to be defined by this. From a humanistic perspective, you are more than this. From a pragmatic perspective, not everyone has the unerring single-mindedness, talent, opportunity and good fortune to become a Steve Jobs or a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, people who have reaped the enormous psychological rewards of investing substantially all of themselves in their work and been successful.

In Singapore, I wonder how the lack of appreciable work-life balance exacerbates the already formidable effect of involuntary unemployment on self-worth. Perhaps the reason why the Japanese salaryman pretends to go to work for months after retrenchment, for fear of breaking the news to his wife, is precisely because he is Japanese and a salaryman. Could not the same be said for the Singaporean salaryman?

We already know the lack of substantial safety nets in this country for the unemployed and how it affects families and individuals. But in a country with admirably low unemployment but terrible work-life balance, the impact of any economic crisis could be especially debilitating on the nation’s collective mental health. Who knows how that might pan out in a true crisis?

Google Autocomplete: Why is Singapore so...

As inspired by another blog noted in this article...

Basically, the idea is to type "Why is Singapore so" into Google and see how Google autocompletes the query. That way, you can tell what most people are really thinking about this little red dot (and no, it's not about our food, at least not in the way you think).

The valence of the results matters prominently. Most results have negative valence. As the originator of this idea stated, most people tend to search for reasons for negative rather than positive phenomena.So, don't be offended by what you find here.

I did the Googling so you don't have to. Partial queries in bold, in case you want to verify the results yourself.

*Drum roll* please...

The answer to what people think about Singapore?

Why is Singapore so hot, rich, boring and expensive? (Aye to that.)

And the various fun-fun combinations... Take note especially of the order in which the queries are autocompleted. Remember that Google's algorithm sorts by likelihood of the query.

Why Singapore needs immigrants, need foreign talent, banned chewing gum, is so hot?
Why are Singaporeans so rich, kiasu, selfish and unfriendly?
Why are Singapore cars so expensive, and girls so difficult? (Oh, I love this one. Ladies, take note. You're a pain, but less of a pain compared to COE.)
Why Singaporeans migrate, are so stupid, don't recycle and waste food.
Why do Singaporeans hate China, hate foreigners, say la and migrate?
Why Singaporeans like to complain.
Why Singaporeans love to buy property and love food. (note that Google prioritizes property above food. Apparently, condo launch beats prata, laksa and char kway teow hands down.)
Why Singaporeans hate filipinos, foreigners, indians and malaysians?
Why Singaporeans don't recycle, do not recycle, don't splurge with profits and don't want to have children.
(PAP shills and sycophants, and assorted political observers, take note. The environmental lobby here is becoming stronger and stronger.)

This is a gold mine of information. Short, pithy, and you get an inside line on what people are really thinking in the privacy of their Internet searches.

The hidden consequences of massive immigration

This post is terribly current given the state of the global economy and the spate of traffic accidents involving locals and foreigners. I didn't plan it this way, but here it is.

[BTW, the taxi-Ferrari accident couldn't have happened at a worst time for the PAP. The rational PAP elite would dismiss this as having no bearing on the Hougang by-election. Such a rational PAP elite would be a f***ing idiot in my opinion.]

___

As was amply demonstrated over the last several months since before the General Elections of 2011, the PAP government likes to strenuously protest that its ways are the right way. Then, after the GE campaign started looking less sanguine, it started getting religion, the highlight of which was the PM's unprecedented apology. 

But months after the GE, I think it's mostly been window dressing, backsliding and soft-pedaling on the hints of promises for reform and change, renewed justification of prior policies, and a belief that the current direction is fine, just that better perception management of us unwashed peasants is required.

Sort of the PAP equivalent of sticking the fingers in the ears and going lah-lah-lah-lah-lah.

Well, today, I'm going to talk about the hidden consequences of massive immigration [and this is over and above the spate of traffic accidents we are seeing]. 

Because I believe it is not going to be long before these hidden effects stop being hidden and start exerting themselves in ways that will make life very uncomfortable for the average Singaporean.

Even if the government is no longer handing out visas, PRs and pink ICs like candy at Halloween (and it's debatable that they have stopped doing so), the fact remains our population has almost doubled in the past 10 years, and the composition of our population has dramatically changed.

As a flaneur, an observer of the city, I am going to stick my head out and make some predictions. Take what you read here with a pinch of salt, as these are mere prognostications of an Internet blogger. Still, if these predictions come to pass, remember, you read them here first.

First, the preamble. I believe the precipitating event for these hidden consequences will the next global recession, or rather the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 Continued, since that particular drama hasn't actually ended; the debt was merely transferred onto sovereign balance sheets. For reasons too long to discuss here, I believe that the next recession will be particularly bad for countries that currently run trade surpluses. So, countries like Singapore that appear to be coasting along swimmingly just now will probably see their economies pancaked in the next couple of years.

The "morning after" of massive immigration...when the next recession hits:

1. We know that foreigners are quite often preferentially hired over qualified Singaporeans by employers, particularly when the hiring managers are foreigners, and especially so when they come from countries that are known to be more...clannish. Heck, some hiring managers are even brazen enough to advertise specifically for foreigners of a certain nationality.

Well, when the next recession strikes, don't be surprised if Singaporeans are preferentially retrenched over foreigners. There are no safeguards in place today, and even if there were, the government would be weak at enforcing them. Besides, as soon as employers cry hardship, the PAP government will cave like a cheap whore on a slow night.

2. Structural unemployment will almost certainly increase.

If you've ever had to look for a job in recent years, you'll know that today, job descriptions / specifications are written in incredibly narrow terms. If you aren't doing exactly the same thing in your current or previous job, you're unlikely to get callbacks for interviews. This is partly a function of an extremely open immigration policy where companies can source employees from wherever they wish.

This isn't just about hiring managers writing job descriptions in narrow terms so that they can hire someone they already have in mind. It's also about companies being unwilling to invest in training and wanting only to hire someone who can be immediately productive. And Singapore's immigration policy encourages this line of thinking.

When a recession hits, companies that have long been used to hiring staff that are immediately productive are unlikely to change their minds about hiring workers that may have industry-relevant experience, but no job-specific experience.   

3. In a bad economy, a lot of foreigners will leave the country. What works well on the upturn works just as well on the downdraft.

Singapore is an expensive city to live in. It's even more expensive when you're a foreigner. And foreigners are frequently singles who spend a big chunk of their income each month.

That means that foreigners probably account for a massive amount of discretionary consumer spending in our economy. If a foreigner loses his job and decides to balik kampung, he takes all his spending with him. That isn't going to be pretty by any measure. Suddenly, I think we'll see a lot more boarded up restaurants, bars, clubs, hair salons, nail parlors, retailers and the like. 

Which brings me to point number 3...

4. The market for goods and services will shrink. Expect fewer choices in the future.

Remember, a big reason why Singapore is oh-so-cosmopolitan and you can get your Gap, H&M and Topshop here now without going overseas is because having doubled or even tripled our working (and spending) population, Singapore as a market is now large enough to accommodate several niches for various consumer goods and services.

If you've gotten used to the wider range of goods and services, not just in retail, but in restaurants, bars, clubs, salons, bakeries, upscale grocers, boutique bike shops, rock concerts, theater performances, museum exhibitions...think about the bad old days when you wished Singapore wasn't such a cultural backwater...cuz those days could make a reappearance faster than you think.

5. With fewer foreigners, the property market will plummet, taking everyone invested in property with it.

No surprises here. The amazing thing is not that property prices have gone up in a big way in the last decade, or that people are up to their eyeballs in mortgage debt. The amazing thing is that so few people I've talked to realize that for these property prices to be sustained, not only do we need our foreigners to stay, we also need (a) the supply of housing to continue to be throttled (which is unlikely to happen now that Mah Bow Tan has exited stage right) and (b) the rate of immigration continues to be sustained at the high level of previous years.

(b) is simply not going to happen because it is politically untenable and the infrastructure is already coming off the rails (literally).

If foreigners actually start leaving because of a weak economy and the high cost of living in Singapore, the property market will collapse like a house of cards.

6. Many foreigners will stay on in Singapore. And that's actually a bad thing.

Realistically speaking, even in a global recession, prospects are still better for some foreigners here than back home, or elsewhere. I'm talking about Filipinos, PRCs, Myanmarese, perhaps the odd Greek or Irishman too. That's partly a function of how bad some other countries are doing, and also a function of how undiscriminating how government has been in the quality of the skilled/unskilled immigrants that it has let in. See the above comment on handing out visas, PRs and pink ICs like candy.

If you're a foreigner with a PR or short term visa, and you've lost your job, but you don't want to leave, what would you do?

Doesn't take a genius to figure this one out. You move out of your apartment and downgrade to digs with cheaper rent. Or you double-up or triple-up with other foreigners you know. Some Singaporean landlords are going to knowingly or unknowingly become tenement slumlords. And that leads to...

7. An increased incidence of petty crime, vice, panhandling, domestic violence, you name it.

Unemployment or underemployment, adrift in a foreign land with limited family support or frayed relationships, overcrowding in tenement apartments...it's a bad combination. 

It's likely you'll be seeing more foreigners in your neighborhood if you live in the suburbs, simply because it's cheaper to live there. Perhaps the occasional foreigner selling tissue paper at the hawker center. Or panhandling (begging) even.

I lived in Baltimore for a few years. There was a practically a panhandler on every street corner. And the crime and homicide rate was among the highest in America. So, I'm cool with this kind of situation. Not ideal, but hey, I lived in Baltimore, I can live anywhere.

Some Singaporeans would probably need some time to get used to such a situation though. Good luck with that.

8. Because these ill sentiments tend to feed off each other in a bad economy, expect tensions to rise between local Singaporeans and foreigners.

Singaporeans are going to go from grudging indignation to righteous anger to blood boiling rage. As for foreigners, they've long been accustomed to being treated with kid gloves by the PAP, so much so that there is an entrenched sense of entitlement among them. It would be funny if it wasn't so terribly tragic that should the first riots in decades to occur actually happen, they would more likely be fueled not by racial differences, but anti-foreigner sentiment.

No need to elaborate further, because the anti-foreigner sentiment that is current will simply be a foretaste of what is to come. And the PAP government will be heavily blamed. Then perhaps, the calculus behind massive immigration will finally be recalibrated to reflect the true cost of immigration, which can only be a good thing.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm not a supporter of xenophobia; I'm simply predicting which way the wind is going to blow.

1.1 billion dollars more of buses will not help

I've waited a few weeks to post my opinion on the government's move to purchase buses to improve the public transportation system for a number of reasons, mostly because I wanted to wait to read the opinions of other bloggers.

As it turns out, the few people who blogged about this expressed opinions that differed little from the general sentiment of "It's a step in the right direction, but it comes a little late, and honestly, more should have been done earlier. But let's wait and see how well this turns out."

As always, I write only when I believe I have something fresh to offer, and this is my clear and unequivocal opinion:

I do not think adding more buses in the way that the government has envisioned will improve the public transportation system appreciably. And the train situation as it stands now will NOT improve because of this new addition of buses.

I take buses much more often than I do trains to get around, so I think I'm qualified to comment. And my reasons for being so unequivocally negative on this extra-budgetary measure are as follows:

1. If you read the puff piece that the Straits Times published a few weeks ago (follow the link in the first sentence of this post), the reporters wrote on how taking service 128 was in fact slightly faster and much more comfortable than going the feeder bus-MRT mode. The piece spoke specifically about how the bus was less crowded than MRT trains at peak hour.

A word to the wise: As anyone who builds or manages systems will tell you, adding more capacity to a mode of transportation that already has spare capacity (i.e. is less crowded) is not a strategy for improving operational outcomes.


It was this single fact alone that revealed the Straits Times piece for the cheerleading article that it was. Editors at a national propaganda machine should know better than this. Chances are, service number 128 was cherry-picked to "demonstrate" the merits of bus versus train travel.

2. Anyone who takes buses will know that journey times by bus are generally longer than journey times by MRT.

There are 4 basic components to journey time:
a) Walking times to and from bus stop / MRT station
b) Waiting times for arrival of public conveyance
c) Stopping times at bus stops / MRT stations
d) Actual travel time enroute to destination

MRT wins hands down over buses due to shorter (b), (c) and (d). It's no surprise that most people prefer trains for their speedier transit. Ergo, trains are crowded while buses less so.

There are groups of people for whom buses make sense over trains. These are people who can't stand crowds (yours truly), do not live sufficiently near to an MRT station to take advantage of its speed (and hence have to take feeder bus services or walk relatively long distances, yours truly again), or have to endure the hassle of making multiple transfers across rail lines even on MRT.

But by and large, for most people, the speed of the MRT wins out over buses.

Which brings me to this point: adding more buses on the roads generally only reduces (b). It does very little for the other three components that make up journey time by bus. MRT will still be faster for most journeys.

In addition, we have to consider the fact that even if the buses succeed in attracting passengers off the trains, they will only attract the marginal travellers who value space and comfort just that much more over shorter journey times. That's going to have limited impact on improving the train situation.

3. But wait, there's more.

Adding more buses on the roads will reduce waiting times, making journey times by bus shorter and hence a viable alternative to trains that more passengers will consider. That's what our public transportation planners would like to think.

As it turns out, there is already a way to reduce waiting times for buses to a minimum, as savvy bus travelers like myself know. Two things: schedules and bus transfers.

Going to work in the morning, buses travelling from the suburbs to the CBD area tend to arrive on time and on schedule because traffic is relatively light on the roads around the suburbs. After all, people live distributed all over the island. It's a different story in the evening when the roads out of the CBD are filled with vehicles all trying to get out at the same time, and arrival times for buses tend to become unpredictable.

When I head to work every day in the morning, I make it a point to reach the bus stop only 2-3 minutes before my bus arrives, a trunk service that brings me to within a 5 minute walk from my office building. No transfers, minimal waiting time. Granted, the bus takes a circuitous route and it's still slower than the feeder bus-MRT mode, but there's no jostling with the crowds and much less walking.

Going home in the evenings, I can take the same direct trunk service again to get home, but because of the aforementioned unpredictability in waiting times, I choose a different strategy instead.

I walk to a bus stop that has not one, but two bus services that take a very direct route toward home, but can only drop me off 4 bus stops short of my destination.

From there, I have two buses that can take me straight home, and another four that can take me 2 bus stops closer to my destination.

And finally, at this third bus stop, I have 4 buses that can take me the final 2 bus stops back to my home.

I call this extreme bus transferring. And it makes total sense after the transition to a distance-based fare system last year. At every stage of my journey, I maximize the number of buses I can take and minimize the waiting time. It's not uncommon for me to drop off a bus and take the next one that's either right behind it or in front of it at the bus stop. Total waiting time for my journey ranges from 2 minutes to perhaps 7 minutes, comparable to the MRT.

But even with all these stratagems, I have to say: the MRT is still faster. Getting from my office desk to across the doorstep of my apartment, or the converse, takes about 45 to 50 minutes by the walking-MRT mode. The same journey by bus takes perhaps 55 minutes to 1 hour 5 minutes. For reference, I work in the CBD and my home is in the Dover area.

So, despite the best intentions of our transport planners, the point I'm trying to make is that even with reductions in waiting time brought about by more buses, MRT still wins out.

Even with bus lanes and the newer concept of "bus hubs", it's unlikely stopping times and travel times will appreciably improve for buses and make them competitive with trains. Which is why I seriously doubt that more buses are going to alleviate the train situation.

The real kicker in this long post of mine discussing our woeful public transportation situation?

I run home from office twice a week, and I take just 1 hour 15 minutes to do so. Now that's fast.

The remarkable Singaporean work ethic

In a space of 2 weeks, I had 3 different friends, in separate conversations, relate how hard it was to find Singaporeans to work with at work, and what a shame it was, because oftentimes, the foreigner colleagues they had to deal with had a poor ethic, were more concerned with political machinations in the office than getting things done, or were simply incompetent at what they had been hired to do.

And in many cases, they felt that they had to pick up the slack in order for any headway to be made at work. One friend was a manager at an IT firm who still had to do coding himself on occasion for lack of available expertise. Another was an IT recruiter who could see the consequences of his boss relying too heavily on a Filipino colleague, a colleague who was extremely political, clannish, and who would, he surmised, eventually leave the company for a better offer, taking all his Filipino cohorts and accounts en masse with them. Yet another friend was a doctor who frequently picked up after her less meticulous foreigner colleagues because, "otherwise, it's the patient who suffers".

Now, I have to stress that these 3 friends of mine all stated that not all foreigners that they worked with are thus so, and that they knew on a personal level examples of great people from various nationalities that they would be happy to work with. So, these 3 friends of mine were neither the xenophobic nor the ultra-nationalistic type.

The interesting thing was that despite their misgivings of some of their...less professional colleagues (and just as a sidenote: Indians from India and Pinoys tended to the most frequent targets of their venting, perhaps because of these nationalities' propensity to talk up a good show but not actually delivering), my friends all seemed much more focused on getting their jobs done, and done properly, than suing for some fairness at work, or for their less professional colleagues to be forced to live up to higher standards.

I could understand the logic behind such thinking, since as my doctor friend did put it, if she didn't pick up the slack, the direct result might well be a poor patient outcome, which nobody wants to see. Still, I couldn't help but marvel that Singaporeans, on the whole (and exceptions of course do exist everywhere), are quite hardworking and responsible, and perhaps to our own detriment, generally respectful of authority and non-confrontational.

No wonder those friends of mine who were in a position to hire lamented that they could find relatively few qualified Singaporeans to hire! And those that were not hiring managers did state that they would prefer to work with more Singaporeans.

I used to think that more foreigners meant more competition for locals at work, that Singaporeans would have to up their game, and perhaps end up working longer and harder. Now, I guess, the picture can be much more complex than that.

Having more foreigners may also mean lowered productivity, as not all foreigner hires are quality hires, and the resulting burden of greater work stress may fall disproportionately onto the responsible Singaporean shoulders.

It's interesting to speculate how much our diminished productivity growth in recent years has been due to our insourcing of cheap, unskilled labor, and how much of it has been due to the lack of quality people that we bring into the country that nonetheless take up middle class and middle income jobs.

If Singaporeans were once lauded as the world's most hardworking and productive workforce, it should hardly come as a surprise that as the proportion of Singaporeans that comprise it reduces, the quality of the workforce correspondingly diminishes

The nascent crisis of affinity

The Saturday edition of the Straits Times had a long series on heritage in Singapore. It was one of the better articles that they have published.

Why is it fashionable to talk about heritage now? Because with the progress and changes in the last decade, more and more Singaporeans are feeling that the parts of the Singapore Identity are being lost irrevocably. And as a result of this ineffable sense of loss, more Singaporeans are stepping forward to claim a piece of their rightful heritage.

I would wager most of us have never heard of Bukit Brown cemetery before part of it was put at risk by the LTA. Just like many of us had not stepped into the old National Library Building in years, or even decades, when plans were afoot to have it torn down.

And yet, like something long taken for granted, we are suddenly shocked when we are told of what we are to lose.

The Power of Place and the Power of the Narrative

It has been several years since the old Changi Prison was demolished. And while some parts of it were saved and a museum was built to commemorate the site, I still recall then how I marveled that Australian POWs and their descendants, literally thousands of miles away, actually made a formal effort to save the prison from being demolished. They stepped forward to claim what they felt was a part of their heritage, as far removed as they were on a foreign continent. Read more here.

I was naive then about the power of place and the power of the narrative. Now that I am older and hopefully wiser, no longer.

For Singaporean males who have served NS, the following should sound very familiar:

You don't see your NS friends on any kind of regular basis in your "real" life, but when the time for ICT rolls around, you pack up your stuff and grudgingly make your way back to camp. While doing ICT is a real drag, at least there is the bright spot of meeting old friends, friends you instantly connect with because of where you are and the situation you are in again.

That is the power of place. It provides an environment which allows you to pick up the conversations where you left off. There is no sense of awkwardness, unlike say, a high school reunion held in a hotel ballroom (which can be remarkably fraught with angst).

A lot of NS guys will find familiar the ICT routine of exchanging and retelling old stories from the days of full-time NS, of the pranks and practical jokes that people pulled, of the tics and mannerisms of various characters encountered, of the universally disliked officer or encik getting his comeuppance. They're all stories we've heard before and are familiar with, and yet retelling them is a comforting routine. You would think that we had all turned into doddering old men with no teeth in our gums, reminiscing over the glory days of our youth.

And that is the power of the narrative. Retelling a story keeps it alive and preserves the memory of it and how it binds the various participants and actors together. It reinforces a shared sense of history and the closeness of the collective.

In many ways, the power of place reinforces the power of the narrative. That is why some Australian and British POWs visited Changi Prison every year before it was demolished. In all likelihood, every time they visited the prison, they cracked the same old jokes, retold the same old stories and lingered over the same old corners of the Prison that they were imprisoned in so many years ago.

A place becomes a cultural and historical touchstone, and a metaphysical repository of memories. I use the word metaphysical because the memories are embedded not just in the artifacts or in the structure, but in the very space that is enclosed and defined by the structure itself.

In truth, the government should be glad that many Singaporeans are expressing disquietude over the destruction of Bukit Brown or the demolition of Rochor.

The unthinking civil servant believes that these Singaporeans are being difficult, obdurate and overly sentimental. The savvier civil servant believes that "engagement" with the public should have been done earlier, with consultation exercises carried out to assuage the disgruntled (but with the same end result as the government-crafted plan called for).

In contrast, the most enlightened civil servant would, I submit, rejoice that Singaporeans still care enough about their heritage to lock horns with the authorities over part of its demise. The enlightened civil servant would also recognize that the loss of any part of our shared heritage, however necessary, is lamentable, even if it is preserved with museums or commemorative plaques.

Because eventually, when there is little left to be lost, all that will remain will be the sound of silence. No one will care enough to speak up about what is Singapore. That is, if there are any who care who remain in the first place.

The crisis of affinity

This brings me to my topic for today, what I call the crisis of affinity, the erosion of Singapore's collective sense of belonging and a shared destiny and vision for the future.

As meteoric as our economic growth has been in the last decade, I think something valuable has been lost along the way. What is vexing is that it is so difficult to put a finger on what exactly has been lost. And yet, I sense the loss, as I wrote about it in the Two-Tier Society. And it is not merely a sense of misplaced nostalgia.

The last 10 years have seen great changes in Singapore, not all for the better. The pace of demolition and construction, and the loss of shared urban spaces and the memories they represent is bad enough. But to compound matters, we have had a huge foreigner influx and a widening gulf in income inequality.

Some would argue that having more foreigners doesn't dilute our store of memories, but only adds to it. A greater foreigner presence enlivens Singapore and makes it more interesting, diverse and cosmopolitan.

I would agree, but up to a point. That point ends where foreigners are privileged over citizens in work and school, when it is painfully clear that Singapore is a stepping stone for them to better places, or when by their sheer numbers, assertiveness, competitiveness and sense of entitlement, transform the very character of the place.

I never thought I would say this, being very much invested in my identity as a city person: To the Indonesian, Filipino, Mainland Chinese, Indian, Myanmarese, Vietnamese and Malaysian immigrant here in search of a better life, I appreciate that Singapore is your land of opportunity and your New York. But I don't much like the New Yorker that you're collectively turning me into (with all the attendant stereotypes).

What happens to Singapore if we all become a nation of narcissistic New Yorkers?

As for income inequality, what is there left to be said that I have not said already? Income inequality is inherently divisive and corrosive to affinity. People from different socio-economic strata lead different lives, have different narratives on what is important, what is to be valued, and what groups, ideas or philosophies they individually identify with. The Wee Shu Min incident years ago should have made this abundantly clear. You can trust me on this when I say income inequality is not conducive to building a strong society with a sense of the collective. I know.

A strong economy can cover up a lot of cracks. But who's to know what will happen when the shining facade is peeled away? I have called this a nascent crisis of affinity. But how nascent it is remains to be seen.

Goh Chok Tong drew a lot of flak/comments for his stayers and quitters remark years ago in a time of adversity. The government should not fear criticism the next time it decides to level such an question at Singaporeans. It should fear the possibility of a deafening silence instead.

Observations on the Foreigner Dominated Office at Work

I took on a temp position in a financial services company several weeks ago as a preliminary step towards a permanent career change; I formerly worked as a research engineer in the public sector.

[As to why I decided to change careers, well, that's a little personal, and perhaps I'll blog about it some other day when I am more settled in a permanent job.]

My current workplace is strikingly different from my previous workplace. For one thing, my previous employer, for reasons peculiar to the nature of the work, generally hired only Singapore citizens and a handful of permanent residents (don't ask why). In contrast, in the department of my current employer where I work, the office is filled with foreigners on work visas. I estimate Singaporeans comprise something between 20 and 30 percent of the employees. The rest include Malaysians, Indonesians, Hong Kongers, Indians and Westerners from various countries (the UK, Australia, etc.).

It is one thing to be intellectually aware of how Singaporeans compete with the many foreigners that have arrived in our country in recent years, it is quite another to be thrust into the thick of it after being formerly ensconced in the public sector.

I'm not bitter or resentful about it, even with my current employment challenges. One might as well complain about why it rains or why it's so damnably hot here all the time. I'm not the optimistic or "think positive" sort, but I much prefer practical thoughts on how to move past (or around) obstacles in order to get what I want, rather than caviling about how unfair life is.

As a former researcher who used to professionally observe and interview people at work (I trained formally as an engineer, but I worked frequently with psychologists and the occasional sociologist), I took the opportunity of working in the modern Singapore office to observe the dynamics of foreigners working here,  and to think about the impact it has on Singaporeans.

A lot of people have complained commented on foreign competition for jobs, but beyond the obvious, I haven't really read anything substantive with the details articulated well. And even though I do have foreigner friends in Singapore, working in an office full of foreigners allows certain insights to come through that would not have otherwise occurred to me within the more personal confines of friendship.

This post is a collection of my own observations and reflections after several weeks of working in a foreigner dominated office.

Demographics

First, the caveat: the sample size I have is small, and arguably biased. This caveat applies equally to all the subsections that come after this one.

Most of the foreigners in my workplace are, as mentioned previously, of the nationalities I listed above. They are generally youngish, ranging from the mid-20s to the early and mid-30s, which squares with the data I reconstructed in a previous post. The gender split in my office, however, is relatively even.

The single to married ratio runs at about 2:1. A few of the singles date. Those that are married have one, or no kids, and where they have kids, the kids are generally infants or toddlers, meaning the kids came relatively recently, when they were in their early thirties.

In general, most of my coworkers do not have extended family here. Immediate family is a bit more common, either in the form of spouses or sometimes siblings (with whom they frequently share a rental apartment with, especially the Malaysians and Indonesians).


Living Arrangements

Married folks tend to buy, singles tend to rent. It's as simple, and as expected, as that. Ergo, as most of my coworkers are single, rentals predominate. My office is along Shenton Way, so most of my coworkers live in relatively central locations.

Driving is uncommon.


Languages

The dominant language is, of course, English. However, Mandarin and Cantonese are frequently spoken in my office. This isn't at all surprising given the presence of Malaysians and Hong Kongers.

Working hours

Perhaps it is mostly a function of the private sector in general and the financial services industry in particular, but my coworkers work longer hours than I am used to. Where at my previous employer I used to knock off on the dot at 6 pm, people in my current office routinely leave at between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm. FYI, the day starts at about 9 am.

And yes, I am fully aware that many people in Singapore work longer hours than these, and that these are not particularly onerous hours.

Is it because foreigners are likelier to be single with no families to return home to that they work longer hours? Or is it because the same ambitions and aspirations that drive people to find work in a foreign city also motivates them to put in more hours at the office? Does this up the bar for the Singaporean worker, with resulting effects on the later age of marriage and the number of kids raised?

These are interesting questions, but I am also all too aware of confirmation bias to unhesitatingly state these as conclusions. Let's just leave them as intriguing questions to think about.

Socializing After Work

Perhaps because of the longer hours as well as the single status of many of my coworkers, going for dinner together after work is a common occurrence. My coworkers also sometimes meet up on Saturdays for lunch (usually at some place with good food). It could also be due to the more constricted social circles faced by workers in a foreign city.

The vibe in my current office is similar to the vibe I felt as a university student, and the vibe I felt when I used to visit friends working on Wall Street in New York (although because I am a career changer, many of my colleagues are much younger than I am). It was more of a single's lifestyle (as a single myself, I'm certainly not complaining about or judging it). Nor am I so myopic to not know that many people eventually grow out of this kind of lifestyle.

While I did have many single (Singaporean) colleagues in my previous job that I occasionally had dinner with after work, meeting on weekends was almost nonexistent. And the shorter working hours at my previous job meant that most people knocked off from work and met their other friends for dinner. Relationships at work are somewhat chummier in my current office than before.

It's interesting to think about what the social implications are for a government-sanctioned policy of mass immigration of foreigners of working age, and the potential impact it has on the local population: the rate of interracial and inter-nationality marriage (one of my female Singaporean coworkers is married...to a Malaysian in the same office), the delay in the rate of local family formation and lowering of birthrates, since the office culture encourages long hours, even on the viability of national service in the future.

With regard to NS, quite aside from the already low birthrates Singapore is experiencing, immigration has historically been driven by the young, and restless young men in particular. Will the children of expatriate men and local Singaporean women be lost to the SAF in the future should they choose to eschew citizenship? Was this one reason why nationality law was amended in 2004 to permit female citizens residing abroad to transmit their citizenship by descent? Are there other potential effects on dilution of national identity as a result of mass immigration?

Recruitment

I am just a temp, hence I fully intend to resume my job search in a couple of months (my position is a very short term one, more like an internship formalized into a temp position). So, it's hard to ignore the conversations in the office when candidates are being considered for fresh positions, or when resumes get sent in and scrutinized.

[I have to state here first that I am not being seriously considered for a permanent position in my current company mainly because of my lack of relevant industry experience, among other things, rather than my nationality.]

While I wouldn't go so far as to call it discrimination, the fact of the matter is that job searches, as in much of life, depend on referrals. The impression that I get is that it is common for someone to be hired in my company based on a personal referral from someone already working in the company. And since the department is staffed mainly with foreigners...well, you get the idea.

I have no idea how widespread this phenomenon is, but I would hardly be surprised if it was common across many companies and industrial sectors in Singapore.

It's not so much the fact that new hires get made on the basis of referrals as the fact that being a foreigner is no bar to getting hired in the first place that is so disturbing. Most industrialized and developed countries impose some barrier of entry to immigrants so that they have to meet a higher standard of credentialing, talent or performance than a citizen in order to obtain a job here.

The ease of foreigners in getting jobs here could be interpreted in a number of ways. One interpretation is that jobs are plentiful. Another is that foreigners have it easier than Singaporeans, with fewer obligations, such as NS, and fewer financial commitments, such as HDB mortgages. That allows them to be more competitive than local hires. Yet another interpretation is that foreigners are "hungrier", whatever that means, and are willing to work harder and to settle for less.

Here is one other interpretation: perhaps it is not how easy it is for immigrants to find jobs here that is salient, but what an indictment it is of how bereft of value Singapore citizenship really is.

Maybe the government is so confident that foreigners can't freeload off the system here (beyond the initial inducements made to attract them) that they feel free to throw the doors wide open to all comers without reservation. After all, if you can't earn your keep here each day every day, you certainly won't survive long here. Even citizens here do not enjoy much in the way of state-sponsored benefits (aka "free lunches").

Citizens, PRs or foreigners on work visas, we are all just fungible labor inputs into Singapore's economic machine, which is why I do not mince words when I say that Singapore citizenship is bereft of value.

Future Plans

It's interesting to speculate what plans foreigners have when they arrive and work in Singapore. Do they plan to stay on and make Singapore their permanent home, take up citizenship, perhaps start a family? Are we attracting the "right" people to come to Singapore, so to speak?

The short answer to this question is there is no answer. The general feeling that I get from many of my foreign-born colleagues is that they have no concrete plans. Nobody really knows what the future holds, and certainly nobody has made concrete plans that concern making their move to Singapore permanent.  To many of colleagues, being in their mid-20s to mid-30s, these are highly abstract concerns for another day, another age, literally.

Oh, some hold permanent resident status, and a few have even bought property here. But given the ease and cost-benefit trade-off of permanent residency here, taking up PR status is a no-brainer. It's all carrots and no sticks. And a continually rising property market here in the last decade makes buying property a relatively easy commitment for the married folks to make, whether they eventually decide to stay or go elsewhere. For those who got in early in the cycle, it even made good financial sense. PR status and property ownership are not reliable indicators to base an assessment of how likely a foreigner is going to make Singapore their home for good.

As I have indicated in two previous posts, there is reason to believe that outflow rates may pick up years in the future, particularly if economic growth stalls, and population volatility will likely rise markedly as well. I wonder if the smart guys in our civil service take these factors into account in their rosy population projections.

The Two-Tier Society

The Straits Times today featured a fairly bland and benign, even banal story. It was entitled "Premium healthcare grows at a healthy pace." The full transcript is available (for now), strangely enough, at IM$avvy, a CPF companion website. I say strangely enough because the lux health screening packages described in the article are far beyond the reach of the average Singaporean, and yet, if there is one government institution all Singaporeans are acquainted intimately with, it is the CPF.

It has happened in business and banking (think private banking). It has happened with restaurants and fine dining. It has happened in the real estate market (Sentosa Cove, and too many condos to name). It has happened with entertainment venues, like our integrated resorts, and events, like Formula I. And it has happened in our healthcare as well. If the words "medical tourist hub" did not resoundingly ring in your head when you read this story, they should have.

Singapore is also home to the One Degree 15 Marina Club, Jetquay and FreePort. I could have chosen other examples, but these three resonate most with me as symbols of the excess, exclusivity, and expatriateness that define the new Singapore.

We have truly arrived as a first world city. Our level of immigration, connectedness to the global economy, our availability of goods and services, standards of quality, and costs of living, rival those of any of the global cities that Saskia Sassen describes in her work.

Unfortunately, at least for me, I am belatedly realizing that as much as I enjoy the energy associated with living in the "big city", warmth and homeyness are increasingly not what I identify with this city, Singapore, that I currently live in.

Inveighing against the wealth that comes to our shores from afar is a pointless, perhaps even foolish, exercise, given the benefits it brings to our economy.

I am not going to go into the complicated arguments that delve into whether inflation here has been driven up by foreign liquidity, or that medical tourism has indirectly caused an exodus of doctors to the private sector, or the multitudinous pernicious effects that income inequality has on measures of societal health, as detailed in The Spirit Level. That is better left to a day when my dispassionate, more analytical self, feels moved to comment.

But my quieter, more philosophical self senses the ineffable feeling that this city is increasingly being designed variously as a playground, a global bolthole, winter retreat, or Asian gateway, marketed primarily to the wealthy expatriate, and perhaps, incidentally, to the wealthy local (who may be a naturalized foreigner).

The feeling is particularly difficult to dispel when one considers the sorry state of public transportation while struggling to board a subway train at rush hour (with hordes of foreigners who are working class, of which I guess I am one too), or when one marvels at the price of government flats as they spiral ever higher out of reach, until the dream of owning a home becomes mere fantasy.

Each day I turn the pages of our increasingly irrelevant national newspaper, and my eyes glaze over the risibly fanciful names of newly launched condos in property ads, or the expensive marques that tout ever more sophisticated levels of automotive engineering and tasteful design. And I continue to wonder how relevant all this is to my life, beyond the evanescent pleasures of daydreaming that perhaps one day, I could have all this too.

Wishful thinking.

I am not overly worried about my future; not optimistic, but not worried either. I can differentiate between needs and wants, and my psychological constitution is strong enough to withstand the corrosive effects of income inequality.

Still, the feeling that Singapore is Home continues to recede. Feeling is irrational, and it defies logic and explanation. Yet there it is, and it persists in existing.

It is difficult to love a city that doesn't love you back, and that is both cold and hard. And it is not for nothing that cash is described as cold and hard. 

Being a lower income student in an "elite" institution

The Straits Times had an article today, "Non-grad parents, but they made it to top schools". No transcript available, but very briefly, it talked about how only a minority of students today in top schools in Singapore hail from households where parents are non-university graduates. It also had some short interview-like snippets from the minority students.

In truth, the title of this article was disingenuous. It would have been more accurate to characterize these students as coming from low-income households rather than with non-grad parents. Perhaps some editor from the Straits Times wanted to avoid any association with that hot potato issue of income inequality.

Reading some of the students' comments stirred some memories. I too, was a lower income student studying in a top school. My family isn't poor by any measure, but disparities were still stark. Some background here.

The truth is, top schools have had a skewed income distribution for several years now. I certainly felt it keenly almost two decades ago. It is NOT a recent phenomenon.

On the off-chance that one of those kids might read this, here's the two cents worth of my reminisces, and some advice, if they will have it:

It is entirely understandable to feel a sense of being apart from your peers who come from much more privileged backgrounds. I call it that sense of "otherness".

Newsflash: It never goes away entirely. So, deal with it as best as you can.

Here's why that feeling of otherness never fades away entirely.

Today, in secondary school, you might feel inadequate because you can't afford to tote the latest iPod, iPad or iPhone. Or you might decline to join your friends at Starbucks or Cafe Cartel, or wherever it is young folks today hang out.

When you reach JC or in the early years of university, some of your wealthier peers will start experimenting with alcohol and clubbing. A few will start driving when their parents gift them with new cars. You'll probably still be taking public transport.

If you do well in school and decide to take up a scholarship to fully fund your university studies, congratulations, you'll have a fairly generous allowance to live on. Finally, some cash in hand!

Unfortunately, that's about the same time your wealthier peers, who might be studying abroad in the same university as you, start talking about ski vacations at Aspen, Whistler or Lake Tahoe. Or weekend getaways to New York for Restaurant Week (Nobu apparently is a great deal). Not exactly your average student's weekend plan.

[For the record, a scholarship allowance probably could pay for these luxuries in moderation, with cutbacks in other areas. But if you were raised in privation, you would find it difficult to justify the expense.]

And when you finally start working, you might see your better-off peers land prestigious unpaid internships, get a new car as a gift from their parents, or have their lavish wedding or new apartment paid for by family.

If you've been following so far, you would probably start wondering why any kid would voluntarily hang out with richer folk after they've grown up when the risk of feeling inferior is so great.

The problem is, when a student joins a top school, whether they realize it or not, important parameters for their social life are being set that will persist for years into the future.

There's a reason socio goes with economic in socio-economic status.

A person's education and upbringing determine their ambitions, drives, values, concerns and perspectives.

A student that has attended a top school will share a very similar set of characteristics (for want of a better word) as their peer group in their school, irrespective of financial background. But, family finances will impose very practical constraints that prevent the student from truly feeling a sense of kinship with their peers.

On the other hand, while a student attending a top school will empathize with someone who comes from a similarly less privileged background, they won't be able to identify with them because their set of characteristics are completely different.

This is just a very convoluted way of telling those lower income kids who attend top schools that they might find that they don't feel like they truly belong anywhere. Now, and in the future.

I first realized this to true when I had the privilege of serving as a man (that is, a corporal. I sooo did not want to liable until I am 50.) during NS. My platoon mates came from fairly average backgrounds, and their concerns were quite different from the friends that I had in school. Some clearly had family problems, and even today, their worries concern more about things like saving up for their parents' medical bills.

In contrast, friends I know from school are generally concerned with weighty matters like, which are the top MBA programs to apply for, what are the opportunities to work as a quant in a hedge fund, or is membership in One o-15 marina a good investment?

The problem is not that I can't appreciate why no one should attend an MBA program outside the top 8. The problem is that I can. Just like I know that getting Wilmott certification is advantageous for working as a quant. I just don't see myself getting hung up over stuff like that. Nor could I ever see myself discussing matters like this over a mess tin of Maggi noodles with my platoon mates during an outfield exercise.

This incongruity between social and economic status is something that any lower-income kid who attends a top school is going to have to grapple with in the years to come.

Do I have advice for lower-income kids who attend top schools? Absolutely.

First, if at all possible, get a part-time job. It can be at McDonalds, Starbucks or just giving tuition. It's something I didn't do as a kid, and I wonder if I made the right decision.

This might sound like irresponsible advice, but hear me out.

It's enormously empowering to make, and spend, your own money. On a practical note, it gives work experience at an early age, and it exposes you to different perspectives. Even minority lower income kids are cloistered to a certain extent in a top school. For once, you'll meet people who don't view not getting an "A" in Physics as an absolute disaster.

As for time taken away from studies, there is always enough time. It's only a matter of priorities. You don't need to top the class in a subject, especially if there is no financial incentive to go with it. If you were smart enough to get into a top school despite being financially disadvantaged, you're smart enough to wing an "A", if just scraping in. Don't work beyond what's required to get the maximum marginal benefit of good grades. That's valuable time you could be spending on something else.

As for how you might spend your income, there's no need to splash out on designer goods. You probably couldn't keep up with your peers anyway. But it would be nice to pay for the occasional meal out or movie.

And not to have to ask parents for the money to attend the school prom, and to actually have something nice to wear to it, priceless! Really, not having money just makes the awkwardness of the teenage years that much harder to bear.

Second piece of advice comes courtesy of Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-hour Workweek, whom I had the pleasure of transcribing an interview of on mturk not long ago.

Diversify your identity.

This is, in fact, very good advice for anybody. Ferriss advises the start-up founders he consults for to take up at least two activities outside of work, one of which is a sport. The rationale is that start-up entrepreneurs have a tendency to get caught up with and obsess over their companies. If they had a bad week at work because of setbacks, which are common with start-ups, it can still be a good week if they, say, clocked a new personal best for their running, or finally succeeded in their personal project at home.

Diversifying your identity is a way of avoiding or delaying burn-out.

I never experienced burn-out as a student, but I have often regretted spending as much time as I did on studies. I tell myself I should have cut loose and relaxed a bit more when I could.

If you're a lower income student in a top school, you're already under enormous pressure to "succeed", which makes it all the more important that you don't burn-out.

This is why having a job could be useful. If you make coffee part-time at Starbucks, you can be the best barista you can be, instead of just another student.

If not a job, instead of angling for a leadership position in school, take up a CCA just for FUN. If you go to church or temple or mosque, volunteer a few hours a week. It can be very helpful to step out of the bubble that a school, especially a top school, can resemble.

Go widen your social circle a little, get some perspective, and grow in different ways. As a person, you'll grow to become more resilient, not to mention much more interesting.

What are some possible unintended consequences of massive immigration?

Disclaimer: Some readers might take offense at this post. This post is not motivated by any form of xenophobia, and I will maintain as neutral a tone as I can manage throughout. The purpose of this post is as a thought experiment, to think about potential unintended, and more importantly, unexpected, consequences of unrestrained and massive immigration. If you've read the Black Swan, you can think of this post as an exercise in Black Swan hunting.

We know massive immigration causes problems. Particularly when immigrant populations are not well integrated into the mainstream population or when the native population is outnumbered by foreigners. For example, see the civil unrest in France in 2005, Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, or the July 2009 Urumqi riots in Xinjiang.

Immigration in Singapore appears to be mostly free of these problems, and the main concerns here have been more prosaic, if still important, such as the cost of housing, employment of citizens vis-a-vis foreigners, and the declining quality of life, particularly those who rely heavily on public services.

I don't intend to interrogate these consequences of immigration, as they are well known and noticed, but to look for consequences and effects that are less obvious, less often perceived. Things that won't be found in some official record somewhere, but are street observations that are undocumented, until perhaps sometime in the future.

Take neighborhoods for instance. I am a flaneur, and the tagline of my blog is "An obsession to walk the city to experience it". And what I've noticed over the years is the changing character of neighborhoods as a result of immigration.

We know neighborhoods change as a result of redevelopment and gentrification. Tiong Bahru for instance, while still retaining an air of authenticity, has been gentrified almost beyond recognition. The most accessible parts of Chinatown are one big giant tourist trap (the interior is still somewhat authentic). And most of the shophouses in the Tanjong Pagar conservation area are given over to offices, particularly law firms and accountants' offices. I should know, I used to temp there.

But some areas have changed mainly as a result of immigration. Joo Chiat, for instance, was and perhaps is still infamous for vice, mainly stemming from callgirls from China setting up shop there.

Then there are what I call 'immigrant enclaves', buildings or places that attract a disproportionate number belonging to a particular foreigner ethnic group. For example anyone who has spent any amount of time in Singapore would know that Lucky Plaza is Filipino central, particularly on weekends. As a JC student years ago who used to head to Orchard every weekend (to chill at Takashimaya 'Square'), I used to marvel at the number of Filipino maids who would picnic on the lawn where Ion Orchard is now situated at.

Similarly, Golden Mile Complex has long been popular with Thais. I remember one time I wandered there while looking for Army supplies at Beach Road and was bewildered by the sheer number of Thais and Thai signboards. I felt like I had been transported to Bangkok.

On recent trips to Peninsula Plaza, I noticed the vast numbers of Myanmarese businesses (travel agencies and shops) amid the ... piquant ... odor of that aging mall.

What, in practice, have I found to be the best indicator that an area or building has been colonized by an immigrant group?

Supermarkets. Because food is so integral to culture, and supermarkets are high volume, low margin businesses, ethnic supermarkets are the number one indicator of a sizeable immigrant presence. Places of worship are another great indicator, but still not as useful, or visible, as supermarkets.

It's not just places that change as a result of immigration. Industries and occupations change as a result of immigration too.

We've already talked about vice in Joo Chiat due to China girls. Then there's that infamous report on human trafficking in Singapore that the government has dismissed. Perhaps Singapore's allegedly lax stance on immigration has contributed directly or indirectly to the prevalence of human trafficking in the sex trade here. We have the ubiquitous Banglas in the construction industry, more accurately South Asians, as they comprise Indians and Pakistanis as well. Their social problems have been well-documented by The Online Citizen. And the nimby effect was clearly evident when the thorny problem of situating their dormitories came up. We have also seen the problems of customers communicating, or not communicating, with non-English speaking service staff. Everyone in Singapore has had experience with that. And university students in the local universities have long complained of lecturers from China or India who are unable to teach effectively due to their heavy accents.

What is less commonly remarked upon, noticed, or is simply a more recent phenomenon? 

The Ministry of Manpower has an entire department of statisticians churning out labor statistics which are unfortunately publicly unavailable due to 'sensitivity', but we can make a few observations.

The IT industry and call centre industry is heavy with foreigners, particularly Filipinos. Anyone who has had to interrupt a meeting because of a cold call from a credit card representative would know this if he had deigned to notice. A friend who works as an IT recruiter has commented that it has been this way for quite a while.

And a colleague who complained of driving on the roads these days because of "aggressive" mainland China bus drivers clued me in on something I had noticed, but hadn't really internalized. Our bus drivers today are increasingly from China. And they're aggressive enough on the roads to have caused some drivers to take notice. Just a few days ago, a friend told me of how his bus driver got into an quarrel with a passenger due to a fallen tree branch incident which blocked traffic on an expressway. The bus drivers of today aren't the bus drivers of yesteryear, that's for sure.

We know of wildcat strikes in China at Honda factories. For better or for worse, immigrants to Singapore are generally not as ... tractable ... as native Singaporeans. If a critical part of our infrastructure like the public bus transport network is heavily dependent on foreigners of a particular ethnicity or creed, what happens if they have reason to get organized and demonstrate, protest or go on strike? Like the Falun Gong demonstration that happened in Singapore a while back? Or the diplomatic fracas that came in the wake of the Flor Contemplacion incident? There would potentially be a lot more unhappy Filipinos on Singapore soil today should a diplomatic incident like that happen again. And frankly, before 9/11, Singapore was lucky to not have sourced for immigrants from Muslim states that might subsequently have found our staunch relationship with the USA ... objectionable. 

What about our other industries? Electronics, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, construction? Any possibility of some adverse event occurring simply because we are so critically dependent on "hired help" in those industries? Nobody knows, and the MOM a'int talking. Maybe we should start asking. Just sayin'.

Finally, immigration changes not just places and industries, but also people. 

With every change, I find myself becoming less and less rooted to this island. A sizeable mass of Singaporeans has been disenchanted with "growth at all costs", income inequality and massive immigration. Because of immigration, some wags talk about being second class citizens in our own country. We have become disenchanted, disenfranchised and increasingly disconnected.

Home is where the heart is, but what happens when the heart itself has left the home?

I remember when the old National Library building was demolished despite massive public dissent, and the collective memories of generations was lost. Is that so different when neighborhoods are transformed through immigration? They may be revitalized, and that is undoubtedly a good thing for places plagued with urban decay, but something is lost nonetheless. Lost and unmourned.

Our local patois of Singlish is regularly denigrated (lah), as if being drowned in a babel of foreign tongues and accents is not challenge enough already. Will the day come when even ordering in a hawker centre is something that can't be done in Singlish? Because the service staff don't speak it, not at all?

And immigrants are brought in to "stick spurs" in our hides to make us work harder. We work plenty hard already, and are justly proud of our achievements. Yet we are told time and time again to work harder, cheaper, better, faster. We are exhorted to emulate some city or country, to strive to be the "insert city here" of the east. We are told we have to be hungry like some nationality or ethnic group. We are made to feel inadequate and insecure, and when we voice concerns, those concerns are belittled or dismissed. All the national education and NDP parades in the world will not be enough to dispel the actual experience of the modern day Singaporean. That despite having made it from third world to first, we are still not good enough. Hence the need for more immigration. We are not allowed to feel pride in being Singaporean.

The Singapore Tourism Board has been zealous in promoting the Uniquely Singapore brand. But no one seems to be paying attention to the fast eroding Uniquely Singaporean Identity. For better or for worse, we are getting disconnected from our place of birth. We already have a low birth rate. Do we need an escalating rate of migration among native born Singaporeans as well?

It is clear from recent news that the powers that be are intellectually wedded to a pro-immigration policy. But what might that tunnel vision bring us in the future, when the unintended consequences of massive immigration are fully felt?

Remark:

I am very interested in the transforming urban landscape in Singapore due to immigration. I would be much obliged to readers who can point out instances of neighborhoods or districts that seem to have taken on an overt foreign character. 

Coping with Public Transportation

The recent fare hike change to a distance-based charging formula for the public transportation system has upset quite a few people. Although I have not had the opportunity to check exactly how much my public transportation expenses have increased (I live a 5-minute walk away from my workplace), I am certain I am one of those negatively affected since I take mostly trunk services and avoid transfers like the plague.

This post isn't about me ranting about our ... flawed... public transportation system. I have commented on it previously here and in particular, "Why our public transportation system should be a cut above the rest.". I consider the latter to be one of the better posts I have written. 

This post is about me embracing my inner anti-establishment self, and exercising my engineer's creativity. 

In addition to being inherently anti-establishment, frankly, I'm disgusted with how a number of things are run in our country.

So I opt out. For instance, I've opted out of local media (don't watch TV and while I read the newspapers, I ignore the columnists and dispense with the entire paper in 15 minutes flat), and I tune out local events (like Formula 1 and YOG, *shudder*).

Unfortunately, as I don't drive, I can't opt out of public transportation. Much. And it's not like driving sets you completely free of "the system" either, what with satellite and GPS-based ERP on the horizon.

But there have to be some creative ways of opting out of public transportation at least partially right? Some way of coping with public transportation, so to speak?

Here are a few that I can think of:

1. Premium bus services. Heck, if you're going to pay more anyway, might as well get a premium product. More information on the LTA website www.publictransport.sg.

2. Park-n-ride. Only available to those who drive. Not very useful, I know. Still worth mentioning though. Again, see www.publictransport.sg for details.

3. Free shuttle bus services, often associated with out-of-the-way shopping malls. The most complete list is probably here, though it has not been recently updated.

4. Cycle or run to work. You have to be the sporty type though; let's face it, our culture and our climate are not conducive to a casual city person's Velib type service. As for running, well, you have to be in reasonably good shape to actually commute by running. When I used to work on a semi-regular basis at MINDEF, I ran home from work about once a week, traversing the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve by using a variation of one of my regular routes. I would enter the forest via the Dairy Farm Road entrance and exit out via Jalan Kampung Chantek, then continue running on to home.  

5. Use a Segway. I've long fantasized about zipping past bumper-to-bumper road traffic during peak hours by segging (is that even a word?) along pedestrian pavements that run parallel to roads. Don't take this as literal advice though; I have no idea as to what the legality of using Segways on pedestrian pavements is in Singapore. Knowing our government, they would probably just as soon ban it as someone decides to do it.

 

The flaneur's guide to dining alone

Rebecca Lynn Tan had an article today in the Sunday Times on Dinner for One. That will be the topic for today's post. Tan's wasn't a bad article, but I think I can provide more ... specific advice on dining alone.

In my youth (ok, I'm not that old), I used to travel fairly extensively as a student. Because it was somewhat difficult to find people with the same travel interests as myself, I frequently travelled alone. Still do, actually. So I learnt a few tricks on dining alone.

Dining alone in a restaurant is, for most people, an intimidating experience. "Table for one", "Yi wei" ... no matter how you say it, it's difficult. As a traveller, I started out ta-paoing from convenience stores, or eating grab-and-go street food, or stepping into a McDonald's like most less experienced travellers. Fastfood is frequently the easiest option when you are in a foreign city and you don't speak the language.

But it got old fast. So I wised up. And I picked up the courage to say "Table for one, please".

The unexpected thing is, the tricks I learnt while travelling still stand me in good stead here in Singapore. It doesn't happen often, but I occasionally dine alone in a restaurant in Singapore. As an incidental benefit, dining alone usually means looking for quieter places to eat; that's a good thing seeing as how I'm allergic to crowds.

Here then, are my tips for dining alone:

1. First of all, in reference to Tan's article, if you have to raise your voice and repeat "Table for one" to the maitre'd, thereby announcing your solo status to everyone in the restaurant, you're not doing it right. Do what the Japanese do when dining out; indicate with your fingers how big your party is. In this case, just raise your index finger (not the middle one, no matter how tempting that is).

2. Eat early or eat late, but do not eat when everyone else is eating. Restaurants are at their most crowded from 7pm - 9pm, with exceptions in certain countries (e.g. Spanish diners eat notoriously late). Walking into the restaurant at 6pm or at 9pm will more likely get you the seat you want as well as a more private dining experience.
3. Fine dining, despite what Tan's article would suggest, is generally not a fine option. Fine dining establishments typically turn tables once, or not at all, per night. Turning tables is restaurant parlance for seating new diners at a table vacated by a prior group. Most diners at fine dining establishments will come in at about 7 or 8pm, and leave after 10pm. So such a restaurant will on average serve a number of customers 1.5 to 2 times their maximum seating per night. If you're a solo diner taking up a table meant for 3 or 4, and you finish sometime after 8pm (especially if you didn't abide by rule number 2), since solo diners seldom linger, it's unlikely that the restaurant will be able to accommodate a new group for your table for the rest of the night. In other words, it's lost revenue for the restaurant. And being a solo diner, it's unlikely that you ordered wine, at least by the bottle. Which is another lost revenue opportunity. They can say what they want about welcoming and making solo diners comfortable, but really, fine dining restaurants generally do NOT want solo diners. Plus, do you really want to sit down through a multicourse dinner alone? And drinking wine alone is ... well, you could either be construed as being very sad or a lush, neither one of which is very appealing.
4. Cuisine matters. Certain kinds of cuisine are just more suitable for solo diners. Tan was right to be apprehensive about Chinese dining; it is communal and has larger portions or platters meant to be shared. While I do not doubt that Crystal Jade as mentioned in the article has single portions on its menu, still, Chinese is seldom a serious option I consider when I eat out alone. Even if there are single portions available, it's invariably a little more expensive and generally not very good value. The food was meant to be shared after all. The same goes for Thai food. In contrast, Japanese (with its bentos), Korean (think soon-dubu jigae and the like), Vietnamese (Pho, with a sider order of spring rolls or another appetizer), are generally better options for solo dining. Go for cuisines that emphasize individual plates or small portions (Spanish tapas comes to mind, although frankly, there are no good Spanish restaurants in Singapore).


5. Now, where to eat? That goes right to the heart of the matter, doesn't it? As a diner, I look for good food at reasonable prices. As a solo diner, I ask for quietness and privacy. That may or may not be what you are looking for. If it is, then read on. If not, well, Singapore's a crowded city, so you should have no problems finding what you need. Generally, convenience implies crowds. So if you want to dine someplace quiet, you should be prepared to go a little out of the way. Choose restaurants in out of the way malls (I stay in the west, so West Coast Plaza is one of my preferred haunts. It helps that they have a Sakuraya Fish Market.). Walk out of the hubs like town centers and major MRT stations into surrounding neighborhoods where there are sometimes friendly, family-type restaurants that serve the residents in the area. Hotel restaurants are a safe, if boring and pricey alternative, and the wait staff are used to dealing with solo travellers. And don't overlook tourist destinations. Museums these days are paying greater attention to their food offerings; it would hardly do to leave visitors with a bad taste in their mouths, literally. If you're lucky, you might find a elegant quiet experience in a museum restaurant or cafe. And theatre restaurants can be a godsend for a solo diner. If you step in just after a major show has begun, you're almost certainly guaranteed a quiet private dinner. 


6. Bring a distractor if you must, or enjoy the experience of dining alone. By distractors, I mean a magazine, a newspaper, a Kindle, or an Iphone ... but probably not a paperback or hardback book. That would look ... odd. And if you're secure enough or inquisitive enough to put aside the distractors, enjoy the experience of dining alone. Too often when we eat out, we are too busy having a conversation with friends or family that we don't appreciate the decor, the restaurant, or just the opportunity to people-watch in the restaurant. Get a seat with a good view of the restaurant, or next to a window that overlooks the street. You'll be surprised by how much you can see, or eavesdrop on.


7. Lastly, be friendly and be an easy customer. Don't make things overly difficult for your servers. You don't have to engage the wait staff in a conversation if you don't want to, but be pleasant and gracious. And if they are wearing nametags, make a point of addressing them and thanking them by name when you are about to leave. In my experience, people always react well to that.