Barely hours after I did my post on rude angmos, I witnessed for myself another uproar. Alright, I am exaggerating again, but what happened was a good example of how fragile the racial harmony in Singapore is.

Apparently, there was a Starbucks staff who was clearing the tables and while she was walking past a PRC customer, the latter threw a tissue into the tray that the staff was carrying. By any standards, that was rude. Yet the PRC didn’t think that there was anything wrong.

The staff was obviously very angry and she asked in a rather loud voice for the customer not to litter the place. Feeling indignant, the customer argued back in somewhat broken English something that I couldn’t get. In the end, the customer asked the staff to "go on" or "move on", or "be dismissed" or in Mandarin, 退下. For those who are not familiar with the Chinese language, it’s like the Emperor asking the subject to dismiss himself. It’s rather derogatory if you ask me.

In the end, a Singapore Chinese had to approach the Chinese customer to find out what went wrong. Perhaps the PRC customer really didn’t find anything to throwing a litter into the tray that the staff was carrying, but it is this kind of misunderstandings that can break the racial harmony and equilibrium that we are enjoying.

With a higher influx of foreign talents, and with the Singapore government encouraging more foreigners to come in, it may be inevitable for such things to happen - and tolerance of each other’s culture does not happen overnight. Already, a lot of Singaporeans are displeased with foreign talent "taking over" their jobs, how bad can it get if they bring along their own culture and assume that the locals will be able to adapt to it, or that the locals can accept it?

After all, isn’t it that when in Rome, we do what the Romans do?

STEP into the toy department of Isetan Scotts and chances are you will be served by Zhang Jia Le from north-eastern China.

The cheerful 20-year-old quit his studies, borrowed $7,000 from relatives and came to Singapore to work three months ago.

The Ji Lin native who said he lost interest in studying, remarked: ‘The environment here is better and we learn how to handle and sell many different kinds of products.’

He is among a growing number of front-line China workers in the service industry.

Mainland Chinese are making their presence felt not only in foodcourts and hawker centres but also in shopping malls, supermarkets and petrol stations.

Employers like these workers because they are hard-working and are willing to take jobs shunned by Singaporeans.

But the reception from others has been less than warm. In the past two weeks, four people have written to the Forum page of The Straits Times commenting on the ubiquitous China worker.

The letter writers said these workers are taking jobs away from Singaporeans and questioned their suitability, saying that many do not speak English.

One exasperated reader, Mr Murali Sharma, described how he could not get a glass of warm water from a waitress from China at a wedding banquet.

The 71-year-old retiree said: ‘I can’t speak Mandarin and she couldn’t speak English. It was so frustrating.’

The Sunday Times visited 23 coffee shops and foodcourts in the past week and found China workers serving in at least eight eateries. At a coffee shop in Braddell, up to 10 of the 25 employees were China nationals.

Their vocabulary is typically restricted to job-related terms but sometimes it is not even sufficient for work.

Ms Sharidah Zaitun, 47, a part-time editor, has had frustrating encounters with service staff from China at food centres and shops who cannot understand her.

She said: ‘Singapore has an international community and speaking English is a must.’

Even some Chinese Singaporeans have problems. Not all can speak Mandarin and they get by using dialects such as Hokkien or pasar Malay in hawker centres.

Mrs Maggie Goh, 61, a retiree who speaks only Hokkien and English, said she has resorted to pointing to items on the menus in restaurants.

Just on Friday, she was served by a waiter from China at a restaurant in Parkway Parade who could not understand English. ‘He kept speaking in Mandarin even though I spoke to him in English. I ended up pointing to items on the menu. It was a struggle,’ she said.

Expats in particular are having difficulty with the language barrier.

A Filipina accounts manager, Denise Iroy, 31, recounted how she once spent 15 minutes trying to explain to a salesman from China that she wanted to buy an adaptor.

‘I tried to speak slowly but he still could not understand me. In the end, the manager had to come and assist me.’

Employers and labour agents said the influx of China workers came after rules were relaxed to allow them to work in the service industry.

They said service-sector companies can now hire work permit holders for up to 45 per cent of their total workforce with China workers making up 5 per cent of that.

The Manpower Ministry could not say how many China workers are in the service industry but interviews with labour agents suggest that demand is hotting up.

Agent Zen Tan said that from July to December, his agency supplied about 3,600 China workers to companies in the service sector. This month alone, demand has gone up by 20 per cent.

He said: ‘A lot of these jobs require long hours and Singaporeans do not want to take them.’

Mr K.H. Hong, who owns a chain of 10 coffee shops islandwide, said he hires China workers because they are ‘hard-working, willing to work overtime and eager to learn’.

It also does not hurt that a China worker’s pay is $1,000, about 10 per cent lower than what a Singaporean or Malaysian earns - because he is usually inexperienced. Mr Hong has about 40 China workers in all.

Ms Shereen Leong, senior human resource executive of foodcourt operator Koufu, which has 21 outlets, said local workers are scarce in the tight labour market. The company has 29 China workers out of its pool of 503 workers.

One such person is Wu Ye Li, who has been manning the dessert stall at Koufu’s Toa Payoh outlet for two years.

The 34-year-old started out serving customers but has since learnt to prepare all 15 items on the menu.

She works 12 hours a day, gets two days off a month and earns $1,000 monthly.

She admitted that the first months at work were frustrating because she could not understand her customers’ orders.

‘Language was a problem, the Singapore slang is different and I knew little English,’ she said. But now, she can speak simple English to her customers.

Ms Julia Tay, deputy human resource manager of Isetan, hired four China workers in the past four months after interviewing them via webcam.

She thinks that they would be more committed to their jobs because of the large sums they’ve paid labour agents to hook them up with jobs in Singapore. The amount can be as high as $8,000.

She said: ‘Though having a basic command of English is important, the willingness to learn is more important.’

The China workers are paid the same amount as the other workers - $1,100 a month. The company does not give them English language lessons.

The store, which has 600 retail assistants, plans to place up to three China workers in each of its four branches.

Bata Singapore, which employs 11 China nationals as sales staff, tackles the language problem by enrolling them in a week-long basic English course.

Ms Corrine Goh, manager of the Peninsula Plaza branch, which has two China workers, said the company preferred to hire China nationals over English-speaking Filipinos because they are cheaper.

China nationals get $1,000 a month compared to $1,500 to $1,800 for Filipinos.

She said: ‘Of course language can be a problem, but the workers try their best. We hire them based on how much they are willing to learn and how far we think they can go.’ She said that there have been no customer complaints.

While some customers may be unhappy with the China workers’ weak grasp of English, employers said the situation is not likely to change given the tight labour market and Singaporeans’ reluctance to work in the service industry.

Mr Hong Poh Heng, chairman of the Foochow Coffee Restaurant and Bar Merchants Association, said: ‘They are cheap to hire and unlike Singaporeans, are willing to work long hours and on public holidays to pay back their loans.’

But 24-year-old undergraduate Rebecca Norfor has this piece of advice for employers who seem to downplay the importance of language in good service.

‘If I have to tear my hair out to communicate, I will take my business elsewhere.’

mavistoh@sph.com.sg

shulis@sph.com.sg

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 9th December 2007

Many people have expressed fears of loss of job in Singapore to foreign talent, be it in the high (management and above; C-level), low (less than $1800) or middle (S-pass, more than $1800) level.

Even before the Sunday Times report today, I was commenting to Alice one day, while eating at the Parklane Wan Ton Mee store, that almost 80% of the helpers in the store are either from PRC or Malaysia - and it sort of reminds me of my history lessons eons ago about how our early forefathers came down to Nanyang from China looking for jobs and better prospects.

From the past, we know that (most of) our forefathers have worked really hard to become what we are today - not that our Malay counterparts are any less hardworking, but it’s just that they have a different way of working with an entirely different set of beliefs and priorities.

Soon after, the Chinese helped flourish (with the help of many other people from other races) Singapore to what it is today. If you ask me, the situation in Singapore is somewhat similar to how it was pre-independence - where a lot of Chinese came down from China for a better future.

The only difference now, in my opinion, is that there may be stiffer competition for jobs, but I figured that if PRC Chinese are willing to learn and work hard, they will get somewhere one day and build their own empires.

Wait, isn’t that supposed to be "detrimental" to Singaporeans - in that Singaporeans will be losing jobs to PRC Chinese and become jobless. I guess a lot lies in the mentality - not that I am any less vulnerable, as the Post-doc sitting next to me is from PRC, the PhD student diagonal to me is from Indonesia and the Masters student opposite me is from Pakistan.

For me, I’d constantly be upgrading myself in more ways than one - be it academically, professionally or otherwise. It does seem that I’m always on my toes, doesn’t it? In a certain sense, it does seem that way - but I don’t think I’d be exaggerated to keep upgrading myself constantly - that would definitely be too tiring. At the end of the day, there are many other factors besides skill sets that can keep us hired, including interpersonal skills, a good working attitude and sad to say, perhaps some pay cut.

I figured that by the time the new Chinese (as I like to call them) is up and coming again, I’d hopefully be planning for my retirement in Singapore or elsewhere. So, there’s really more to competing for jobs. It’s a whole process of packaging and marketing yourself, as well as planning your roads ahead. Sometimes, complaining probably doesn’t help as much as taking the first step and planning ahead. After all, the end point doesn’t always have to be the same as where you started.

A friend of mine told me that calling Caucasians "angmo" is derogatory, but in this post, I think the angmo is rude in the first instance. I am not sure if it’s a cultural difference, or do they think that it’s really fine, or do they think that Singapore’s an Asian country and hence they are supreme almighty. Thank goodness it’s a rarity that people like them exists and someone should really knock some sense into them.

Can you see what’s wrong? No? Okie… how about another picture?

Have you noticed anything yet? Still haven’t? Hmm… maybe this isn’t obvious yet, but the following picture should be.

Yes! His feet is on the table! Both of them; and his girlfriend (I suppose) doesn’t even seem to care! Is this a "Western Culture" or is this really alright? I’m not sure, but if I put my legs up onto a table where we put our food as well, I’d get whacked out of my wits.

Then again, maybe there’s nothing to do with culture and someone may just attribute it to bad habits - like how some of us like to shake our legs when seated; but his feet were on a public table where it’d be used by someone else after they leave - without it being cleaned first.

So now, I’d just use tall tables - where I hope that any attempts by any angmo to put their feet on the table will result in them toppling down from their chairs. Another couple just sat at that seat after the angmo couple left, and the girl is happily resting her palms on the table. Sigh…

Seriously… look at her with your head tilted to your left, to your right… and even upside down if you want to. Look at her from her legs up or head down… or even at her shadow… can you figure out?

No? Okie… if you are a guy, perhaps you should stop looking at her nipples because it doesn’t really help much. As one fellow blogger mentioned, “guys will get tired after staring at her for quite a while because they’d all be looking at the wrong parts of the body!”

For me, I think I’d have a headache. 

Now, can you see her spinning clockwise or anti-clockwise? I saw her spinning clockwise first, for as long as I wanted to, then I saw her spinning anti-clockwise. While it was rumoured that this determined which side of the brain you used more, the fact is that, this is only a 34 frame animation in a constant loop which does not provide sufficient 3D spatial information for your brain to process - so your brain tries to fill it up by providing whatever spatial information it thinks you need to see something that you can interpret.

And if you are interested in the left-right brain nitty-gritty, here you go (extracted from news.com.au):

More explanations can be found here and here, and thanks to Chillycraps for highlighting this.

The number of youngsters with sexually transmitted infections (STI*) have tripled over the past 5 years, with young people between 10 and 29 years of age accounting for 13% of new HIV cases. If you ask me, I think this is very alarming. What puzzles me most is how someone as young as 10 years old is able to understand what sex is all about, let alone doing it.

Is it so innate in us that a 10 year old would know what to do sexually? I don’t know. Perhaps I came from a rather conservative family and hence everything is pretty much hush-hush. Do I think I needed sex education when I was 10 or 12? Perhaps. Do I think I’d benefit from it? I’m not sure.

Given the recent push for sex education in schools in Singapore, I am quite surprised at this figure. I would presume that being more educated and informed, more youngsters should make better decisions. Well, perhaps they did make better decisions when in the act - jolly well knowing the consequences. I guess knowing what’s good for you and really doing what’s good for you are 2 different issues. At the end of the day, schools and parents can only do that much.

Of course, one can’t help but wonder if any form of sex education could actually accelerate the curiosity that’s already present in most youngsters. I mean, most probably know what AIDS, HIV and STDs are; but do they actual believe that they are as vulnerable as the guy next to them?

This reminded me of an ad (of a true confession?) that I saw in school last week: My boyfriend does not like to use a condom because he does not like the feeling of it. So, we did it once without it, except that I didn’t tell him that I have herpes.

It’s quite sad to see these kind of confessions sometimes; but in this world where people crave for love and attention and fear loss of (supposed) loved ones, it’d be quite hard for some to be honest about themselves. Now, I just wonder how many of those who were infected with HIV would be brave enough to confess - without fearing social stigma. I doubt many will, and sad to say, this has lead to legislatives coming into the picture.

Perhaps abstinence is really the best prevention.

The number of youngsters with sexually transmitted infections (STI) has almost tripled in the last five years.

And in the first half of 2007, young people between 10 and 29 years of age accounted for 13 per cent of new HIV cases.

These were among a series of statistics Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Balaji Sadasivan rattled off at the ‘Love them. Talk about sex’ workshop on Saturday.

In the first nine months of this year, 657 teens aged between 10 and 19 sought help for STIs, three times the number of cases in 2002.

This was a cause for concern, he noted.

‘Parents need to reach out to educate and protect their youths,’ he said. ‘If children have knowledge of sex but no values or values without knowledge, there’ll be trouble.’

He quoted more figures from various other surveys for his concern:

22 per cent felt that pre-marital sex is acceptable

15 per cent said that they were likely to have sex upon reaching 18 years old

43 per cent of adolescent boys and 23 per cent of girls had sex within a month of knowing their romantic partners

17 per cent of boys said that they had sex with their partners on the first day they met.

Digesting these findings were 200 parents at the launch of the ‘Love them. Talk about sex’ programme which aims to equip them with skills to educate their children on sexuality issues through a series of interactive talks and workshops.

The session was organised by the Health Promotion Board and the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 9th December 2007

* STI is different from STD in that STIs are infections and may not necessarily be a disease.