Um… did he really say that? I can’t believe he said that… Well, he did… read this.
Suspect he’s gonna draw shit loads of flak man! We really did spend a lot of tax payers’ money doing up our museums. Now he say nobody will “go to the museum to look at some lifeless pieces of ceramics…”.
Win liao lah!
Today’s Channel News Asia reported that Taufik, (1st Singapore Idol winner) is sorry for his honest mistake screwing up the lyrics of our National Anthem.
I say, don’t worry, not many people knew that he was singing the National Anthem much less that he bungled up the lyrics.
In fact, he sounded like some ‘tang kee’ going into a trance. It sure didn’t sound like the National Anthem that I have been singing from Primary 1 through Secondary 4!
Once again, a writer from the Straits Times attempts to take the moral high ground and brand people with concerns over the excessive use of one language, in this case, Mandarin in Geylang as xenophobes.
I find the arguments brought up by the writer to be flawed and well, unconvincing.
Singapore is a multi-racial country. We take pride in being one of the few multi-racial country in the world that have seen harmony among the various races for almost half a century. This was not always the case.
Baby boomers and older would remember the days where racial riots were common and state emergency had to be declared.
People spoke different languages and even the Chinese fought among different dialect groups.
Earlier Chinese immigrants did not take up English because there is an advantage in doing so. English was only needed if you want to do business with the British. Everyone could easily get by speaking their own dialects and work in their own community.
It took independent Singapore great pains to get everyone to speak English.
English was being introduced as a compulsory first language in our schools because the Government saw the dual benefit of English both as an international language, as well as a language that can become common to all Singaporeans thus bringing us closer.
The journalist also mentioned that “One only has to look at the world’s most economically vibrant cities – London, Sydney and New York – to see the benefits accruing from recruiting foreigners.”
Two of these cities have been hit by terrorist attacks. The perpetrators are of foreign origins and some are second or third generation immigrants.
Some of these immigrants, born there cannot even speak English! Why? Because there is no reason to. They can get by in their own local enclaves without the use of English.
The governments there were not bothered that their immigrants do not speak English or are unable to interact with the rest of the population. As long as they stayed in their own area. When misunderstandings arise, the language barrier prevents resolutions from being made. People get angry. Some feel oppressed. This gives fanatics a chance to spread their ideology among the immigrants.
I am not saying that this will happen in Singapore. That our immigrants will become terrorist if they do not speak English.
What I am trying to highlight is, we cannot take it for granted that immigrants will take up English to better themselves or even just to get to know us better. Not when the need is not there.
The rate of immigration in Singapore is high. We cannot be ostriches, stick our heads in the ground and wait for the fullness of time to bring about a generation of English speaking immigrants. It will not happen. London, Sydney and New York have all shown us that it will not happen.
Action needs to be taken to ensure that immigrants and Singaporeans speak a common language as quickly as possible. In this case, English.
Speak English campaign, like those I had in primary school might be a good idea. We can’t speak good English if most of our immigrants can’t even speak English!
This is my attempt to post via the Nokia N97. Not that simple. I guess there’s still some work getting used to the QWERTY keyboard. Heh!
I made a double authorisation with Southwest Airlines today. Their website kept telling to try again because of an undefined error. So I did until my fingers got really tired.
Of course I called their reservations line and had a shock. I made 9 reservations. 2 via Paypal. None was successful.
The staff at SWA was really nice. 15 minutes later, I was booked on my flight and ready to fly.
Then I realised one thing. Paypal deducted my money from the 2 transactions that did not go through and placed the transactions as pending.
The answer that the Paypal website gave to this question “Why is the order status pending?” was “The status of an order is pending until it expires, is completed or has been canceled.” Is that an answer?
I decided to call Paypal. They have this nice little “Call Us” button somewhere on their website which intelligently gave me a Singapore number.
I dialed that number. The machine picked up the call, gave me a warning that my call is being recorded for ‘training’ purposes before it kept me waiting for 20 minutes. Then a guy called “Kirk” or something picked up the call.
I told him my predicament. He said I have 2 options. One is to wait for the transaction to void itself after it expires in one month. The second one is to contact Southwest Airlines. What kind of an option is that? I waited 20 minutes for the a non answer!
I asked Kirk if he is sure that there are no other options. His reply was, “There are no other buttons that I can click here.” Okay, great. This guy is a genius!
I grilled him a few more times hoping against all hope that he could come up with a more helpful solution. I wonder why I even tried.
Not wanting to let Paypal earn any interest out of me, I decided to choose the second option. Since SWA mentioned that I should contact Paypal when I voiced this up while making my reservation, I figured SWA staff probably don’t know how Paypal really works. So I asked Kirk to give me a contact in SWA that can help. He told me to go to the website and check.
Seriously Paypal, I think I just found a way for you to cut cost. Close down your call center. It is crap.
