Gripes

I cannot help it. But I view foreigners in Singapore with alot more irritation now than I ever did before. Foreigners as in those who live and work here.

For one, a large chunk of them lack social graces. I'm not saying that Singaporeans are mighty good in this aspect but at least a majority of them have a fair bit of social grace contained in them somewhere.

It's depressing sometimes. You step into an MRT train cabin and you hear these foreigners speaking at huge volumes. Enough to rival the volume of the recorded voice of the lady announcing the arrival of each station. Enough to irk everyone. And enough to prompt me to want to shout out "Can you just shut the f*ck up??"

What nationality am I referring to? Well, two groups. One with olive skin, and the other with fair skin. Go figure.

You go to a foodcourt and order food from a Chinese national. You step out of the lift at your office floor and meet face-to-face with a cleaner from there as well. You go jogging at night and an Indian worker rides past you on his bicycle, leaving a waft of nose-tingling scent behind him.

You head to Orchard Road on a Sunday and find the place teeming with foreigners. You step into Sim Lim Squaare, start eye-ing a laptop and a Fillipino or Chinese national salesgirl tries to get your buy-in on the product.

A Chinese national barged her way past me to get into the train this mornig. I muttered "bitch" under my breath. A local lady turned around to look at me. Hope she didn't thinbk that I was referring to her. But even if she did, then tant pis, too bad.

A Fillipino lady constantly stepped on my foot whilst on the train. Hello, my foot was in the same position for the longest time. You couldn't shift yourself a little to avoid stepping on my toes?? You couldn't even say a single word of apology to me too?

You throw a stone and there's a 50% chance you'll hit a foreigner. Ok, I might be biased, there are nice foreigners around. People like the nurses in our hospitals who work hard to serve the patients and those nice ladies helping out at my gran's nursing home.

But even so, what's becoming of the country? National identity. Is there one at all? Hmm mm. Was there one to begin with? Will there be one?