<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=wintiny noWrap align=right>19736.1 </TD></TR><TR><TD height=8></TD></TR><TR><TD class=msgtxt><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Keep a hand on the tap
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD>We need foreign talent, but let's not change too much, too fast </TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Author --></TD></TR><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Bertha Henson, Associate Editor
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
I LOST my temper and snapped back: 'Why do you want to know this?' I had just been asked a personal question by a hospital nurse.
I guess I should have answered her nicely. But I was through having to decipher a series of questions in her Beijing-accented English that were delivered curtly and near unintelligibly. It was no fun exercising the brain while coping with an appendix that was about to rupture.
Earlier, another nurse, a trainee, had bustled into my hospital room with a vacuum flask of hot water. I was supposed to be fasting and thought that included no imbibing liquids. I told her so in many ways, including in half-baked Mandarin.
She went out, presumably to check with someone else, came in and took the flask away with profuse apologies. She was a Chinese national too.
The nurse who was in charge of my particular room was a Filipina. Likewise, the nurses who asked me questions en route to the operating theatre and the nurse who assisted the anaesthetist. They were all cheery though I had to wrap my brain around their accents. One was even singing in the patients' waiting area outside the operating theatre. It was surreal.
I believe I was in touch with a true-blue Singaporean hospital staff member only once - an elderly Malay man who helped push my gurney.
And, oh yes, my doctor - a quintessential Singaporean. When he came around, we engaged in some good-natured banter about the evils of eating certain types of food and what I should 'pantang' or avoid. I wonder if a foreign doctor would know what 'pantang' means?
We are fortunate to be able to supplement our medical talent pool. It's good to know that our country is attractive enough for foreign professionals to make their way here. So why then do I feel uneasy?
I have come across only one foreign doctor in my life, when I took a friend to a hospital's accident and emergency section a few years ago. He hailed from the Indian sub-continent and I was glad I was there to speak for my friend whose English was less than perfect.
There will be more of them here, whether foreign-born or foreign-trained, and I hope they will not be deployed at the front lines to treat HDB heartlanders.
When you are sick, you want to have the comfort of home. That's why Singaporeans abroad fly home when they are unwell, to be taken into the arms of the Singapore system.
It is not politically correct to be uncomfortable with the foreign-born - it's one of the fault lines the Prime Minister spoke of in his National Day Rally speech. But when does political correctness prevail over a feeling so primeval - and, yes, perhaps irrational?
And how can an educated person like me not see the truth: that we need the foreign-born to help this place function because people like me are not having enough babies?
Why should I even feel uncomfortable? They are not about to take my job, unlike others who are at risk of losing their jobs to cheaper foreign workers willing to slog harder. Plus, I am myself a child of mixed parentage. How can I even harbour such thoughts?
I suppose I am uncomfortable because the face of Singapore is changing too quickly and we seem to be losing our shared reference points.
I see it in my condominium. I used to live in an all-Singaporean floor. Now my neighbours include a Japanese, a family from Hong Kong, one from India and another from the Philippines. There are only two other Singapore families besides myself on the floor.
An elderly Indian woman takes her morning walk around the condo everyday. We have progressed in our conversation enough for me to know she lives in Britain and is here to visit her son who is married to a Singaporean.
What a cosmopolitan place we have become! That will be viewed by some as an exciting adventure or by others as a shock to the system.
Singapore society is criss-crossed in so many ways - by race and religion, by income groups, by new versus old citizens, as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pointed out. But we have managed the first two pretty well, and I wager we will continue to do so.
We are now as used to seeing tudung-clad Malay women as we are turbaned Sikhs. Christian groups are getting more active but so too are Buddhists and Taoist groups. Laws are in place and can be invoked to ensure - and sometimes, enforce - harmony. Many fervently religious people have been here long enough, or have parents who have been here long enough, to know how valuable it is to have a common space for all.
As for class divisions, it could be a problem, yes, but not as long as we hold fast to a key Singaporean tenet: the principle of meritocracy. That should be cherished so that children can aspire to a better life as adults, regardless of who their parents are. There will always be an underclass, but there must always be ways to help them rise.
Perhaps I am naive. Perhaps these fault lines will widen. But I will do what it takes to keep Singapore intact - as I think will most of my fellow citizens.
Will flooding the country with foreigners help us do this?
Besides all the economic rationalisations, I know that the Government is doing what it can to assimilate the newcomers into Singapore society.
Lest I be misunderstood, let me say I understand fully why Singapore needs to open its doors to foreigners and I am in broad agreement with the policy. We simply wouldn't be able to progress as fast as we might and provide as many first-class jobs for future generations of Singaporeans as we hope to do if we didn't open up.
All I ask is that we do not change too much, too fast and risk drowning the Singapore system. Foreigners bring needed skills - but also a whole baggage of different histories, beliefs and cultures, even if English remains the common working language.
We need them to pump our GDP - so by all means, let's not turn off the tap. But can we slow the flow a bit?
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD>We need foreign talent, but let's not change too much, too fast </TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Author --></TD></TR><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Bertha Henson, Associate Editor
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
I LOST my temper and snapped back: 'Why do you want to know this?' I had just been asked a personal question by a hospital nurse.
I guess I should have answered her nicely. But I was through having to decipher a series of questions in her Beijing-accented English that were delivered curtly and near unintelligibly. It was no fun exercising the brain while coping with an appendix that was about to rupture.
Earlier, another nurse, a trainee, had bustled into my hospital room with a vacuum flask of hot water. I was supposed to be fasting and thought that included no imbibing liquids. I told her so in many ways, including in half-baked Mandarin.
She went out, presumably to check with someone else, came in and took the flask away with profuse apologies. She was a Chinese national too.
The nurse who was in charge of my particular room was a Filipina. Likewise, the nurses who asked me questions en route to the operating theatre and the nurse who assisted the anaesthetist. They were all cheery though I had to wrap my brain around their accents. One was even singing in the patients' waiting area outside the operating theatre. It was surreal.
I believe I was in touch with a true-blue Singaporean hospital staff member only once - an elderly Malay man who helped push my gurney.
And, oh yes, my doctor - a quintessential Singaporean. When he came around, we engaged in some good-natured banter about the evils of eating certain types of food and what I should 'pantang' or avoid. I wonder if a foreign doctor would know what 'pantang' means?
We are fortunate to be able to supplement our medical talent pool. It's good to know that our country is attractive enough for foreign professionals to make their way here. So why then do I feel uneasy?
I have come across only one foreign doctor in my life, when I took a friend to a hospital's accident and emergency section a few years ago. He hailed from the Indian sub-continent and I was glad I was there to speak for my friend whose English was less than perfect.
There will be more of them here, whether foreign-born or foreign-trained, and I hope they will not be deployed at the front lines to treat HDB heartlanders.
When you are sick, you want to have the comfort of home. That's why Singaporeans abroad fly home when they are unwell, to be taken into the arms of the Singapore system.
It is not politically correct to be uncomfortable with the foreign-born - it's one of the fault lines the Prime Minister spoke of in his National Day Rally speech. But when does political correctness prevail over a feeling so primeval - and, yes, perhaps irrational?
And how can an educated person like me not see the truth: that we need the foreign-born to help this place function because people like me are not having enough babies?
Why should I even feel uncomfortable? They are not about to take my job, unlike others who are at risk of losing their jobs to cheaper foreign workers willing to slog harder. Plus, I am myself a child of mixed parentage. How can I even harbour such thoughts?
I suppose I am uncomfortable because the face of Singapore is changing too quickly and we seem to be losing our shared reference points.
I see it in my condominium. I used to live in an all-Singaporean floor. Now my neighbours include a Japanese, a family from Hong Kong, one from India and another from the Philippines. There are only two other Singapore families besides myself on the floor.
An elderly Indian woman takes her morning walk around the condo everyday. We have progressed in our conversation enough for me to know she lives in Britain and is here to visit her son who is married to a Singaporean.
What a cosmopolitan place we have become! That will be viewed by some as an exciting adventure or by others as a shock to the system.
Singapore society is criss-crossed in so many ways - by race and religion, by income groups, by new versus old citizens, as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pointed out. But we have managed the first two pretty well, and I wager we will continue to do so.
We are now as used to seeing tudung-clad Malay women as we are turbaned Sikhs. Christian groups are getting more active but so too are Buddhists and Taoist groups. Laws are in place and can be invoked to ensure - and sometimes, enforce - harmony. Many fervently religious people have been here long enough, or have parents who have been here long enough, to know how valuable it is to have a common space for all.
As for class divisions, it could be a problem, yes, but not as long as we hold fast to a key Singaporean tenet: the principle of meritocracy. That should be cherished so that children can aspire to a better life as adults, regardless of who their parents are. There will always be an underclass, but there must always be ways to help them rise.
Perhaps I am naive. Perhaps these fault lines will widen. But I will do what it takes to keep Singapore intact - as I think will most of my fellow citizens.
Will flooding the country with foreigners help us do this?
Besides all the economic rationalisations, I know that the Government is doing what it can to assimilate the newcomers into Singapore society.
Lest I be misunderstood, let me say I understand fully why Singapore needs to open its doors to foreigners and I am in broad agreement with the policy. We simply wouldn't be able to progress as fast as we might and provide as many first-class jobs for future generations of Singaporeans as we hope to do if we didn't open up.
All I ask is that we do not change too much, too fast and risk drowning the Singapore system. Foreigners bring needed skills - but also a whole baggage of different histories, beliefs and cultures, even if English remains the common working language.
We need them to pump our GDP - so by all means, let's not turn off the tap. But can we slow the flow a bit?
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
