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Coffeeshop Chit Chat - Indian FT thinks 151st is the best!</TD><TD id=msgunetc noWrap align=right> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE class=msgtable cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="96%"><TBODY><TR><TD class=msg vAlign=top><TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR class=msghead><TD class=msgbfr1 width="1%"> </TD><TD><TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0><TBODY><TR class=msghead vAlign=top><TD class=msgF width="1%" noWrap align=right>From: </TD><TD class=msgFname width="68%" noWrap>kojakbt_89 <NOBR></NOBR> </TD><TD class=msgDate width="30%" noWrap align=right>1:31 am </TD></TR><TR class=msghead><TD class=msgT height=20 width="1%" noWrap align=right>To: </TD><TD class=msgTname width="68%" noWrap>ALL <NOBR></NOBR></TD><TD class=msgNum noWrap align=right> (1 of 5) </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD class=msgleft rowSpan=4 width="1%"> </TD><TD class=wintiny noWrap align=right>32229.1 </TD></TR><TR><TD height=8></TD></TR><TR><TD class=msgtxt>Apr 25, 2010
THE EX-PAT FILES
To know a place, read its papers
<!-- by line -->By Rohit Brijnath
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On an Indian roadside, I once found myself eating out of a paper packet which, on further inspection, had been made out of one of my articles. So much for wanting to be stored in an archive, I thought as I gulped down humility. Then again, playwright George Bernard Shaw once discovered a book in a second-hand bookshop which he had once signed 'with compliments' to a friend.
Anyway, I digress. The bag story is just an attempt to illustrate the versatile power of newspapers which the grim Internet insists are dying. Newspapers educate, swat flies, line drawers, wrap shoes and can be turned into un-flyable planes while one is drunk. None of this is possible with a laptop, by the way.
Newspapers open the day. My first journey in the morning is unsteadily from bed to front door. The Straits Times on the floor is like a gift - it is spread open with a rustle, it is read communally, at home and elsewhere. In trains, the well-mannered will adjust pages so that the leaning-forward fellow across the aisle can read the other side. No one in a train has ever shown me their computer.
These are not only containers of news, but also understandings of peoples. In January 1990, on my first visit to the laconic Australian continent, the mere placement of sports stories in the newspaper gave me an insight into its inhabitants. Sport, I found, was integral to the Australian culture. It is bound to its sense of masculinity and achievement, it speaks of its outdoor spirit.
All newspapers, like The Straits Times, offer a window, an imperfect one of course, into a nation's being. They reflect a country from various angles, identify its eccentricities, chart its progress, argue failures and debate achievements.
Here it is uniquely challenging for there is no set demographic - the paper must appeal at once to both heartland community and country club crowd. It requires the most agile of editorial tap dances.
I have lived here for just over two years and every day I am less a stranger on these shores, my belonging often linked to my reading.
I am fascinated by Singapore's need to have a Graciousness Index, impressed by the way religious harmony is worked at, intrigued by the debates over English pronunciation and Ris Low, charmed by an efficiency that includes cleanliness details of Changi Airport bathrooms, and astonished by how people defer constantly to the officials.
These tutorials of what Singapore is come to me every day in the paper. So I am bewildered when I meet expats, of various colours and geographies, who don't read The Straits Times.
Let me go further. I know people who want to write in this paper, who want their event to be highlighted in it, but still don't read it. I am told of people who say, Straits Times, sneer, it's a fish-and-chips paper, and then proceed to argue against every paragraph of a Sumiko Tan column which they have clearly memorised. I grin.
All papers have weaknesses (in language, ideas, freedoms). So has this one, and you at least have the liberty to say so. I could also over a nice whisky tell you about the uneven English in my favourite Indian papers, the jingoism of some British publications (please see sports sections) and the sad parochialism of many Australian dailies.
But I hardly want to make this a contest. Nor do I want to make a defence of this paper by naming Janadas Devan (on language), Sim Chi Yin (on anything), Jeanette Wang (running), Lorna Tan (finance), Deepika Shetty (culture), all of whom I read faithfully. I just wonder, when expats - even if here for a year - go back, what will they carry home about Singapore? Malls and Orchard Road?
But Singapore is more than that, and you get a feel of it in Sumiko's columns about a single woman on the island, a sense of it in Wong Kim Hoh's piece about the prejudices transsexuals face. It doesn't matter whether you like these writers - they are translators of Singapore.
Read them, then decide. Visitors to these parts sometimes hear unflattering views about the paper and it hardens them. But papers must be tried, tested, tasted, for they are individual things, and then embraced or tossed aside.
Of course, you can just read the fine London Times and drink American beer in a British club, if that's your idea of living abroad. But you'd be missing something. After all, only if you read the paper, and observed the ads, then might you understand a unique national fascination with being thin, fair and busty.
The writer, a senior correspondent with The Straits Times' Sports Desk, comes from India but has a home in Australia. He has been in Singapore for 30 months.
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THE EX-PAT FILES
To know a place, read its papers
<!-- by line -->By Rohit Brijnath
<!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar -->
On an Indian roadside, I once found myself eating out of a paper packet which, on further inspection, had been made out of one of my articles. So much for wanting to be stored in an archive, I thought as I gulped down humility. Then again, playwright George Bernard Shaw once discovered a book in a second-hand bookshop which he had once signed 'with compliments' to a friend.
Anyway, I digress. The bag story is just an attempt to illustrate the versatile power of newspapers which the grim Internet insists are dying. Newspapers educate, swat flies, line drawers, wrap shoes and can be turned into un-flyable planes while one is drunk. None of this is possible with a laptop, by the way.
Newspapers open the day. My first journey in the morning is unsteadily from bed to front door. The Straits Times on the floor is like a gift - it is spread open with a rustle, it is read communally, at home and elsewhere. In trains, the well-mannered will adjust pages so that the leaning-forward fellow across the aisle can read the other side. No one in a train has ever shown me their computer.
These are not only containers of news, but also understandings of peoples. In January 1990, on my first visit to the laconic Australian continent, the mere placement of sports stories in the newspaper gave me an insight into its inhabitants. Sport, I found, was integral to the Australian culture. It is bound to its sense of masculinity and achievement, it speaks of its outdoor spirit.
All newspapers, like The Straits Times, offer a window, an imperfect one of course, into a nation's being. They reflect a country from various angles, identify its eccentricities, chart its progress, argue failures and debate achievements.
Here it is uniquely challenging for there is no set demographic - the paper must appeal at once to both heartland community and country club crowd. It requires the most agile of editorial tap dances.
I have lived here for just over two years and every day I am less a stranger on these shores, my belonging often linked to my reading.
I am fascinated by Singapore's need to have a Graciousness Index, impressed by the way religious harmony is worked at, intrigued by the debates over English pronunciation and Ris Low, charmed by an efficiency that includes cleanliness details of Changi Airport bathrooms, and astonished by how people defer constantly to the officials.
These tutorials of what Singapore is come to me every day in the paper. So I am bewildered when I meet expats, of various colours and geographies, who don't read The Straits Times.
Let me go further. I know people who want to write in this paper, who want their event to be highlighted in it, but still don't read it. I am told of people who say, Straits Times, sneer, it's a fish-and-chips paper, and then proceed to argue against every paragraph of a Sumiko Tan column which they have clearly memorised. I grin.
All papers have weaknesses (in language, ideas, freedoms). So has this one, and you at least have the liberty to say so. I could also over a nice whisky tell you about the uneven English in my favourite Indian papers, the jingoism of some British publications (please see sports sections) and the sad parochialism of many Australian dailies.
But I hardly want to make this a contest. Nor do I want to make a defence of this paper by naming Janadas Devan (on language), Sim Chi Yin (on anything), Jeanette Wang (running), Lorna Tan (finance), Deepika Shetty (culture), all of whom I read faithfully. I just wonder, when expats - even if here for a year - go back, what will they carry home about Singapore? Malls and Orchard Road?
But Singapore is more than that, and you get a feel of it in Sumiko's columns about a single woman on the island, a sense of it in Wong Kim Hoh's piece about the prejudices transsexuals face. It doesn't matter whether you like these writers - they are translators of Singapore.
Read them, then decide. Visitors to these parts sometimes hear unflattering views about the paper and it hardens them. But papers must be tried, tested, tasted, for they are individual things, and then embraced or tossed aside.
Of course, you can just read the fine London Times and drink American beer in a British club, if that's your idea of living abroad. But you'd be missing something. After all, only if you read the paper, and observed the ads, then might you understand a unique national fascination with being thin, fair and busty.
The writer, a senior correspondent with The Straits Times' Sports Desk, comes from India but has a home in Australia. He has been in Singapore for 30 months.
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