Foreign talents... are they ok?

[krishna91]

Singapore doesn't have 'locals' or 'indigenous' people to speak of. The 'locals' themselves are immigrants, but they migrated to Singapore 150-200 years ago, and some later.. So if the definition of a local is to be born and brought up in the place, fair enough..

 

[allenleonhart]

Singapore doesn't have 'locals' or 'indigenous' people to speak of. The 'locals' themselves are immigrants, but they migrated to Singapore 150-200 years ago, and some later.. So if the definition of a local is to be born and brought up in the place, fair enough..

well. locals are immigrants, but we have created our own identity: singaporean.

we like chicken rice, we like to sing song talk ****, we love singlish, we are kiasu. we have built a common identity in a sense.

now if u want FTs to actually come to singapore, they have to fit into our society, become a singaporean. like how people go japan and try to be like japanese people!

when in rome do wad romans do. it is not benificial to have people in a society acting randomly in their own way; people who do not conform into their society actually poses a threat to destablise the society.

fair enough?

 

[night86mare]

we have built a common identity in a sense.

have we?

is there a unique culture in singapore to be identified? or are we producing a mutant mix of western and eastern culture and emulating different traits haphazardly?

 

[allenleonhart]

have we?

is there a unique culture in singapore to be identified? or are we producing a mutant mix of western and eastern culture and emulating different traits haphazardly?

well. we do have our own certain traits:x kiasuism is one. lack of political activity is another ~~

and this is why u can identify singaporeans oversea so easily. in a good and bad way ~~

 

[night86mare]

still. u realised london is pretty much a screwed up place? why bother raising countries with not as good standards in their social hospitality? we arent looking to er. go like.

so that's london. have you been here? or do you just speak from the armchair.. relying on lonely planet?

i will not deny that london has its faults.. but it also has its merits. there is a reason why so many people would die to stay here, and i can see its charm. but i will always remain a singaporean and i would not.

what about new york?

pick japan. japan may have a lot of foreigners going there, but their society requires people to fit in to them. People who go to japan to work/stay are required to learn japanese so as to converse. people who work in germany have to learn german to converse.

and you think that is a good thing, forcing people to fit in?

one of my old teachers has a daughter who married a japanese man. she used to be a lawyer in singapore, and she enjoyed her job. in japan, she is a housewife, the family demanded it, and she respected their decision. every culture has its little kinks too.

what i feel is that FTs has to respect the society that they are going to stay in. If FTs wanna work in singapore, shldnt they at least be trained to converse with our people? enough said.

as kit has pointed out many times, is the lack of training the fault of the FT?

do you think that the vietnamese waitress in the restaurant wants to stammer and speak in broken english to you? do you think that she enjoys not understanding what you say? most of all, do you think that she wants to not do her job?

food for thought. you are focusing on the wrong group of people.

Secondly, singaporeans have a general negative attitude towards FTs, not that we are racist as per se. but rather amidst the lack land, housing, and a small local economy, we are facing threats from FTs, who earn money in singapore and return it back to their native country. This is what we know as a outflow of money from singapore to... lets say china. It isnt benificial to singapore in the long term run. and hence the FTs---> citizens. at least they are part of singapore.

this is an arcane attitude.

you might as well say that we should abolish trade if imports exceed exports (mercantilism).. since we are spending more money on global goods that benefit other countries, and not earning that money back in return. nonsense!

you cannot just isolate FT = outflow of money. do they not carry out functions in their job roles?

put simply, i can see your argument for say, a bank who wishes to hire one person for a less than important role (e.g. back office) that is relatively simple, i.e. research. a singaporean might possibly be equivalent to another applicant from country x. but then again, banks have the right to choose personnel based on their "unique" needs and can anyone fault them if they think that the country x guy is going to be more useful than the singaporean? no!

to potentially indulge in protectionist policies will only serve to meddle with companies. and the result? they will not want to even touch singapore, because there are labour laws saying that you can only hire singaporeans. what if that is not what they want?

we are not like london where it is an ethnic state, as compared to singapore where we are made up of immigrants initially. hence, the big difference. we can accept FTs, provided that they are willing to conform to our society, communicate with us, in the long term run settle down in singapore, and hopefully singaporeans will have a more accepting attitude towards them

i don't see the difference regarding acceptance of immigrants/foreigners as part of society, whether one is an ethnic state or an immigrant society. at the end of the day, singapore has been independent since 1965. it is 2010 today, that's 45 whooping years. there are at least 2 generations in every family on average that was born in singapore since independence.

 

[limwhow]

have we?

is there a unique culture in singapore to be identified? or are we producing a mutant mix of western and eastern culture and emulating different traits haphazardly?

well. we do have our own certain traits:x kiasuism is one. lack of political activity is another ~~

and this is why u can identify singaporeans oversea so easily. in a good and bad way ~~

Actually, personally I think we have come to a stage when a certain Singaporean Identity (in both behavioural norm, way of thinking etc. etc..) has been established. It will certainly evolve with time, as everything else has and will continue to do so.
This identity will have its own set of strength and weaknesses.
Let's go back to the Japanese identity. Even that has its plus and minus points.

 

[night86mare]

Actually, personally I think we have come to a stage when a certain Singaporean Identity (in both behavioural norm, way of thinking etc. etc..) has been established. It will certainly evolve with time, as everything else has and will continue to do so.

i'm not sure we have.

if you look at it, my generation compared to my parents' generation, it is not maturity in play that explains the difference. it is circumstance. in the earlier days life was not such a simple matter - people had to fight for a future.

today, because the people who had to fight for a future want the best for their next generation.. more often than not, things are granted, genie-style. i once met an elderly couple at the age of 50+ who were still giving their children (of working age AND working, mind you) an hefty monthly allowance because "aiyo, their starting pay not enough to sustain their lifestyle". :bsmilie:

 

[allenleonhart]

well...

and you think that is a good thing, forcing people to fit in?.

not force. but rather automatically fit in. u are a foreigner in a sovereign state after all. the very least respect u shld have is to try and fit in. period. u dun act like u own the country when ur from china.

as kit has pointed out many times, is the lack of training the fault of the FT?

do you think that the vietnamese waitress in the restaurant wants to stammer and speak in broken english to you? do you think that she enjoys not understanding what you say? most of all, do you think that she wants to not do her job?

i am not saying tat its their fault. but rather. if companies are hiring workers like them, shldnt it fall onto them to at least provide basic language training?

one good example tat i met today was at sushi deli, tiong bahru. the shop operater was from china, i could tell from the accent. however,i could tell she made the effort to actually learn conversational english as was able to chat with customers and understand their needs. best of all she is polite.

i'm not blaming every FT. but some are stubborn in their own sense. personal case: i went to a coffeeshop, ordered coke light and power grass. the waitress, prc, brought me soy milk and green tea =.= if tat wasnt bad enough, i repeated my order in chinese, she raised her voice and said tat tat was wad i ordered. and now i told her to change, she went of not too happy, bought coke and green powergrass. note: coke. not coke light.
btw i think my chinese is pretty proficient. i took the hsk exam, gce o lvl higher chinese exam and i got distinction for both.

i am not blaming all, but i'm blaming some, who do not try to fit in. it isnt benificial for a society to actually have such problems. all it does is to destablise it.

you might as well say that we should abolish trade if imports exceed exports (mercantilism).. since we are spending more money on global goods that benefit other countries, and not earning that money back in return. nonsense!

and i'm throwing the same words back to u again bro ~~

i wasnt complaining abt abolishing trade.

*edit* refer to bottom post =.=

in the long term run, just plain trading isnt going to get singapore to grow u know wad i mean? growing a local economy is one way to make ur country stable.

you cannot just isolate FT = outflow of money. do they not carry out functions in their job roles?

erm. did u read my previous posts?

i mentioned. foreign talents are crucial to singapore, but rather than they just earn, send money back to their country and then leave behind no technical value for singaporeans (read the previous post. i raised an example abt a company not providing tech)

*edit* nvm i just post here. faster.

imagine a foreign company, they do r&d in their home country just to produce in singapore. singapore lets their workers work in that factory. the problem comes when the factory decides to pull out, move to malaysia cause its cheaper, leaving no technology and a bunch of workers with no jobs to do.

what we hope is to have FTs stay in singaproe, commit to being a citizen, and do their r&d based in singapore. this is a way to grow our local economy, though it somehow isnt happening yet. seagate pulled out to malaysia their factory, causing ppl to lose jobs. many more examples. etc etc.

what we want is actually long term investments based in singapore.

in fact, u realised we invested in china? if i remember it seems to be like suzhou. and that is one good way to earn revenue. r&d done here in singapore, and products manufactured in china.

 

[allenleonhart]

i'm not sure we have.

if you look at it, my generation compared to my parents' generation, it is not maturity in play that explains the difference. it is circumstance. in the earlier days life was not such a simple matter - people had to fight for a future.

today, because the people who had to fight for a future want the best for their next generation.. more often than not, things are granted, genie-style. i once met an elderly couple at the age of 50+ who were still giving their children (of working age AND working, mind you) an hefty monthly allowance because "aiyo, their starting pay not enough to sustain their lifestyle". :bsmilie:

~~ dun worry. i'm already starting to work part time and rely lesser on my parents. i understand the meaning of needing to fight. what i despise most is people who gets money from their parents to buy a 5dmk2 just because it makes them look cool. u get the idea~~

personally, i do not come from a very... well off family. probably the lower end of the middle classes?

for now i hope i can earn enough to return my parents their initial investment on my 450d:x

 

[night86mare]

not force. but rather automatically fit in. u are a foreigner in a sovereign state after all. the very least respect u shld have is to try and fit in. period. u dun act like u own the country when ur from china.

let me point out that this isn't a unique problem to people from china, india, whatever.

we have singaporeans who act like they own the country when they're from singapore. but do they? this statement applies to everyone.

i'm not blaming every FT. but some are stubborn in their own sense. personal case: i went to a coffeeshop, ordered coke light and power grass. the waitress, prc, brought me soy milk and green tea =.= if tat wasnt bad enough, i repeated my order in chinese, she raised her voice and said tat tat was wad i ordered. and now i told her to change, she went of not too happy, bought coke and green powergrass. note: coke. not coke light.
btw i think my chinese is pretty proficient. i took the hsk exam, gce o lvl higher chinese exam and i got distinction for both.

don't need to be from prc to have bad attitude.

i'm sure more than a few of us here can quote our bad service experience from singapore waitresses as well.

are you saying that anyone rude to customers isn't trying to fit into society? is the problem unique only to FT?

what i meant was: to grow our local economy, so as to less rely on foreign economy. u do realise out of all the SEA countries, singapore was hit the worst? reason being we were so reliant on the USA economy that when the recession came, there was little demand from the states and other euro countries tat we didnt export much? as compared to malaysia and indonesia and india and china which all managed to still have a positive growth rate, due to them having a large local economy.

positive growth rate?

it is so nice to make statements without actually having to worry whether they are true, right?

Last week, the Department of Statistics released data showing that Malaysia’s economic output (known as “real GDP”) was RM131.3 bil in the last quarter of 2008.

This was a sharp drop of 3.6% when compared to the third quarter of 2008 (whose GDP was RM136.2 bil). It was also only 0.1% higher than the RM131.2 bil in the last quarter of 2007.

The “real GDP” measures the volume of goods and services produced. The economy’s performance can also be measured by the current value of production, which also takes into account changes in prices, and is thus a better measure of the current income of households and companies.

Here, the fall in the economy is even more pronounced. The current GDP fell by 11% between the third and the fourth quarters of 2008 (from RM199 bil to RM177 bil).

All the sectors have been hit, in terms of deceleration of growth between the third and fourth quarter of last year. The real GDP in manufacturing fell 12% from RM40.3 bil to RM35.3 bil, while agriculture fell from RM10.8 to 9.9 bil and construction from RM4 to 3.9 bil. There was only a very slight growth from RM74 to $75 bil in the services sector.

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/gtrends/gtrends242.htm

in fact, u realised we invested in china? if i remember it seems to be like suzhou. and that is one good way to earn revenue. r&d done here in singapore, and products manufactured in china.

time to read up more on suzhou, my dear forumer. :bsmilie:

if you stick around more, i'm sure some uncle will tell you more about it.

 

[allenleonhart]

time to read up more on suzhou, my dear forumer. :bsmilie:

if you stick around more, i'm sure some uncle will tell you more about it.

no lar. cant remember suddenly. so many stuff to remember my dear T_T

i just know they investing in china one place for a high tech city. just suddenly forget name

 

[allenleonhart]

reminds me. i said MORE badly hit. not tat malaysia wasnt affected.

singaproe just more affected in the region!

did i phrase that wrongly in the previous post? i apologise for my mistake

 

[night86mare]

reminds me. i said MORE badly hit. not tat malaysia wasnt affected.

singaproe just more affected in the region!

did i phrase that wrongly in the previous post? i apologise for my mistake

ok, if you say so..

as compared to malaysia and indonesia and india and china which all managed to still have a positive growth rate, due to them having a large local economy.

yes, you did phrase it wrongly.

 

[allenleonhart]

ok, if you say so..

yes, you did phrase it wrongly.

yes bro. updated;D with data this time

i cant seem to find the chart for their economic growth during the recession period =.= still googling

 

[laposto]

so flying dutchman - angmo or singaporean? :dunno:
gurmit singh - indian, chinese or singaporean? :dunno:
li jia wei - chinese or singaporean? :dunno:

:bsmilie: guys we have to agree tat the whole world mixing. sooner or later there will be no angmo.. all brown and beige color only. :sweatsm:

 

[allenleonhart]

okkies. here is the updates. accurate as of jan 1st 2009. nearing the recession !
GDP REAL GROWTH RATE
singapore :1.1%

malaysia: 4.6%

indonesia:6.1 %

china:9%

usa: 1.1%

india:7.4%
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=sn&v=66
and this source gets its data from the CIA

and yes. singapore is more affected as compared to other countries. cause we rely heavily on trade and commerce. and little on local economy

 

[allenleonhart]

:bsmilie: guys we have to agree tat the whole world mixing. sooner or later there will be no angmo.. all brown and beige color only. :sweatsm:

yea. and reason being not due to er. making babies ~~

but rather it is due to being climate change which darker skin tones seem to help. the pigments have certain benifical effects if i not wrong.

oh pls dun make me do any more research :cry:

 

[Jukon]

i'm not sure we have.

i once met an elderly couple at the age of 50+ who were still giving their children (of working age AND working, mind you) an hefty monthly allowance because "aiyo, their starting pay not enough to sustain their lifestyle". :bsmilie:

Ya night86mare I have 2 FTs from Burma earning SGD $1,000+ but their fathers (Generals) send SGD $1,500.00 every months for them to spend.

Hopefully we can get more FTs to spend their father hard earned $$$$

In China there are many peoples in late 20s & 30s never work and just get $$$ from the parent to spend.

 

[allenleonhart]

Ya night86mare I have 2 FTs from Burma earning SGD $1,000+ but their fathers (Generals) send SGD $1,500.00 every months for them to spend.

Hopefully we can get more FTs to spend their father hard earned $$$$

In China there are many peoples in late 20s & 30s never work and just get $$$ from the parent to spend.

ee. useless people. LOL

 

[laposto]

now if u want FTs to actually come to singapore, they have to fit into our society, become a singaporean. like how people go japan and try to be like japanese people! fair enough?

:thumbsup: good point but sometimes if angmo trying hard to be local they got bully... some auntie thought angmo mocking. errr so what do to? :dunno:

maybe FT just need to respect e policy and abide them at all cos.