Monday 25 August 2008

One World, One Dream

Last night with my new mobile E71, I wrote the below post half way but fell asleep.

"I am starting to feel a little under the weather. But one good thing is now I can blog even when I am lying in bed or anywhere using my phone. After watching the world class performance of the olympics closing I think the chinese did extremely well as organiser and as trueblue sportsmen. They proved to the world that they can do it. Look at their ...."

So now I continue. Luckily in the morning when I woke up, I was feeling much better. Thought I had to see a doctor if I was more sick today. But I was fine! As I was saying, yes, China should be proud of themselves for being able to play a splendid host to the Olympics, despite the many obstacles before that... eg. the Tibet riots, the Szechuan earthquake, the great Beijing clean up campaign .... Of course there were many criticisms against them, but in spite of all that, I think we should salute them and the people who made it all possible, who proved to the world that the Chinese (Asians) can do it as well. And best of all, the spirit of sports, the spirit of the Olympics continues.

There were criticisms levelled at our winning silver-medal table tennis team of China imports. Many said that Singaporeans should not be that proud of ourselves because the 3 girls from China won the silver medal for Singapore after 48 years. Yes they are our imports (and they are hugely rewarded for winning that medal), and they deserved it. In fact, many of Singapore's achievements are actually "imported" or "foreign talents". Just because the table tennis trio has the whole world's attention that made Singaporeans questioned our "Singaporean" win.. Many researchers, and businessmen from all over the world has made Singapore their home, slogged and contributed in the building of our country and economy. Many students from all over the world, especially China, have also chosen Singapore to further their studies and eventually to settle down here. And many foreign labour (or talents) have contributed to the different sectors of Singapore, by taking up jobs shunned by glamourous Singaporeans. Think... the Bangladeshi construction worker sweating it out at our IR work sites. Think... the China waitress serving us our McDonalds and in almost every restaurant. Think .... the Filipina telemarketer calling you on behalf of your bank. Think ... the Indian software programmer in your company crunching data and programs. Leaving Singaporeans or our younger generation with the more glamourous job of topping the grades in school and eventually becoming a CEO one day. So are we just focused on developing our kids to be future CEOs? Does your kid want to be a waiter?

There is an opportunity cost in whatever venture or dreams we go after. We just have to make sure we toe the line, we keep things in perspective, give and take a little, live and let live a little.

2 comments:

  1. Totally agreed regarding the 'silver medal issue'. Sometimes, singaporeans are just too narrow-minded. Shouldn't we be united as a nation regardless of our origins-we are still singaporeans who achieve in the name SINGAPORE

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  2. Well-said my friend! 100% agreed with you here. :)

    ReplyDelete

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