Few Bad Eggs

Well, I've given up on Skyrim. Chasing the dragon was getting a bit addictive...see what I did there? That's-that's a joke...yeah it's not funny.

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Cooking is sometimes the most productive activity of your life and also the bane of your existence (oxymoron anyone?). Well there are times when you find an awesome recipe on the internets which uses up all the ingredients you already have and still manages to stand out from your usual crappy cooking which feels great and you end up asking your roommate about how it tastes and feel like a puppy getting a backrub when he says it's good. And there are other times when you wake up after an exhausting dream involving threeways with hollywood actress(es) and the only thing on your mind is "Gee, wouldn't it be great if I had some spicy biriyani and some sweet lassi to wash it down?" and all there is to eat is some stale leftover rice from last night. And then you realize what you used to have in your life that you don't have now. Or, as in my case, you still have but it's too far away to solve the problem at hand. And upon this realization, you draw a conclusion that dawns upon you only now though it had been staring at you for quite a while.

"I miss my mommy".

Happy mothers day.

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Recently I read news of a car crash involving a wealthy chinese immigrant and a local cab driver. The chinese guy drove a Ferrari and was probably drunk when the incident happened. He tried to run a red light and ended up crashing on a taxi. The crash video is available on youtube and it's not a pretty sight - the Ferrari decimated the taxi. Both the taxi driver and the Ferrari driver died. And this added fuel to the flame that's slowly starting to spread like wildfire - the Singaporean public is not happy with the country's immigration policies and it blames the immigrants for making their buses crowded, living costly and life in general, crappy. Being an immigrant myself, I'm gonna play the devil's advocate and say that it is partially true. But how far is it contributed by the immigrants? 

In Singapore, being a small city, news like this is rare and spreads pretty fast. Road accidents are few and far. Imagine a country like India where trains are perpetually late and the mass transit is, in general, bad and that's being kind in my criticism. But they get away with it. No one is really bothered about it. But in SG, SMRT (Singapore's metro service) services disrupted several times over the past few months and people went batshit crazy. This leads to the conclusion that when the area is small, small problems become large.

Lets draw another parallel with Singapore and India, and this time, we'll compare the immigration problem. India doesn't have an immigration problem with an influx of foreigners. But there is an immigration problem within the states of India. Shiv Sena, the prominent Maharashtrian party, ardently opposes workers from other states from entering Mumbain and the rest of their state shouting "They took our jobs!". Part of this opposition involves a property damage amounting to 80 crores in property damage last year during their protests.

Singapore faces a similar problem. Singapore is like a frustrated housewife - it doesn't feel appreciated. Foreign students bad mouth it in twitter and facebook. Foreign students occupy seats that should be taken by Singaporeans. And there is the they-took-our-jobs problem. But there are no protests in Singapore (mainly because the police never allow it) and people just curse under their breath and move on. Some articles say that this is one of the reasons the PAP is losing is support from the public.

What I don't get is, eventhough everyone knows that Singapore needs foreigners to grow, or to even stay the way it already is, what's with all the whining? Foreign talent is necessary for Singaporean industries, and I guess a major part of Singapore's tourism and services based industry is composed of foreigners. Being meritocratic and all, Singapore cannot expect every employee in every company in Singapore to be a citizen because, lets justs face it, not every Singaporean is the best guy for a given job. Sometimes foreigners are just better. Singapore's economy runs on a lot of foreign investment, many companies in Singapore are MNCs based in other countries. To quote a very crappy saying, Singapore wants to have its cake and eat it too. 

For my part, I whine whenever I see a job posting for which only Singaporeans and PRs are allowed to apply. Be happy that you still have that  Singapore, because, back in India, that kind of discrimination doesn't exist because, even Indians don't wanna work in India.

Singapore's problem with immigration is not due to a problem with its immigration system. It's just a case of a few bad eggs. Drunk people have poor judgement in common. Beer goggles works on all nationalities. If any laws or policies need to made stricter, it should be the laws relating to driving.

Ciao