Thursday 10 February 2011

Outnumbered

I met an impossibly hostile man at the newspaper stand on Wednesday morning. He was buying the papers as Rusty and I walked towards the stand. He looked up suddenly and got a small fright.

We were standing at least 2.5 metres away from him. I kept Rusty tightly leashed and close by my side.

Being polite, I apologised even though there was no need to. He looked at us disapprovingly and shouted, waving his arms angrily at me. "Who says you can bring your dog to this place?"

I looked askance at him. "What have I done wrong?"

"This is a food place!" his voice raised a notch. "You want me to call the police?"

We were standing outside the food centre, not inside! The newspaper vendor tried to pacify him to no avail.

I was in a hurry and didn't want to get embroiled in an argument with him, so I walked away.

What is wrong with this idiot? If he's so smart, why don't he go after real criminals instead of harrassing innocent people like me?

He really ruined my morning. I was upset all day. To think that I was treated this way by a fellow Singaporean!

Recently my friends were lamenting about our sad state of affairs. Out of the 5 million people in Singapore, only about 2.2mil are true blue (born and bred) Singaporeans. We're becoming a minority in our own country! Blinkymummy says it very well here.

No wonder my kids come home from school telling me about how the trains are packed with foreigners and how their classmates hail from all over the world. Come to think of it, half the residents in our apartment block are non-Singaporeans.

While I have nothing against foreigners, the thought of us being outnumbered in our own homeland is quite scary.

6 comments:

Amel said...

SORRY to know that you experienced such a nasty incident with that person. Geez...

I can understand the sentiment about being outnumbered (though not completely) 'coz I've never been a "true blue" wherever I've lived. Always a "foreigner" even in Indo or in Finland.

Petunia Lee said...

Singaporeans have anger issues!

Wen-ai said...

There all kinds of people out there. Some of them aren't quite right up in the heads... so, take it that you were interacting with an imbecile!

Anonymous said...

From my own personal experience, the even more upsetting thing is my dog and I get treated better by non-Singaporeans in this country than by most Singaporeans we came across

shuting said...

More updates (and pictures) on Rusty, pls? =)

Anonymous said...

I get peeved when people chide me for bringing my dog out too. I was in a public park and my dog was on a leash but a man told me to keep the leash shorter. It's a public area! Annoying.

About the outnumbering of foreigners - Isn't it true that your parents/ grandparents themselves were the "majority" of foreigners in this country when they migrated? The indigenious people in Singapore are definitely not Chinese, Indians and Eurasians but look at the makeup of races now. There must have been a time when they themselves were foreigners, and an alien majority. And now you're considered "true blue". Won't the descendants of the current foreign majority become "true blue" like like you in future?

Are the foreigners really so scary? What's so scary about your ancestors? - Just a thought.

Chowmahalla Palace

During our week in Hyderabad, some of the places we visited include the Mecca Mosque, the Charminar (the icon of Hyderabad), Sufi Shrine, Bi...