Redditer: actually what's left of Singapore identity and culture these days?....

[Tragedeigh]

actually what's left of Singapore identity and culture these days? We are hitting 10 Million population very soon, so overcrowded with all sorts of New Citizens, until even PRC tourists joked to their families back home they are seeing all the China restaurants, shops, services staff all PRC​

Shocking

from Sam Choo:

“I felt like walking into a different country.”

A few years before Covid, a minister shared that when he stepped into a lift, he heard people around him speaking in a language not his own. He said it was the first time he felt like a foreigner in his own country.

Back then, I was working in the same area, serving one of the big banks. Every morning I would walk past a department with glass walls. One day I glanced in. Row after row of desks. Computer screens glowing. And every single person inside seemed to be from the same foreign country. It's like a foreign village planted into the room.

Yesterday, I read a post from a fellow Singaporean working in an office in the West. He said most of his colleagues were foreigners. They had their own lingo, their own inside jokes, their own favorite lunch spots. He found himself listening to conversations he could not quite follow. Smiling when everyone laughed, even when he did not fully get the joke. He said he felt like a minority in his own turf.

When you sit in your own office and feel like the outsider, something shifts quietly inside your identity. It is just a subtle dislocation. Like the furniture in your house has been rearranged and you are still trying to find the light switch in the dark.

Last night, after dinner, I walked into the mall nearby. I had not been there since Covid. Same building. Same escalators. But it felt unfamiliar. Many of the shop signs were brands from one particular foreign country. I caught myself wondering where the local brands had gone.

Another day, my wife and I visited a neighborhood shop. The cashier could not speak English. We stumbled through the transaction. It was awkward.

In your workplace, do you ever feel like a guest in your own country?

Some of us carry a quiet ache that is hard to explain. It is not about hating anyone. It is not about rejecting change. It is simply the feeling of being slightly displaced in a place you once knew so well.

We start asking ourselves, softly: Is this still my home?

Or am I slowly becoming a minority in my own land?

It is a strange feeling to have.

Maybe all I am really saying is this.

I just want to feel at home.