Thursday, November 01, 2007
paste it on their foreheads

Yesterday, I went with Saleh to one of the colleges as special guests for a tourism class. One of their students did a project on Singapore and we were invited to listen to the presentation to see if she got her facts right and also for a qna session.

It was a bumpy start when she introduced us and called me BinTalib. That was really funny. But she eventually got my name right and went on with her presentation.

When it came to the question and answer part, they were really drilling us with questions about Singapore down to the details of the land area and the history. Lucky, I dropped by the Visit Singapore site to do a bit of research prior so I was able to answer the questions. no problem.

There was just one fact though that they simply can't seem to remember or to accept. It applies not just to them but to everyone here in general. And it is the fact that we speak English and that English is our first language. When we talk about other things, they actually understand but whenever we mention that English is our first language, it just seem to past through their brains and out the other ear. I think they've got selective hearing that blocks out that truth. First, they ask us what language we speak at home and we both mentioned English. After a few other questions, they ask when we started to learn English, if we did it in Secondary School or? I said since we were kids, at home. I told them that where formal education is concern, we started even in pre-school and they couldn't seem to believe it. They also asked like what's the most common language and if most people speak English and what language do people do business in. The questions kept coming up at different times linked to different areas. What is so hard to understand or accept about English being our first language seriously? He kept complimenting my English like as if I've only just learnt the language a year ago. In fact, throughout the whole time i was addressing the class, I only stumbled on my words once and that is when he told me to say something in chinese. er. erm.

On a separate occasion, in school, our tutor (not Aussie, some European) told the class that we could bring in dictionaries into the exam hall if English is not our first language. She then proceeded to ask whose first language is not English. Only ONE person raised his hand, a spanish guy who refers to his English-Spanish/Spanish-English dictionary all the time. My other 2 chinese friends (another Singaporean and a girl from HK) and I did NOT raise up our hands but she kept going "The four of you can bring in your dictionaries. Don't lose out to the others unneccessarily." "The FOUR of you... the FOUR of you... the FOUR of you...". ARGH! what FOUR?!!??!?! did she see imaginery hands raised that we all could not. Actually, i think they whole class seem to be able to see those imaginery hands except the 3 of us. NO! I do not need a English-Chinese/Chinese-English dictionary and neither do my friends. I hardly even know how to use one of those dictionaries. I think if they had translated all my exam papers into chinese, I would fail terribly. The best part is we just told her (our tutor) the week before that English was out first language. She also mentioned that the HK girl got the highest mark for the essay assignment and that it is the most well-written when it came to language. This tutor is also the one who happened to gave us 9.5/10 for our oral presentation. Aren't those enough to drill into their heads that we do not have problems with English?

Anyway, back to the tourism class. There is one more thing that they can't seem to get into their heads. They can't seem to accept that Chinese is not the Only race there is in Singapore eventhough it has been mentioned and repeated countless times. They said I look like a real Singaporean and Saleh does not just because he's an Arab. He emphasised on the fact that he was born, bred and raised in Singapore but I don't think they actually bought that.

Regardless of the number of times we mentioned those facts and the amount of emphasis we put on them, I don't think it really makes a difference since they only believe whatever they want to. Not even research being done or interviewing Singaporeans changes anything. It's a misconception that they just refuse to let go of.