Nasty little letters in Straits Times 9 April 2010

My wife pointed out a letter in the Straits Times querying whether Indian nationals who are currently teaching in Singapore have a sufficient grasp of English to be doing their job. There have been quite a few of these bordering upon racist/ sexist/ bigoted letters and articles in the ST of late - against Malays, women, the disabled...something to monitor. In the Indian case I think its been possible to sense a tangible seachange in attitudes amongst members of the Chinese majority over the last few weeks and months: whats deemed as too many Indian foreign worker/ expats and the populace turns nasty it seems.

I have a feeling that any real anxieties about Indian teachers emanating from the nasty littler letter in todays ST will derive from the fact that these Indian teachers' English will be too good/ standard for students in local schools...

No politcal cartoons please, we're Singaporean

With an election coming up, funny to think how in Singapore there is NO culture of political cartoons even of the most bland nature. In the Straits Times in superfiial terms at least Singapore's version of a serious national daily newspaper, there was a cartoon explaining what happens if you don't vote in the forthcoming election - a person you may not want may get in because of your vote. As the same party have dominated the city state for the last 45 years I don't think thats an isssue for many. But my point is the cartoon - done by a familiar cartoonist in Singapore - he also does the carttons you see in taxis telling you to give explicit instructions to your taxi driver as to hoiw you want to get from a to b - instead of scolding him at the end a popular Singapore sport - the cartoon is so simplistic, such infantile humour, in the elite anglo paper - in all fairness I do realise that Enid Blyton has had a profound linguistic, social, cultural influence of the nation state - suggests to me perhaps the masses of Singapore don't have the most sophisticated senses of humour in the world, but more likely the state media are quite happy keeping things that way.

Theres a story that the 70s Singapore cartoonist Shems publishing a mild cartoon about the elections. Apparently he was mildly rebuked by Lee Kuan Yew, "politics is no laughing matter". Maybe not here but in other countries satirical cartoons seem to be the lighter stuff of which robust political debates are partially made on.

Any chance of Steve Bell being seconded to Singapore?

Merlion Hotel

Just failed to get into the red box that is the Merlion hotel this evening, a curious Japanese artist's creation installation built around Singapore's kitsch tourist icon on the Esplanade, the merlion, a hotel room with raffles wallpaper. Only 150 Singdollar a night, but all the bookings till mid May snapped up a long time ago. The chief guide told me they've been admitting approximately 1000 visitors a day. She was referring to the merlion as a 'she' and said 'she' was pretty fragile made of porous shanghai plaster whatever that is.

More soon...I took a whole bunch of pix will try and post shortly.