Reply to "I am Singaporean and tired of service staff which only speak Mandarin"

Somehow I can't manage to see the post on this Facebook group despite repeated attempts to post. Now I wonder, how did my grandmother do it? She only spoke Cantonese!

"I am a Singaporean living in Shanghai right now and I think the service staff you're referring to generally comes from other provinces and not the 1st tier cities. Younger people in 1st tier cities can speak fairly good english and will not hesitate to retort with a "bitch!" if antagonized. But that's besides the point.

I understand your frustration at not being able to communicate, I remember having the same trouble coming up with simple sentences when I first arrived in Shanghai. This can also happen if an Indian national comes to work here. For most of these China nationals, with their little knowledge of outside world (other provinces) assume Singapore's majority is Chinese ethnicity and assume that mandarin would be understood. The probably also have a rude shock when they arrive to SG and have to speak English.

As to a possible reason why they respond in a polite manner after being harsh, I don't know. What I do know as a market researcher is that these people do fear authority and are used to living in a harsh environment.

I just ask for everyone to be a little bit more tolerant as more and more immigrants, not only from China but Philippines, India and Indonesia try to find work here. Imagine that they come from villages and not cities and empathise with their shock and need for acceptance and some kindness.

I know bad service attitude can hardly be accepted in these times of recession where people want to feel they are getting a little reward for themselves. Maybe we can try to imagine ourselves traveling in a land where we do not speak the language, how would we behave?

Maybe this one person responded harshly, can we reach out to a Chinese ethnic singaporean beside and explain so that our counterpart can explain to this China national why this needs to be done?

Not forgetting we also have a whole generation of aunties and uncles, who still speak only Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Did they start out the same way? how did they communicate?"

One of the methods to get beaten up by taxi driver

When your naive junior researcher asks the taxi driver who is giving off musty, humid, just woke up smell:

"What is that bad smell in your car?"

Driver menacingly "say again? what?" - followed by tension filled silence. Like tension while one decides which wire to cut to diffuse the bomb.

Ahem. *slaps palm over colleagues mouth*

All happening within 1 minute.

Obsessions

I'm lucky I'm turned off drugs/ smoking/ gambling because I'm one obsessed person. Like obsessed.

Yesterday I discovered "My name is Kim Sam Soon" and its twist of having a feisty female character instead of the usual limpid, crying, anorexic looking girls. Turns out after gym, dinner and facial I still couldn't get the storyline out of my mind so I started watching on Youku from 12am till 7.30am this morning. Managed to finish ALL the episodes.

I wish this obsession could be diverted to losing winter weight. Sigh