Having spent the last two months in a country that’s mostly Asian, I think I know what it feels like when y’all ask each other this question. I kinda understand why you don’t see what’s wrong when you go up to non-white people and introduce yourselves and then suddenly say something like, “Where are you from? … No, I mean, where are you really from?” (“I’m really from Atlanta, you doofus.”*)
See, while I’ve been in Singapore, I’ve been asked about my heritage a lot. I look Chinese (well, Chinese enough that hawkers always speak to me in Mandarin), but I’ve got these huge Vietnamese eyes, and my accent is clearly American. The weird thing is that I usually hate this question, but here, I’ve rather enjoyed answering it.
Why is this?
First, contemporary Singapore isn’t as racist as the US**… Instead, it’s insanely nationalist! (ugh) So anyways, Chinese people might look down on other Chinese people who are Chinese nationals and not Singaporean, but not because of their ethnicity (also ugh). But this means most people here (nationals, expats, migrant workers) who ask me about my heritage already understands that race is complicated, and race isn’t everything. On the other hand, when I get this question from white people in the US, and I try to explain that my mother is Chinese but was born in Malaysia, they stare at me with their mouths open and sometimes tell me I’m wrong and actually my ethnicity is Malay (Thanks, white people!).
When people here ask me about my family history, they usually ask from an empathetic perspective. That’s because Singapore is full of Asian migrants! So they get it! They feel it! I guess the phrase “family history” is telling. They might even have a similar kind of curiosity about their own roots. On the other hand, when white Americans ask this question, it’s not about my parents’ lives and my life and our experiences. It’s a game for them. Like, OMG I wonder if I can guess what kind of Asian you are! Well, I play that game too, sometimes. With dog breeds.
People here are not going to discredit my achievements because I am Asian. People are not going to think I am a robot because I am Asian. My Asian-ness is not something that sets the complete context for my actions and my desires. It is not an excuse to pretend I lack agency. Whereas in the US? If I do well in school, well maybe it’s just because I’m Chinese. When I study, maybe it’s because I can’t do other things. When I’m good at the violin? Probably it’s because I’m Asian.***
Uh, I think those are the three big ones. /endrant/
*Pretty sure nobody’s used the word doofus since 1997.
** Individuals here are still pretty racist though, despite all the ‘racial harmony’ propaganda. It’s just … better. Or maybe it’s just better for me. Like, I’m part of the racial majority now. Huh.
*** This has actually vastly improved in college (from high school), but it hasn’t completely disappeared. I’ve definitely been told at UChicago in the past six months that some of my achievements resulted from my Asian-ness. Not cool.
Picture from my youth (2007, Clarke Quay). Check out those CROCS.
While on my long run (around Bukit Timah), I saw these monkeys. Some were playing in trees, and some were running on the grass. Some were playing on a shiny $200,000 car!
Selfie w/ a monkey
Ok, what else? After work on Friday, Candice and I went to the Singapore Art Museum to look at (and feel and smell and hear) the “Sensorium 360” exhibition. My favorite work was the Twinning Machine 4.0 (Tad Ermitano), which was kind of like a projected mirror that played your image back with a delay (and the amount of delay would change).
Source: Today Online.
I also enjoyed Bui Cong Khanh’s “Chicken Rice In The Border.” which explored a Vietnamese heritage and part-Chinese ethnicity by engaging with Hoi An Chicken Rice … through watercolor, wall prints, a video, a letter, a book, and spices which we could sniff (one of them smelled quite spoiled … )!
I should have taken more pictures, but I snapped this when I saw that he has partially the same given name as Dad.
And here is a picture of me and some boobs. The exhibit is called noon-nom (Tyler Rollins). I don’t know why it’s called that.
Dat hand tho. 😉
And here is the blurb that described the boobs:
And the ideal woman is …. NURTURING, SENSUAL, AND SACRED.
In all honesty, I am a bit uneasy about the beanbag boob artwork and its description. Why is it couched (pun intended) in this “nurturing” framework? Like, there’s all these pastel colors and also the description is like, “well, duh let’s talk about women* and babies and nurturing because like that is what women do and that is what boobs do!!!!” Well, HEY ARTIST, YOU COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING COOL WITH BEAN BOOB-BAGS AND THEN YOU DECIDED TO GO FOR THE NURTURING MOTHER ANGLE. *sigh* but maybe if it was too transgressive then it wouldn’t have been allowed into the Singapore Museum of Art, probably.
So yeah, from noon-nom, I get this unsettling vibe: “women are their bodies which nurture children.” Well, sometimes women do nurture children, yes, but sometimes they don’t! And the idea of women’s bodies nurturing children and women being their bodies and what their bodies normatively do isn’t really something that needs reinforcing….
Also, lol, can you imagine doing this with any body part that’s generally associated with men and masculinity? Haha, what if this exhibit let you slide all over multi-colored firm pectoral muscles, or hug and squeeze BIG, PLUSHY, PENISES.
I’m still working on my fake-undercover mission, so hopefully Big Brother doesn’t find this and stop any future actions. BUM BUM BUUMMMMM!
Anyways, the first thing is the unimportant thing obvs: I ended up cutting my hair anyways. I might still dye it purple or pink or blue later. BUT IT’S SHORT NOW THANK GOODNESS, IT’S ALREADY DRY AND I JUST SHOWERED. K__ and I went around on Friday looking for expats to interview at Robertson Walk. No luck: everyone (and by everyone I mean all the white people we racially profiled for expat-status) was “busy” or a tourist. Bored and tired, we decided to interview the next person (white or not) who would talk to us and then get haircuts at this hair school thinger place.
Turns out, the one Asian lady who ended up talking to us was an expat, from Korea (so the moral of the story is that looking for white people didn’t really help us out).
And here is a picture of me lookin’ sultry post-haircut.
…. I’m on a horse! Not really, but I don’t have a mullet anymore so that’s cause enough to celebrate. And I do, in fact, smell like The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.
Ok, so onto the fake-undercover mission where I pretend to be a spy:
Filipina domestic workers in Singapore are not supposed to pay placement fees, according to regulations set by the Philippine government. Generally, what happens is that domestic workers aren’t given a salary the first 4-9 months of their employment (can you imagine working 14-hour days for months on end and not getting paid?) for the two-year contract because they have to pay back their placement fee. My task was to ask domestics what they paid at the beginning of their contract in order to write up an article, so I did that for a while, asking “how much deductions did you have?” Then I decided it might be good to ask the agencies what they were charging. Get it from the horse’s mouth.
I took a bus to Bukit Timah Shopping Centre, which is filled with employment agencies. At first, I was super overwhelmed because there were like thirty shopfronts were advertising the best price and the best service for MYANMAR MAID, FILIPINO MAID, INDONESIAN MAID. Inside each agency, a couple salespeople sat behind a counter, and anywhere from two to ten domestic workers would be sitting in chairs by the door.
Photo of an employment agency at Bukit Timah Shopping Centre — by Wee Teck Hian for Today news.
A few weeks ago, a lot of activists were complaining domestic workers waiting at agencies were being put up in “galleries” like goods (or slaves) for sale; according to them, the domestic for hire were displaying their talents by washing dishes or dusting or changing fake baby diapers. And just last week, the Ministry of Manpower banned the “inappropriate display of maids.” From Today news:
Agencies should refrain from public advertising — such as on shop fronts and websites — that mentions fees or likens maids to merchandise that can be purchased and replaced when found to be unsatisfactory. Maids should not sit outside agency premises, which gives the impression that they are “commodities” to be “tested or traded”.
Anyways, from what I saw, the domestic workers weren’t being forced to display their ability to do household tasks in front of me, but there were plenty sitting by the windows “on display.” And, there was this one weird agency where I walked in and the saleslady motioned at one of the domestic workers to pull a chair out for me. The domestic worker pulled it out, and then stood behind it while I sat down. Even weirder was when I stood up to leave: I moved to push my chair in, and the saleslady motioned at me to stop, saying that the maid would get it for me, and that I should just leave. The young lady who had pulled my chair out for me stood up from her spot at the side of the room and walked towards my chair, lifting it slightly, and then walking it beneath the counter. I stared for a second, wondering what kind of treat-me-like-royalty tone this kind of bullshit was setting for employers. I wondered if I should say something.
I left.
I moved to the base of the escalator, tapping my fingers on the moving handrail. What should I have done? Pushed the chair in when I was asked to leave it? Even after the domestic worker had stood up? Aghhh.
From AsiaOne news, the caption on this photo is: “Maids being trained at Homekeeper agency in Hougang Green mall yesterday. It is one of two agencies being probed for marketing maids as “commodities”.”
I compartmentalized. I was here for a reason, and the reason was to get agencies to talk to me. Time to walk into the next agency and ask how much it would cost to hire a domestic worker.
I had learned that if I was going to get the information, I needed to be a little sneaky. My first few attempts were pretty disastrous. “Um, hi, what are the deductions for the maids?” I’d ask. In response, I’d get things like:
“What?”
“Are you talking about the placement fee?” (I didn’t know what I was talking about).
“Why are you asking? Are you looking to employ?” (When I said no, the shopkeeper kicked me out. “We only talk to employers.”)
So, clearly, I had to get them to think I was an employer. I didn’t want to lie, but since these people are keen on selling me something, I probably didn’t have to do that much convincing. I put on my best Singaporean accent (well, I didn’t overdo it, but I sure didn’t talk like an American). The best script was to walk in and say something like, “Ah, hello! I just want to know, how much is your agency fee for Filipino maid?” Sometimes I’d ask about whether than included the MOM fee, and the medical fee, etc., even though I didn’t care. Or I’d ask them whether they allowed “exchanges if the maid is not a good fit.” Then, I’d pop the question: “How much is the loan?”
Then they’d tell me. It seemed to hover around four to seven months for Filipina domestic workers (definitely not zero), six to seven for Burmese domestics, eight for Indonesians. One agency had the gall to attach this letter that basically stated that the Philippines were trying to step up their enforcement of the regulation, but it was highly unlikely that they would succeed. If they somehow did, you might have to pay an extra S$1500 or so, because you wouldn’t be able to take that money from your new maid. But most likely, nobody on the Philippine side would be able to do anything to you, and nobody on the Singapore side was going around making sure Singapore agencies followed the rule (not in Singapore’s economic interests, I’ll bet). I was still surprised how nonchalantly all the agencies were openly defying the law. But yeah.
The fruits of my labor
I guess, it’s really ridiculous how anal Singapore is about some laws, and then, when there’s regulations out to protect migrants, enforcement become suddenly very unimportant…. my theory is that the regulations are all for show, to appease those pesky international human rights activists. So the areas of government set up to enforce the protections are understaffed, underfunded, and slow (disclaimer: this is from personal experience and may not accurately describe the government agencies! don’t arrest me!).
I want to talk about one last thing that made me very uncomfortable. At one agency, I asked why the Indonesians’ loans were so much higher than the Filipinas’. The saleslady explained that the fees were higher from the supply-side agents when they were “buying” the maids. It’s not seen as a partnership to connect with domestic workers for Singaporeans, but rather a trade in persons. It’s not “trafficking,” technically, but it’s very unsettling the extent to which the commodification of domestics’ labor combined with racism and xenophobia becomes this commodification of domestics themselves, both in thought and in language. And this way of thinking isn’t uncommon: one of my informants (for my BA thesis) told me a story about a domestic worker, referring to that domestic’s employer as “the owner.” Honestly, I think it’ll take a lot more than getting rid of the “inappropriate displays” in order to get people to think of low-wage workers as real people*.
Anyways, I’ll link to the article with my “findings” when I write it. Tomorrow I’m going to Lucky Plaza to interview some domestics, and maybe to talk to more agencies. Don’t tell any Singaporeans about this blog post!
*this reminds me, I really need to brush up on my Karl Marx.
First point of business …. One of my aunts asked me to put out this notice:
NISSA IS OFFICIALLY LOOKING FOR A HUSBAND SO HER RELATIVES CAN HAVE AN EXCUSE TO COME TO THE UNITED STATES IN ORDER TO BUY COACH BAGS AND NIKE SHOES (sry, u have 2 be a dude otherwise my relatives can’t come because they might catch the gay*!!!!!!!!!!! v contagious u kno). PLZ LET HER KNOW IF YOU ARE INTERESTED. PLZ BE READY TO MARRY WITHIN THE YEAR. THE SHOES AND PURSES ARE URGENT.
I had a long post here, but I decided it was actually terrible
So I deleted it.
Here are some things I’ve done while I have been not updating:
Interviewed people. Lots and lots of people.
Learned how to get rejected.
Still felt bad about getting rejected.
Bought a voice recorder. Felt like the queen of the planet.
I still feel like the queen of the planet actually.
Like, seriously. I can do ANYTHING.
Went to an anti-trafficking campaign meeting.
Had a lot of weird feelings about anti-trafficking campaigns.
Had a lot of weird feelings about narratives in advocacy in general.
Had a lot of weird feelings.
Actually, still having a lot of weird feelings.
Like, on one hand, you don’t want to dehumanize your clients so that they’re just these victims and not people. But on the other hand, if you get to know them, get to know their real story and not just the story of this one shitty thing that happened to them, how are you supposed to be a functional human being and help people?
Also, this getting to know them thing is probably problematic.
Lucky Plaza on a Sunday. This is where I’ve been doing some interviews and surveys with Filipina domestic workers who aren’t affiliated with the organization.
Went to an academic conference on the future of migrant care work.
The NGOs get pissed at the academics for being “out of touch” and ill-informed about advocacy and money and things. The academics are pissed at the NGOs for misconstruing things in order to gain publicity.
The NGOs are also pissed at all the other NGOs. Business as usual.
Tromped around with a USC professor who is basically the coolest person who does gendered migrant worker things ever.
She also has a great critique on what we call “trafficking.”
I tromped around with her RA.
Interviewed more domestic workers.
Interviewed employers.
Got a foot reflexology massage. Mmh.
Had a lot of feelings about my hair. Was told repeatedly that I shouldn’t cut it.
I feel so much more comfortable with short hair. Like, I can wear whatever I want and it doesn’t matter because I have short hair.
I have decided not to cut it while I am here, but I am going to dye it a bunch of funny colors. My relatives are OK with that.
MISS Y’ALL ❤ ❤
-nwm
(but seriously i really miss you guys)
* the homophobia (and racism and sexism) here is starting to drive me nuts
This post will be fun (!) and full of fun (!) pictures, and I will talk about all the fun (!) things I did last weekend.
First, on Friday, we rented out a room to do karaoke. FOR SIX WHOLE HOURS. In case you were wondering, it is 100% possible to karaoke too much. For example, six hours is way too much karaoke.
Brandon is picking songs. And who’s on screen? The BACKSTREET BOYS? idk.
Apparently, sessions are three hours long, but Brandon and Bradley were tired of getting booted out and feeling unsatisfied. Solution? DOUBLE SESSION.
I mean, it was pretty fun, but by the end, nobody wanted to sing anymore, and our throats were sore.
WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY? A-RING-DING-DING-DING-DING-DING-DINGA-DING..
For some reason, Brandon and Samuel didn’t know any Lady GaGa songs. Do the Singaporean and Malaysian governments censor them? Or are they just too inappropriate? Bradley knew them (he’s attending school in Australia, mate)!
Then, on Saturday, we went prawning, which means we sat around this pool and fished for big shrimpz with claws. It was okay. Kind of boring. Everyone hyped it up a lot, so I was a little disappointed. I enjoyed talking to people though.
Charles putting the bait on the hook. Look how bored everyone in the background is.
So yeah. I find it a little difficult to talk to the cousins who haven’t studied outside of Singapore or Malaysia. But like, Bradley and Gregory are fine.
Oh, also, I caved in and took a couple pictures of food. The first is my favorite thing ever: zongzi. They’re like, rice dumplings… like, imagine a tamale with rice instead of corn. Sometimes they’re sweet with banana or coconut, and sometimes they’re hearty with meat inside. They’re cooked inside bamboo or banana leaves instead of corn husks. I could eat about 500 of them.
Was eating while walking to work.
And this next pictures … are DURIANS. YUM YUM YUM. Durians are my other favorite thing ever. Yesterday night, my uncle told us he was going to get something from the car. We were wondering what was taking so long, when he suddenly reappeared with SIX BOXES OF DURIAN. The stinky aroma wafted up through the house … and we sat down to eat. I couldn’t help grinning the whole time. You know that look you always get when your S.O. texts you something super cute and you can’t help but smile, and you’re parents are like, “Why are you so happy?” Yeah. It was 100% exactly like that. I was so excited about FINALLY getting to eat the fruit that actually felt giddy. And then when I put it into my mouth? Heaven on earth.
YUM YUM YUM sooo tasty. Photo cred: 14-year-old Nissa. The hanging things are mangosteens.
Gan Ba: Tasty? So what are you going to miss the most when you go back to the States?
Me: You!
Gan Ba: Right answer…
Me: … but then second most is durians.
Here are some quotes about durians, sourced from a blog I found:
“It has the texture of a cold cow pat, it smells like a poorly maintained public convenience, but the taste is worse.”
“… rotten onions with limburger cheese and low-tide seaweed…”
“On first tasting it I thought it like the flesh of some animal in a state of putrefaction.”
[note: this is actually a little outdated … i wrote it last week but never got around to uploading it … also, sorry i haven’t been posting!]
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to comply with my resolution to not take photographs of my food! Samuel, Brandon and I had the most marvelous sushi on Friday night (boring, I know, but delicious!). Samuel snapped a few pictures on his iPhone, and I was tempted to join in. But I resisted!!
Samuel is my other cousin, by the way. He’s nine months my junior, lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and is studying for his LL.B. in Manchester, England. We’ve been arguing since he showed up to visit last Monday and told me that I look like an “aunty.” The fact that he continuously makes broad claims like, “Men should be dominant in relationships, logical over emotional, etc., etc.” and dismisses my comments with a snobbish “Females lah,” or “Americans lah” is doing no favors for my opinion of him. Brandon’s been quietly chortling in the corner, mostly. Brandon’s more mature than I am; he can stay silent, but I have no patience for my younger cousin’s constant insults and harsh declarations. From what I can tell, Samuel is racist, sexist, chauvinistic, bland, and has no taste in music. Blame my Western values for the disdain of the first few, but culture is no excuse for blandness and poor taste! … But really, the racism is too much. Oh! Remember how everyone keeps asking me about boyfriends? Well, Samuel’s parents showed up to visit as well … bet you can’t guess what the first thing they asked me when we got in the car to go bicycling was!
Here is a picture from when we went cycling at East Coast Park … seven years ago. Sorry, I forgot to take pictures. Look how tiny Deron is though! Hahahaha!
Tired of the inquiry, I replied, “Yeah, I actually have seven boyfriends. One for every day of the week.”
And then, get this, Samuel’s dad started asking me if my hypothetical boyfriends are Asians or “Ang mos” (white people), and which ones I prefer. I was like, “Uh, honestly, I’m more concerned with personality and compatibility when deciding whether or not I want to date someone.”
“You mean you would date blacks? But it’s a sin!” And then he started quoting the Bible. Ok, I’ve been generally trying to stick to “appropriate” curse words on this blog, but WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!?!?!?!?! (sorry, Mom)
“Are you shitting me?” I really wish I’d said that. I actually just said, “Yes, I would.” Then he started spouting out a bunch more racist things before concluding that his child would only be dating Asians. I tried to explain that using race as a proxy for values, culture, and personality was a silly thing to do, especially in this day and age. But to no avail, and I was pretty pissed off by this point, so I just shut up and stared out the car window.
Anyways, something I’ve been reflecting on is the light in which I’ve been portraying my relatives. And the light in which I’ve been portraying my work. I’m keeping this blog for myself, mostly. I’ve been pretty honest, and while I have mulled over the prose enough that I’m clearly somewhat concerned with my audience, I’m not obsessed enough to remove an excessive amount of detail so as to make a cleaner, more presentable story (I should really just make more posts, but have them be shorter). I’m easily willing to speak negatively of my relatives (but honestly, I want to make it clear that they’ve been nothing but wonderful to me … there’s just a whole different kind of cultural belief system going on, and I can’t stand it). On the other hand, it’s really, really difficult for me to talk about my internship.
Part of it is that it feels a little exploitative. I hate that the stories I have to tell of the migrant workers TWC2 helps are all victimization vignettes. “Sure, we’ll help you, but you have to let us tell your story the way we want to tell it, you have to let us fit you into our little narrative about how we help migrant workers.” I mean, there isn’t really any other way to do the work and promote the cause. But I also don’t like that part of the reason I’ve chosen to study migrant workers’ narratives instead of employers’ for my BA is because given the power balance, the migrants would be more inclined to talk to me for no compensation.
Yesterday, I asked a Filipina domestic worker, Anne (not her real name), to tell me about her life here. Generally, when I ask people about their experiences, they start to tell me a particular kind of story, based on what kind of narrative they think I want. I arrived in Singapore at this time. My employer was like this. This is what I had to do. I did write a web story in exactly this format just recently (it’s mostly by me; there were a few edits made after I sent it in, and hence the couple of typos). But yeah, that kind of story. I guess the weird thing is that those aren’t my stories to tell. Talking on my blog about how I react to the different beliefs my relatives hold is okay because I’m sharing my experiences, my frustrations, my responses. When I interview a domestic worker to get her story, I’m not even asking about her. I’m asking about this shitty thing that happened, painting her not as a person but as a victim without agency.
I tried to get Anne to tell me something different, so I asked her to tell me what she did on her day off. I will admit, Anne is one of those people who doesn’t really take shit from anyone … So she told me about how she never lies to employers when they interview her, so they don’t come away with false expectations about how meek she is (despite the agency telling her to do otherwise). She tells them that she’s only willing to work for them if she is allowed to use the internet and her telephone. She’s lucky to have read up on Singapore law, so she knows what her rights are; she knows how to leave her employment situation. Lots of FDWs don’t, because they’re not told these things as part of their orientation, and their employers isolate and threaten them, so there’s no way for them to find out how to improve their situations.
Anyways, Anne spends her free day hanging out with friends, helping out the Filipino Family Network, and volunteering at the SPCA or the Red Cross. She loves animals, especially dogs. She feeds feral cats (like Sarah! Sorry Jenny … she did save a dove’s nest once though), she runs marathons, and she does photography. She goes clubbing with her friends.
That’s a story I haven’t heard in the whole time I’ve been here. For the organization, domestic workers are getting exploited, working too much so they can send money back to their families. For Singaporeans, they’re invaders, necessary but unwanted additions to the home; they crowd the malls and plazas on Sundays. They expose children to dangerous values, yadda yadda. I hope to get more of the first-hand stories, so we’ll see.
[Note: I’m finding it much easier to blog about non-internship things than internship-related things. This isn’t surprising in the least, as meeting with migrant workers is much more difficult, both emotionally and in terms of complexity. But it’s still frustrating. I have a lot of half-written posts that I’m pretty displeased with, but I’ll try to finish one in the next couple of days. -N]
So on a scale of 1-10, how date-able do I look?
Today’s adventure was a headache. Mostly literally though, not to worry! I had loads of fun. My “slightly ill” had me in bed all day yesterday, but I was determined not to miss an afternoovening of tromping around Singapore with Candice, so I took some cold medicine, donned that face mask my mother picked up in Vietnam, and hopped on a bus (slightly to the dismay of my grandmother, who thought I should be resting). But despite the nagging sinus headache and the dizzies, I managed to have a good time!
No comment necessary.
So, the answer to the above question, I think, is to avoid getting everyone around them sick. COME ON, WE’RE CONSIDERATE. Also I think in Japan it might be a fashion statement but I’m not sure. Anyways, Candice and I first tried to meet a group of UChicago Alumni to go to Pink Dot, which is basically Pride if your city didn’t want a rainbow parade to go and muss up all the pretty. SAD LIFE. Or probably it just really dislikes protesters and requires that they register beforehand, not actually bother anyone, and also keep their free speech to one designated area of a park–Speakers’ Corner!
So they don’t let you have a parade, but they do let you have a big, gay, pink picnic instead… just make sure you don’t litter!!! (but seriously, there’s probably a $1000 fine for that)
We wandered around for about an hour until we finally saw people with “UChicago Supports Pink Dot” tee shirts. Apparently, there are like 4 different entrances to the train station we were supposed to meet at, and we were standing at the wrong one. Awkward. Anyways, the alumni took a lot of nice pictures for their Facebook page, probably (I’ll go find them and add them to the blog later, right below this paragraph!)
We sat around listening to the speakers for a while, but we ended up leaving before the actual formation of the glowing pink dot. This is because Candice had made dinner plans for us with her boyfriend; she thought the thing ended at 6. I would have liked to stay and listen to the concert and then watch the pink dot form (I wouldn’t have been allowed to participate because I’m not a Singaporean citizen, lol), but I went with Candice, lured by the promise of delicious crab (but also I think I was expected to go with her).
I guess I was “watching and using the public park for recreation,” hahahaha. At least they have a sense of humor.
In terms of my thoughts on Pink Dot. Well, it was interesting. I haven’t actually been to Pride (I’ve somehow always managed to city hop such that I miss it in all locations), so I don’t have a point of comparison. But I guess … it’s a lot smaller (Chicago’s Pride Parade draws about a million people, whereas Pink Dot draws about 25k, even though Singapore has twice as many people as Chicago). Also, people are pretty chill and not being super rowdy? (Maybe it’s because it wasn’t the time for the pink dot? But even when people were speaking … they weren’t really riling people up). The organizers kept reminding us to treat everybody nicely, especially the protesters if we saw any (there was a bit of a scandal in the previous days about a protest Wear White thing–but Pink+White=Pink still, so whatever). It also seemed very catered to allies, at least in print:
See? Not actually addressing LGBT folks. Maybe people would get offended?
The other weird (and also hilarious) thing was when they were like, “Wave hello to the drone that’s going to take the pictures! OH WAIT THAT’S NOT OUR DRONE! WHO’S DRONE IS THAT! LAND YOUR DRONE PLEASE, THANK YOU!” Or something.
Assuming the drone took this aerial picture of the “dot.” Courtesy of Yahoo News.
Um yeah, anyways, then we awkwardly left. To be honest, I didn’t feel that bad about leaving. The whole affair of Pink Dot felt a little contrived and silly. Maybe it was because people were just sitting around munching on prawn crackers instead of, well, protesting. I mean, the speakers were definitely protesting. And some people had signs (actually the only people I saw with signs were allies with signs that said I’M A STRAIGHT CHRISTIAN BUT I THINK YOU HAVE THE FREEDOM TO LOVE, or something). Or maybe it was just that pride parades and pink dot picnics aren’t where the real work is being done, right? Maybe it was the Google and JP Morgan advertisements, maybe the limited scope of the demands (see: Gay Pride is for White People, but then try not to be blinded by your Eurocentism, and remember that other systems of oppression do exist). Maybe I’m too much a cynic. But idk, for now I’ll blame the prawn crackers. I’ll don some rainbows when I’m back in the States next year and tell you how that is, mmkay?
So we got delicious crab with Candice’s boyfriend at this place near Geylang. I’m not exactly sure. We got a Black Pepper Crab and a Singaporean Crab and an Egg Something Crab (not the actual name; I can’t remember what the something was). I didn’t take pictures of my food on principle, so sorry. You can google those things though. The food was great.
And then we walked around this Ramadan night market in Geylang! Whoopee! And then I got on a bus and went home. Good night!
Me and Candice. OKAY, VICKI? HERE IS PROOF THAT WE HUNG OUT.
Buh Gu, Buh Gim, Ah Mah, Ah Gong, and me after dinner.
I got to see more family today (well, yesterday now–the 26th)! I had the day off (instead of Sunday), so I went with the uncle I’m staying with (Gan Ba) to pick up Ah Gong (my grandfather) and Ah Mah (my grandmother). We were taking Ah Gong to the doctor’s to get knee pain medication or something. Then I came home and took a nap (I’m slightly ill) before going to my other uncle (Buh Gu)’s swanky house, where we had dinner with his wife (Buh Gim), his son (Gregory), my other aunt (Di Yi) who had come over.
I guess my Mandarin is better than I remember, actually. I generally knew what was going on when people spoke in Mandarin. The problem is that my family speaks a Chinese dialect called Hokkian, and besides knowing about 10 phrases and being able to tell that a few words are similar to the Mandarin counterparts, I was in the dark. Which was awkward. My Hokkian, which is basically nonexistent, is amusingly better than my Vietnamese, which is actually nonexistent.
With Di Yi outside Buh Gu’s house!
It was nice talking to everyone! UChicago people might appreciate this story though: While I was helping her roll sushi, Buh Gim was asking me about college, and she of course thought I went to a public school in Illinois. Not UIC though! Her husband and my parents all went to UIC, and she knew I wasn’t going to the same school. So she maybe was thinking U of I? No idea. Anyways, apparently she (and everyone else in her family) had been told (by my mother, maybe?) that I went to the University of Chicago, but people weren’t confused because they didn’t know what UChicago was. Instead, they thought that she must have been mistaken, “bullshit lah.” Because “no way is Nissa that smart.” I insisted that I went to the University of Chicago, and my parents would surely know since they were footing the bill. I then stared intently at the sushi roll I was making until she stopped acting shocked.
So, not a problem of school name recognition, rather a problem with the level of intelligence I project, which is apparently not very high. Or maybe they just think poorly of my family … because America? Mom? Any ideas? They haven’t seen me since I was 14! So whatever. I will attempt to not be insulted lol.
Speaking of being girly, I painted my nails! Sorry Sam, the piggies were chipping.
Other things that rather amused (and only somewhat insulted) me: First, Buh Gim was like, “we expected you to be girlier.” I asked why, and she was like, “because you’re a girl, aren’t all girls girly?” I asked if her daughter was girly, and she said no. Everyone kept talking about how fat her daughter was, which I thought was inappropriate and very rude. Not to mention ridiculous. Ugh.
Everyone was also like, “You are very pretty,” and it was often followed up by “… but you would be even prettier with long hair!” I have been told this by various family members on separate occasions. I explained that I enjoyed my short hair, and I didn’t particularly care if I wasn’t as pretty. Gregory was like, “whaaat” and asked me if I was trying to be like Miley Cyrus. I said no, and I pointed out that Jennifer Lawrence also had short hair. Then he thought a bit and asked me if I liked Ellen. I told him I thought Ellen was awesome. He was like, “she’s very butch, right?” “Uh yeah. Also she’s hilarious,” I replied. Then I went to the bathroom.
With Buh Gu in their dining area
Afterwards, I watched this Korean drama called You are Surrounded or something for a while, and then we ate dinner. Everything was fine, except I felt a little left out when everyone was speaking in Hokkian, so I had to keep asking for English/Mandarin translations. Then Gregory showed me around the house (which was ginormous and a little ridiculous). He is taking violin lessons so I made him play for me, and then he asked me to play (and was like, “wow you know you are quite good, right?” … again, very surprised). Everyone had at first asked me what level I was on when I quit violin lessons, and I was like, “they don’t have levels in the States.” And then they were like, “Oh so you just played for fun, very unseriously.” So yeah, then I had to show off (lah).
Me with the Chinese New Year lemon trees?
I’m not sure where this initial impression that I am kind of dumb and/or unaccomplished comes from. The NUS law students at my internship also had this initial idea that I wasn’t very bright. Is it me? Is it America? I feel like it’s America, but maybe not. Is it merely the fact that I’m not currently at UChicago, and this is actually normal? But it seems that the initial impression isn’t even that I’m of average intelligence and accomplishment, but that I’m an underachiever compared to everyone in Singapore. They did say things like, “Oh, people in America don’t do tuition (tutoring).” Everyone here does. Like, every child goes to tutoring. The whole ordeal stresses me out a bit, and I am definitely doing a lot more work than usual to project my intelligence and accomplishments onto everyone. It’s mostly making me feel like an asshole, but the alternative is that people don’t take me seriously.
I guess that’s one nice thing about not having my mom’s family in the States. From what I hear from other Chinese-Americans, this showing off of yourself (and your kids) is pretty common. So like, I get here and I’m doing it for my Mom. Or myself and my own pride, let’s be honest. It’s ugly.
With Ah Gong and Ah Mah!! Yay!!
All in all though, it was very nice to see everyone after basically not speaking for seven years (aside: people use “nice” to describe everything here, just like my third grade teacher told me not to. It’s terrific, and I’ve been taking every opportunity to say the phrase “very nice”) . Di Yi (who I really like) showed me a bunch of pictures from her trip to Japan, and she also showed me her fancy nails that she got done. Gregory showed me his Instagram. We talked about cooking and living away from parents, about hobbies, etc., and I clarified a few things about what Deron and I were up to. Oh! They also asked me a decent amount about boyfriends (this is another topic that keeps coming up with my cousins and aunts and uncles, by the way). I told them I had dated four people but did not have any boyfriends at the moment. They seemed disappointed. Lol.
In Qualitative Field Methods, Omar McRoberts reminded us at least three times a week to “bracket” our emotions and responses. A fair amount of reminding for a class that met twice a week.
I’ve definitely been surprised by a number of things here, so when I was talking to my cousin Gregory today, I asked him about any “culture shock” he may have experienced going to Perth, Australia, where he had been studying all the past year. He said “definitely!” He’d been shocked that there were homeless people, that there were people begging on the streets (whereas that is illegal here). He was shocked about overt racism. These are things I see every day at home and am not shocked by, things I can manage to ignore so I can live my life.
So, things I should bracket so as to not forget they were initially troublesome. First, a stupid thing that drives me crazy: people here don’t hold elevator doors open! They’ll see you walking towards the elevator, and they’ll press DOOR CLOSE right in your face. My cousin claims it’s only older people, that younger people will hold doors open. But this elevator thing has happened to me multiple times. Today (I’ve been here over a week and probably ride an elevator 8 times a day) was the first time someone asked me “what floor?” when I got on. Usually I have to thread my arm through people to reach the buttons. Maybe it’s more efficient? I’ve definitely wondered about efficiency when people would hold doors open in the States, but I’ve now decided that I prefer my Western customs, ha ha.
Another thing from work which had me deeply troubled for a while. I’ll speak generally about her situation instead of about the particular instance, so as to protect privacy. Also it’s a bit of a rant, so feel free to skip this paragraph and the next one if you don’t want to hear me complain. This young woman came into our office claiming that she was too tired, did not like domestic work in Singapore, and wanted to go home (she basically got no break time). But she couldn’t because in coming to Singapore, she had incurred about a $2500 debt to her agency. Doesn’t seem like too much, right? But say she was making about $500 a month and had to pay for food and toiletries (this is illegal, the employer is supposed to cook for her or provide money for food, but there are lots of illegal things that happen). So she keeps $100, and pays the other $400. She’s in debt for 6 months, making a measly $100/month.
First off, I have no idea how you could live off of $100 a month here, even not paying rent. But let’s do a little math, for the average situation of a foreign domestic worker. Say you work 14 hour days (the average, according to a survey we did) for 26 days a month (which means you are getting a day off every week, as per the law that doesn’t seem to hold much weight). You’re making less than $20 a day, less than $1.40 an hour. This is generally justified by “oh the exchange rate is good because the domestic workers are sending money back to a country with a lower standard of living.” I call bullshit. Where are these domestic workers living? Singapore. Anyways this also means you’re stuck in Singapore for like 6 months (not counting the time it takes you to get placed, which can be over 3 months, no joke, where you get paid nothing).
Also, what’re we as an organization going to do about it? She’s paid off most of her debt, but if an NGO goes and pays these agencies, does it help or hurt the situation? I mean, it just continues the exploitation, right? Hundreds of thousands more domestic workers will come, and paying off the agency won’t stop the problem for them.
While the social workers figured out what to do, I got lunch with the young lady. That’s not how we talked about her, by the way. At the organization everyone was calling her a “girl.” Even though we aid the migrant workers and advocate for their rights, we don’t challenge linguistic things like calling FDWs “girls” when they are in their mid-twenties. They wouldn’t refer to me or the other female intern as “girls,” I think. But it was weird that despite her being older than me, I felt like she was a “girl.” Anyways, she was kind of shy, probably just scared; in some other life we might be friends. I could see us hanging out. The end of the story is that we later dropped her off at another organization which was better equipped to help her. I squeezed her hand, said “good luck,” and exited the office. I waved through the glass door. She waved back. I turned around and walked away.
Because of the way organizations work, I’ll likely never see her again or have any idea of what happens to her. Meh. I’ll get over it. It’ll happen again and again and again.
There are other things, but I’m sleepy, I can’t remember, and I want to make a quick post about today, so as to not write everything days after they happen. I guess I only ended up talking about two things, haha. Too ambitious.
On Saturday, some of my cousins (Brandon, Joshua, Gregory) and I went kite flying at Marina Barrage, which is basically a grassy roof by a big reservoir. It was pretty cool. Here are some pictures!
Yours truly, flying a kite, look how cool I am.The big black, white, and red kite was holding up those spiky things
Then we gave Gregory to his parents, picked up Charles, and went to dinner, which was this expensive place that served white people food. It was “brunch” food. Arguably, it was pretty damn good, but I was not into paying $26 for an omelette! So I got a goat cheese salad for $18 instead. Geez. Sing dollars, but the conversion’s like 8:10, and I had an escargot-like dish at the hawker centre on Sunday, and we only had to shell out $10 (yes, pun intended). I’ll put more pictures of the kite-flying adventure, etc. Facebook later.
Love,
Niss
The calculated difference between truth and reality = careless mistakes, awkward encounters, and overwrought prose. Also bad puns.
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