Just read this article and it's nicely written! I often do not like to do this whole Asian/East vs West mentality but I too am sick and tired of foreigners being surprised when we speak English, that Singapore is such a modern city (hello...I think a lot of other Asian cities/countries are modern too) and describe our efficiency as 'cold' or 'antiseptic'. Singaporeans are humans too. We have emotions and if we were 'cold', there wouldn't be so many of us complaining about anything everything under the sun. And we have a lot of sun, considering we're in the tropics (yes, I'm being sarcastic). Sorry that we're not as 'exotic' as other Asian countries. We're charming in our own way, ok?

What I find most infuriating (ooh...I used a big word) about all these Western journalists (mind you...I'm not saying ALL Western journalists) is this: a country's founding father has just passed away and the nation is grieving, but they use that as a platform to insult the country that he helped build. That is plain RUDE and it's lousy journalism to write about THEIR own complaints about Singapore before grudgingly writing an obituary about Mr Lee. If you were so concerned about Singaporeans' lack of freedom of speech, lack of freedom in general, inability to chew gum and being so highly efficient...why not ask us Singaporeans about how WE feel about all these rules and regulations? We're not mindless idiots as you can tell from how many of our citizens have graduated from top universities and from how well we're doing internationally when it comes to academics. True that in terms of athletics, we're still a bit behind but then...we're only 5 million people so the stats aren't really in our favour.

Is there such a thing as a PERFECT country? Is there such a thing as a PERFECT government? No. Lots of people like to preach about freedom/democracy/love/acceptance/plurality of opinion/open-mindedness, all of which are good things to have. However, it is startlingly clear that a lot of these journalists who are preaching about all these qualities lack one valuable skill - listening.

I'm born and bred in Singapore and have stayed in a few other cities for 1-2 months (Fukuoka, London and Melbourne) and you know what? I still prefer living and working in Singapore because I'm not discriminated against as a woman who wants to climb up the corporate ladder; I don't have to care about sorting my rubbish unless I want to be environmentally friendly and I don't have to care which day to dispose of said sorted trash in case my neighbours frown and complain about me; I need not worry about being mugged/stabbed/gunned down on the street if I'm walking home alone at 11pm from the train/bus station (a jogger was stabbed 10 min from where my bro and I stayed in London).

How many Singaporeans or foreigners who have lived in Singapore will it take before these pompous journalists will start listening to what WE have to say about all these things that THEY are complaining about OUR country? They ought to take their own advice and be open-minded.

There. I've exercised my supposedly-lacking freedom of speech.

And I'm not alone. Here are a few more articles in the same line:

• Calvin Cheng (full article) on All Singapore Stuff
• Calvin Cheng (edited article) on The Independent
• Yvonne Ng's comments accompanying a photo of our Parliament House where Mr Lee's body lies in state 
• Lee Yue Heng's blog
• Crystal Lim's blog (she is a Singaporean living in Australia)
• Jenny Tay's blog
• Alywin Chew's blog (he is working and living in Shanghai) 
• Deborah Anne's blog

Gor took Monday off and so we took the time to visit Westminster Abbey since we both didn't get to go in the last time we were there. However, this post isn't going to be about Westminster Abbey etc. I'll leave that for my following post. This post is about the sudden flood of rude people that we met in a day.

Incident 1: We were just outside Westminster Abbey and walking around it as they were not allowing visitors inside anymore (Note: if you're visiting Westminster Abbey, please visit www.westminster-abbey.org to check out the visitor timings for that week).

Just then, this Caucasian guy was trying to get Gor's attention by waving in front of him and pointing to his camera and gesturing. At this point, Gor was tempted to say, "Yes, how may I help you?" but he resisted. That person finally said, "Help, take picture?" or something like that. Of course, Gor answered him in perfect English and even asked whether he wanted his picture taken either portrait or landscape.

-__- How rude to assume that just because we're Chinese, we can't speak English? Even the English themselves don't assume that. Hate to say this...but....silly Americans. Don't get me wrong, I do have some close American friends who are really intelligent but even one of them said that she finds her fellow countrymen rather silly and ignorant. Yes, it is all about ignorance. Weird...considering that America is a multi-racial society too. Hmms.....

Incident 2: We had just finished dinner and decided to have ice-cream at Thornton's, which is a chocolatier. Gor gave them a 20 pound note and he received a lot of change in coins. Gor then asked whether he could exchange the coins to a fiver (ie. 5 pound note). The immediately reply was, "No." -__-; Err....customer service??? If you don't have the note, you could've replied with a "Sorry, we don't have a 5 pound note in the till right now." People complain about poor service in Singapore but at least cashiers are apologetic when they pass me a bunch of coins and explain to me why they're giving me so many coins. An outright "NO" is rude.

Incident 3: It was time to go home and we stopped at this store called Superdrug, which was next to the tube station. We saw the Dove bath creams on sale...2 for GBP 2.95. On that particular shelf, there was only one bottle of the normal white Dove bottle and several gold Dove Silk type. If you were me or my bro, you'd take one of each right? Since there was only one white one left and several gold ones.

Gor went to pay for it and the amount came up to GBP 3.16. My bro then pointed it out to the sales assistant that the tag on the shelf is 2.95. His reply was, "This one's more expensive" while pointing to the gold one. Yeah...but the price tag doesn't indicate so, so how were we to know that? He then called his manager out...who said the exact same thing.

Bro: Yeah, but there isn't a price tag that shows the different price right? So how was I to know?

Manager: Yeah and that's our fault but this one is more expensive. I can't give this to you at the cheaper price

Bro: But there's only one bottle of the cheaper one on the shelf, so...

Manager: There are more... (and she brings us to another shelf)

You know, a simple "Sorry" would have sufficed. "Sorry, it is our mistake for not labelling it properly. We have another bottle of the cheaper one over here. Would you like to change your purchase?"

Gosh...I've met with a similar incident in Singapore and the manager gave me a bottle free since it was their fault for not removing the promotional "2-for-1" tag.

Guess what's the common link? All these people are NOT British. Is it a language thing? Or a culture thing? Or they simply were not trained in customer service? Or it is plain ignorance? Hmm...I shall be kind and say that it is just ignorance.