Everything Also Complain

From various contest entries in  ‘If you were overseas, how would you describe Singapore to Foreigners’, article in Challenge online.

(Barkathnisha Begum Binte Abdul Razzak, MOE, winning entry): Singapore is like a garden salad, and its people like the different ingredients that retain distinctive flavours to make up the salad’s overall taste. We are made up of Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians and increasingly, people of other nationalities with their own cultural distinctiveness and strengths, yet we maintain good relations with each other. The ingredients in a garden salad must be fresh, as depicted in our ‘new’ Cabinet formed after a watershed election and a ‘new’ Singapore for the future.

Wait a minute, garden salad has TASTE? Is this even the right food to represent Singaporean culture? How many of us actually eat salad and enjoy it? Salads are cold, bland, unsatisfying ‘meals’ which people eat just to feel good about themselves, only to reward themselves later during dinner with an all meat buffet using salad for lunch as a convenient justification. Why didn’t anyone think of ‘rojak’? It’s local, messy, sinful and tastes way better than rabbit food.

(Sanjiv Vaswani, AGC): Singapore is like yoghurt. It may appear plain and simple, but deep inside… it is full of live and active cultures. Just like yoghurt, once you’ve had a sampling of Singapore, you’ll feel good inside.

This is quite a silly play on the word ‘cultures’. Yogurt has a short shelf-life, is a food slowly decomposing away, and only tastes good if you have toppings to go with it. Like salad, it’s a Western import and the only reason people eat yogurt is to ‘feel good’ about themselves, when what they really crave for is ice-cream. If Singapore were a dessert, it should rightfully be ice kachang, multi-coloured, multi-layered and you’d have to dig real hard to savour the best bits of it, the atap chees.

(Kristy Lim, CNB): Singapore is like a doughnut – best defined by what’s not there. If you visit Singapore, you won’t have problems finding tasty food, potable water, convenient transport, memorable sights and plenty of shopping. If you work here, you won’t have problems finding world-class infrastructure, business opportunities, fair competition and a frustratingly fun time trying to understand Singlish. If you come here to set up a home, you won’t have problems finding religious freedom, racial harmony, decent healthcare, education opportunities, and understanding the joys and pains of home karaoke systems. If you are a Singaporean, you won’t have problems finding long queues, sales to take advantage of and, of course, something to complain about endlessly.

Coming from the CNB, one wonders if this description of Singapore as an American staple was aided with confiscated hallucinogens. There’s something metaphysical about the role of the doughnut hole; it’s empty but without it the doughnut as we know it wouldn’t exist. Kristy then uses brain-wracking double-negatives to highlight the positive traits of Singapore, none of which has anything to do with eating a doughnut. Again, a Western import like the two analogies above. If Singapore were a light snack, I’m more keen to call it roti prata. We need to be flipped and tossed about, smacked on a hard hot surface a few times before becoming what we are now.

(Zahri Kasir Mohamad, PUB): I would describe Singapore as the king of fruits, the durian, which is sharp, thorny and dangerous on the outside but juicy and delicious inside. Similarly, Singapore might look unattractive with its ‘harsh’ and ‘strict’ rules but once a foreigner gets to taste the real Singapore, he will love its delicious taste. To taste the durian, some effort is required. To see the beauty of Singapore, one needs to get to know its people, places and food. Good-grade durian is expensive and Singapore is expensive. Welcome to one of the most expensive places in ASEAN.

Well, this is more like it, though it’s more a national fruit than something to present Singapore as a whole. Singaporeans are a thorny bunch indeed, but a durian speaks more about a sense of the exotic and adventurous, a trait more suited for other Asian countries where people actually climb trees to harvest durians for a living, whereas  people here climb up carpark rooftops to suntan or goof off. If Singapore were a fruit, I’d pick the starfruit. Not just for the symbolism of stars on our flag, but that it’s so unremarkable if sampled raw that you can only taste its goodness after squeezing the life out of it. A close second would be the chiku, but only because it sounds funny and everyone  makes fun of it.

Filed under: 2011, Local food, Tourists Tagged: | local food, tourism, Tourists