Diaspora.

Been planning to blog about this since a month ago during the NDP period, well looks like I have dragged a long way. After chancing upon some "nationality" articles from the Culture and tradition GP package awhile back I finally decide to come up with this. So first of all, welcome myself in converting into a  Singapore Citizen after living on this tiny island for a decade. :) I'm truly aware that the photo looked retarded but this is all I could find online.

Frankly speaking it din't matter much to me. I mean, this entire nationality issue.At least not yet so. Alright needless to say I'm aware of the vast benefits arising from being a Singapore Citizen, a sg passport will save you the tedious procedures of obtaining VISA during travelling, higher chance of being enrolled into a local university, met the requirement for many, if not all,governmental scholarships,oh yeah, never forget the monetary benefits like lower tuition fees for Uni, bonuses during good economic outlook, just to name a few. Ah all these makes me sounds like someone who come here to only reap benefits and snatch jobs away from the locals. Which it seems I probably am, but am I still qualified as a "competitor" to the locals given that I've obtained the Singapore Nationality? Since strictly speaking I'm now part of the locals,instead of an outsider.

Woah, now that we have come to this. The idea of "outsider" struck me cause I realized that all along I've never really felt I was being treated as one. Okay maybe just one incident in primary 4,I was on the bus and there's the,you know uh spot checks, back then my ez-link photo was a boyish hair cut of me and to make it worse, my mum indicated M instead of F when she made the card,so the inspector aunty insisted that I used my brother's card and she threw me an insult that's loud enough for the whole bus to hear:"你们中国人就是这样！全部喜欢贪小便宜" Which I was quite angry and burst into tears and got off the bus. Well partially angry at her as well as my mum, for indicating M and for the tom-boy haircut photo. But that's the only unpleasant occasion,so apart from that everyone was generally nice to me, perhaps a little credit to my insignificant China accent during conversations. ( Which reminds me of yet another instance whereby my p5 English teacher approached me saying that how could my English be so bad such that I'm getting same results as the China students. Which I find it quite amusing cause I am indeed one.) Well I've stayed in Singapore long enough see people judging and sneering at the China Chinese.Being labeled as "no manners", "loud and noisy", "seduce people's husband" ( never fails to make it to the headlines of Chinese newspaper.), "spoil market"( Academically ), oh yeah and there was this period of time that the term '陪读妈妈' was really notorious after a number of them caught for providing "extra service" in the foot reflexology industry that my mum told me not to tell anyone about our background. So perhaps subconsciously I've learnt to present myself as a "Singaporean" so as to better integrate into the society as a whole. So much so that I've long forgotten the "China accent" which few realized anyways, but I do get a faint sheen of nostalgia upon hearing my hometown's accents randomly on the street.     

Well I kind of paused for a moment trying to identify the correct word (hometown) to use in my previous sentence. And that leads to me pondering what should I refer Singapore as then? I don't know if I should use the phrases like I feel like home here cause I'm not sure how home should feels like. I mean I was rather adaptable, I felt comfortable back in Shenyang, so do I right here.A second look searching on the net got me back with this: 

Home country:
the country in which a person was born and usually raised, regardless of the present country of residence and citizenship.

Which made things even more confusing since I was born in China and raised in both. But projecting into the future I have little doubt about staying in Singapore and returning to China was almost a definite No.Perhaps for business trips or leisure, I will be more than glad to. Should I ever go overseas to further my studies in the future, I guess I will be using terms like "I'm returning to Singapore' instead of "going to", and it will be more likely to say "I'm visiting China for holiday" instead of "I'm returning to the mainland." All in all I feel that the definition of Home is rather personal, to me it means the place where your friends and families are, where your social connections are, the place you can easily recognize and get around with ease, the place where you know someone cares for you, indeed. That's where home is. However Shenyang will always remain as my hometown, I was born there, I had memories there, even if the people are now gone, the places I used to go are demolished, I will always regard it as part of me. To which if possible and able to, I will bring my love one back to where I spent my childhood, show him around my daily route to school, the place which I baked sweet potato, hid exam papers in the snow, and my lil garden that probably will be gone by then. I always think that childhood is the best part of one's life and there would always be umpteen things to talk about it. 

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Now that I have come to the end of the post I realize this is entirely not what I planned to write about. I was sketching a rough draft on complimenting the well-developed facilities,education and workforce system in Singapore, Opps okay maybe some other day, just maybe.  

PS. on a sidenote just fyi, Chinese tends to be loud in public because if you were in china, given the never ending horns on roads and advertisements from all the shops, there is no way you can hear what each other is talking unless by talking really loudly, like, really, loud. So yeah, it's a culture clash sort of thingy~ Singapore's road are too quiet and peaceful to allow such loudess~ :')