Singaporean immigration: a modern comedy.

Singapore is becoming a modern comedy...the whole nation is just one big comic act. However, it is the sort of comedy that does groans, not laughter.

Today, we were having a meal out with the family. The restaurant had a mixed clientele of expats and locals. The atmosphere was good. The food was fine. The only worry was the staff. They were mainly Chinese mainlanders. Now, before you jump to conclusions about the intention of my remark, I would like to say that this is not about race: it is about language.

Ordering a drink should be the simplest thing in the world. However, staffing the restaurant with PRCs who would find difficulty saying: "Yes" or "No", doesn't help much.

"Drinks.", said the slenderest of slender girls from China.

"We'll have...one, two, three, green teas, please." began my wife.

The puzzled look from the waitress told us that there had been far too many words.

"Green tea. Three." repeated my wife rather slower and more carefully.

"Green tea.", she repeated, seeming very uncertain of herself.

"Yes."

"One grass jelly.", I asked.

She stared at me in the kind of silence that told me that a) she hadn't understood me. b) she didn't have enough English to tell me that she hadn't understood me.

"Grass Jelly." I repeated, with an assumed patience. "Grass...jelly..."

"Grass jelly." she echoed, getting the words right, and convincing me, for a moment that she had understood.

She went away.

We chatted.

She came back with a stack of drinks and a smile that she had managed to meet our order.

There they were: three green teas...and a Cherry Lemonade.

She pointed at the Cherry Lemonade in a hopeful way, making it clear to me that she had had absolutely no idea what "grass jelly" was and had simply picked a drink at random in the vain hope that she would get it right by chance.

"No.", I said, debating whether or not to express my irritation. "Grass Jelly. That is not grass jelly."

She gave me the silent look shared by all who don't speak the language that they are presently being required to speak. Dealing with her was like dealing with a mute: she had zero ability either to speak or understand English.

I found someone sighing very close by. It was, in fact, me.

I rose then and walked past her into the restaurant area, proper, walked up to the fridge from which she had taken the drinks, reached in and took out a Grass Jelly drink. She looked very carefully at what I had taken and where it had come from. I repeated the words: "Grass Jelly", closed the door, walked out of her work area and back to my seat.

Now, I have taken the time to describe one moment of incomprehension, in Singapore, to make a point. To get an idea of what it is actually like living in a country in which many of the service staff - who once had been speakers of English, or at least, Singlish - have now been replaced by mute Chinese mainlanders - mute in the sense that they basically speak no English at all - you just have to imagine this one encounter with incomprehension multiplied so that it encompasses a good fraction of all encounters with service staff. Imagine a country, an English speaking country, in which everywhere you go there are service staff who just cannot understand you, cannot be understood and to whom it is a struggle to communicate anything at all. That is the modern comedy of Singapore. It is a comedy because the employers here think that they are being clever by hiring Chinese PRCs on wages locals would never work for. They are not being clever - they are destroying the reputation of their businesses - because it is an absolute nightmare to get served in such places.

I can see Singapore throwing away much that made it a good place to be, in the quest for ever cheaper workers. What happens when ALL service staff are Chinese PRCs, NONE of whom speak English? What sort of place would Singapore be then? Who could stand it? Will we all have to speak to them in Chinese? Is Singapore going to lose its facility with English?

I tire of it. I tire of trying to talk to PRC staff who haven't got the first idea of what I am trying to say - even if I speak with very simple words and very slowly. I am not alone. Everyone around me is complaining of the influx of PRC staff. Yet, still it goes on, still they come.

I wonder how long it will be before companies realize that they are destroying themselves by employing all this cheap, foreign - but non-English speaking - labour? Will they realize before it is too late?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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