Salesmanship, the Singaporean way.

Last week, I had one of the strangest encounters with a salesperson I can recall. I was passing by a shop that purported to sell educational materials for young children, when a saleswoman approached me, perhaps upon noting my three year old son, Tiarnan, beside me. "********", she began in Chinese words I didn't understand.

"English please.", I replied.

"NO ENGLISH.", she countered, emphatically and then proceeded to try to sell me this educational tool entirely in Mandarin. It was bizarre both to watch and to listen to.

The only thing I understood was what her finger was pointing at, as it toured the device pointing things out and spouting Chinese. She was most passionate - or at least driven - by what she was saying. Her words were clearly well practised and she went through them as if giving the performance of her life. The oddest thing about it was that she was oblivious to my evident incomprehension.

I stood and watched her sales performance not out of any understanding, but out of amazement that she would try to sell me in a language I had already indicated that I did not understand. She proceeded as if, of course, I must understand Chinese because EVERYBODY understood Chinese. She proceeded as if my request for English, was some kind of trick to deprive her of a sale.

The entire explanation of the product took about three to four minutes. In that time, I recognized not a single word. The only understandings I grasped were those that were obvious from watching the machine in action. Her commentary provided no meaning for me, nor any improvement in her chances of making a sale.

I gathered from her fluency in Chinese, but complete lack of English, that she must be a PRC - a person from the People's Republic of China.

At the end of her presentation, she did not make a sale. How could she, when I had not understood a word? Yet, that had not dissuaded her from doing so, in an unknown (to me) language.

However, I will say this: it was a worthwhile experience simply to be able to watch her earnest determination to make a sale, despite not sharing a common language.

At the same time, it does show how ridiculously pervasive the presence of PRCs is becoming in Singapore. Not only are they not adjusting, properly, to Singapore - but as this woman made clear, they expect local people to speak to them in Chinese. It doesn't take much insight to see that a deluge of Chinese immigrants, like this saleswoman, armed with little English, but great determination to speak Chinese, could undermine Singapore's status as an English speaking country. After all, many English speaking Singaporeans are leaving - and who is replacing them but NON-English speaking PRCs.

I thought the whole incident worthy of record because it is the first time in my life that someone has tried to sell me something, in an English speaking country, in a language not my own - despite every indication that English was required. I am left to wonder: how common will such moments become with the ever increasing influx of PRCs into Singapore?

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

How America lost an immigrant.

I once had a Green Card, for America - yes, that much prized Green Card. To maintain my Green Card, I made sure that I spent some time in America, every year. Yet, one day, I decided that enough was enough. America didn't seem worth the effort.

One year, you see, I was trying to enter the US at JFK Airport, with my Green Card in hand. Oddly, however, I was stopped by the immigration fellow and asked to go to a special holding room. There I sat, the only white face in a sea of dark skinned immigrants from countries no one has ever heard of. I thought it most peculiar.

As I waited - and they really made me wait - I looked around and watched what unfolded. It soon became quite clear that many of my fellow waiters were in for some trouble. America didn't want to let them in. America was suspicious of their origins and intentions and had little trouble finding reasons to deny them entry.

As I waited, I became more and more nervous, watching how ill my fellow waiters were treated. Those doing the interrogations - sorry "interviewing" - were very aggressive. The primary interviewers were a large black man who would look at home in a boxing ring - and his black female assistant. Neither seemed able to smile and both were rather harsh in their discourse with their victims.

Eventually, it was my turn. The interrogation was unbelievably aggressive. They seemed possessed of the idea that it was wrong to spend so long outside the USA - and why had I done so? (I wondered at this since I was within the legal limit to maintain my card, of less than one year, outside). They went back and forth, levying a barrage of almost shouted questions upon me. I had never been spoken to in this way before. The vehemence of their style of questioning bordered on the violent. I felt myself shake a little, convinced that I was going to be sent back on the plane I had come in on.

Yet, as I thought that, I had another thought: why, on Earth, would I want to live in a country that bullied people at immigration, in such a way? I was being abused and harangued, simply because I had decided to take a plane to the USA. They even did this despite the Irish passport I was carrying and the Green Card in my hand. It was at that moment that I kind of decided that I would never, again, be subject to the bullying immigration officers of the United States: I would never again set foot in the "Land of the Free". (Free from what, I wonder? Certainly, they are not free from aggression, harrassment, or bullying.)

As it turned out, I never did go back to the United States. The unpleasant experience I had had was so distinct in memory that it quite decided me that the US was no place to be. Indeed, only someone inured to violence and aggression could possibly choose such a place, as a home.

As a final thought, I am left to wonder at the extent of the harrassment levied out to others not possessed of a "Green Card"...for I was a legal resident...and still they were abusive. The whole situation is mindboggling. What a country.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Copyright infringement in Asia.

Copyright infringement in Asia is so common as to be the norm. It is, in some countries, in South East Asia, easier to find a fake item, than a real one. In Malaysia and Thailand, every item of kudos in the West, is found in cheap replica, there. Even in ever so clean Singapore, copied CDs and DVDs are not hard to find. It seems, in fact, that copyright theft is almost regarded as a right, by many businessmen.

Now, none of this surprises me, any longer. However, I was surprised, once, at what I saw in a Singaporean classroom. In a class of fourteen students, from China, and Korea, only three of them had official, legal, published copies of the course books. The other eleven had photocopied and bound, privately made editions. I found this most irritating when I noticed it. It irritated me because a lot of people had put a lot of work into making those course books - and they weren't going to see a single cent for their efforts.

What got me, in particular, about this act of theft on the part of the students was that it wouldn't save them much money. It would, perhaps, cost them half as much to steal the books, in this way, as to pay for them. Was it really necessary to go to all the effort to steal the books, at half the price? Why not pay the full price and get a real copy? The presentation and quality were much better for the real book - and no crime would have been committed.

Of course, stealing is a way of life for many of the students. Quite a few of them, for instance, try to "steal" marks, in exams, by cheating. (I have seen this frequently, myself.) I suppose stealing the books is just another aspect of their characters at work.

I wonder how much publishers lose through this particular student practice. Is it just restricted to Asia...or do students in other parts of the world do this, too? In this one class, only three sales were made and eleven copies were stolen. That seems to indicate that actual sales are but one fifth of potential sales, if this class is a typical one.

If anyone has observed this tendency to photocopy books wholesale, in other countries, please comment below.

Thanks.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

David Carradine's posthumous fame.

It is bizarre. David Carradine is already more famous for dying, than for living. His death, in mysterious circumstances, has ensured that, far from being largely unnoticed, at death (as I suspect he would have been, had he not died in the way he did), more attention is being paid to him now, than he ever received in life.

It is notable that, after David Carradine's Kwai Chang Caine role in "Kung Fu", that he led a rather quiet career, for the most part, from the viewpoint of the public. Yes, it is true that he appeared in around 200 shows...but it is also true that most of these roles went largely unnoted. David Carradine was very much an "under the radar", actor, until he was cast as Bill, in Kill Bill, by Quentin Tarantino. Then, again, for a brief time, David Carradine was noticed by the global public - or at least that part of it which likes Quentin Tarantino films (by no means a majority of people, but certainly a fair proportion).

David Carradine's last scene will be forever remembered. Unfortunately, it is a scene of peculiar death: a still shot, imagined in the minds of most readers, of a naked man, bound and suspended from a closet railing. However, this situation has one effect that, as an actor, David Carradine might have appreciated: his career and work may now gain much more notice than they would have done had he quietly slipped away, from natural causes, as most actors (and most people) do. David Carradine's misfortune has the one redeeming feature that he will now never be forgotten - at least, in the lifetime of anyone now living in the developed world, with access to the media.

Yet, there is a tragedy in this situation, too. For is it not sad that a man can be more noticed for dying bizarrely, than for making a creative effort in 200 televisual and filmic productions, throughout five decades? This speaks for the modern world's appetite for strange news, over their appetite for film. It seems that people are more interested in the oddities of the real world, than in anything film has to offer.

Perhaps it all comes down to the power of gossip. David Carradine has died in an eminently gossip worthy fashion. Now, even if the truth turns out to be a rather simple, if odd, case of auto-erotic asphyxiation, that truth will never be allowed to live alone. Alongside it will be spoken any number of theories of why and how he died. Forevermore, there will be tales of murder, of another, or others, present in the room at his death and discussion of whether it was all accidental or suicidal. No matter what the results of the autopsy are, no matter what the police decide, the conspiracy theorists will yabber on, gossip will continue to circulate and the tale of David Carradine's death will just grow bigger and bigger. Not until everyone on Earth has heard of it and discussed it to, excuse me, death, will the gossiping cease. By then, of course, everyone will know of David Carradine, even if they had never before seen any of his work (which is quite possible, particularly if the people concerned are too young to have seen the first run of Kung Fu from 1972 to 1975).

David Carradine is dead. However, in another sense, David Carradine is immortal. By dying as he has, he has, most probably inadvertently, ensured that he will never be forgotten. David Carradine's posthumous fame, is far greater than David Carradine's fame in life ever was. That, perhaps, is the strangest thing of all - even stranger than to end up hung naked from a closet in a Bangkok hotel two days into filming the appropriately named French film production, "Stretch".

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

On the acceptance of difference

Some societies are more accepting of the "different" among them, than others. One of the poorest, in this respect, seems to be Russia.

A couple of days ago, I bumped into a Russian friend who is married to a Singaporean. She told me of many things, but what struck me were her reasons for leaving Russia. She is Caucasian, so these reasons may not have applied to her...but that she felt uncomfortable about the situation was clear. In Russia, you are punished if you are different. This punishment begins at bullying and ends at murder. If, for instance, you are smart, at school, you will be bullied, in Russia, on a daily basis, simply for being different in this respect. If you are Asian, you might very well be killed.

My friend told me of one case she knew of, in Russia, in which a Korean family, consisting of a mother, father and ten year old daughter, were set upon by Russians, and beaten to death. Even the ten year old girl was killed. The reason for their murder was just that they were Asian.

Now, clearly, Russia is an extreme example. This tendency, of Russians, to pick on the outsiders in their midst, can only weaken the country and lead to a diminished nation. Russia is a country that cannot benefit from the input of non-Caucasian foreigners, for instance...it would simply be too dangerous for such people to consider living there. Thus, the Russian talent pool is narrowed and impoverished - and the whole of Russia suffers from it.

However, there are other countries, in which outsiders are not accepted. To some degree most countries are guilty of this, though perhaps with a less extreme response than the Russian one. In all cases, the country is weakened by its refusal to accept diversity: with a variety of different people of different backgrounds, come different capabilities and that can only be to the good of a nation.

My hope is that the Russians mature and come to accept outsiders in their midst - and that other countries with similar attitudes also grow up a bit. It does no-one any good, to pick on anyone. Anywhere in which any group of people suffers from any kind of discrimination is a place that is weaker than it could be.

There is no harm in being aware of difference - and perhaps even intrigued by it - but we must most certainly fight against any intolerance of difference, of whatever kind. Accept the different...you will be doing your town, city, country, a lot of good by doing so.

In the meantime, however, if you are Asian, I would recommend steering clear of Russia, for the time being.

(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.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)