Argonaut Aura

Just completed reading the book by Johansson. The Medici Effect is a great book which touches on topics that i am deeply passionate about. Diversity and innovation. The book discusses how innovation takes place at the intersection. One interesting example is how pubs and lollipop could possibly interact. Interestingly, i also come across Janet Jackson’s my space profile (all from the blog of Johansson). From his words last year, ‘Yesterday I went to Singapore and the diversity here is also quite great – albeit from a different historical context.’ Indeed, i am glad that Singapore is a diverse cosmopolitan society. However, as i was analysing yesterday after hearing MM Lee’s words, London and Singapore are not quite similar. New York too. Based on my limited experiences in these three places, i noticed one stark difference during my time in central london. If you hang around in central london, you’ll notice that most of the residents are local British whereas majority of the Indians and other immigrants are actually residing in areas further away from the centre. In Singapore’s case, most of the expats and foreigners are living in the central (i.e. Orchard Road area) whereas heartlanders or locals are mostly residing further away.

This also brought to mind how Cupertino, California became a largely asian community as local americans fleed the neighbourhood (fierce competition in schools with large proportions of Asians is cited as one reason). Of course, this is largely caused by the disparity of income. In london’s case, the local British are often times ‘better off’ and have a higher take-home pay than the foreigners who come to London. In Singapore, it seems otherwise. Of course, there are expats that have comparable pays to locals and may not take home as much as we imagine they would, but at least it seems that the average expats are living a life ‘better off’ than the locals in Singapore? Pardon me if the statement sounds too ’sweeping’. I will imagine that it has an association with the belief that ‘all things foreign are good’. This is hindering innovation and even when purchasing goods, foreign brands are preferred (perhaps locals should support zen more than ipod?). This is probably not a fair example but in the case of Korea, Japan and even China, it seems that such sentiments are not apparent. Which is why, local companies aspire to sound foreign and often downplay their nationality. We should really be more proud of Singapore goods and Singapore innovation (e.g. Hyflux).

Our environment seems to breed inferiority complex which can be manifested in the complaints that foreigners are taking over jobs. In actual fact, we might be surrendering the jobs over to foreigners by not putting up a strong enough fight for it. Similar to the issue of gender discrimination, it might be self-inflicting and self-induced.

It is interesting during my self-taught process of learning Japanese (with assistance from my sister) to notice that even in the protocols of communications, the Japanese actually downplay their abilities and arrogance is frowned upon deeply. Many things are implicit and not spoken directly of. Thus, a large part of understanding is contextual. Japan is truly fascinating and i can only hope that Asians learn from their spirit of preserving and protecting one’s culture and identity while forging progress in the Western front. I wish that Singaporeans will not be at a loss admist the diversity. A local advertisement relates Singapore to ‘rojak’ a dish made up of a variety of mixed ingredients but it needs to sustain its unique flavour which to many locals, is still a foreign taste.