Uncle Norman's stories vs Uncle Alex's stories

Hi guys, I wanna share with you a memory I had from when I was about 8 years old in 1984. Now there was this huge extended family that used to live next to my family in Ang Mo Kio - we're talking about three generations, along with a whole collection of relatives: uncles, aunties, cousins and family friends who may not have been of blood relation.They were a very nice family, I was very fond of them.  I remember one of them very well - we called him Uncle Norman. Whilst my neighbours were mostly Hokkien speaking, Uncle Norman was English speaking and we often chatted with him in English. I hope you can appreciate that I'm trying to recall details from a period from over 30 years ago.

Uncle Norman was once a seaman, a sailor who worked on ships, until he met his Canadian ex-wife. He had lived in Canada until his divorce. Life in Canada however, was not kind to Uncle Norman: his marriage broke down and his business failed, so he returned to Singapore with his tail between his legs, saying some pretty horrible things about Canada. He said that even the summers in Canada were cold, never mind the winters: whilst the Canadians were sunbathing in their swimsuits by the beach, he was wearing three layers and shivering. Thinking about that statement now, I realized just how ridiculous it sounded. Surely Singaporeans and Canadians feel the heat and the cold just the same - no one can deny how harsh the Canadian winters can be, but shivering in summer? Really?

Another story I remember was that of his business failing - he grew beansprouts at home and supplied the Chinese restaurants and supermarkets with beansprouts. It was an easy business to get started with: it doesn't take a lot of expertise to persuade the mung beans (often referred to in Singapore as green beans) to sprout and mung beans were so very cheap. However, despite his raw ingredients being extremely cheap, beansprouts simply do not command a very high price and no matter how much he sold, his profit margins were just too slim. He complained about having worked day and night only to realize that he had made about ten or twenty Canadian dollars in profit that day. My parents would remind me of Uncle Norman's failed beansprout business and say, "you see? You think life in Canada is so easy? Look at Uncle Norman - did he succeed there? No. Do you still want to migrate to Canada?" 

There were other stories about casual racism and discrimination - but as I cannot remember the details clearly enough, I don't want to risk misrepresenting Uncle Norman's original stories. But the bottom line was that Uncle Norman blamed his failure in Canada on the Canadians for not being welcoming enough to new immigrants. And my parents used him as an example of how a Singaporean can only thrive in Singapore and would be in trouble should he try to start a new life in a place like Canada. At no stage did my parents ever condemn or blame Uncle Norman for his failures - it seemed pretty convenient for them to overlook the fact that Uncle Norman had been mostly unemployed since returning Singapore and didn't exactly have a career to speak of in Singapore. No, it was not like he was some high flying CEO in Singapore - he was a bum in Singapore, just like he was in Canada. He was friendly enough as a neighbour, but I wouldn't trust him enough to take his advice on anything.

But to be fair to my parents - we're talking about 1984 here, they didn't know Canadian people, heck they've never met any white people ever. My dad barely even speaks any English at all. And Uncle Norman was literally there, on our doorstep, feeding up stories and information about his time in Canada. Thus my parents' opinion of Canada was very much made up of exactly what Uncle Norman had told them - they were not interested enough to try to seek a second opinion or try to verify if what Uncle Norman had said was true or not. Well thankfully, in 2015, most of us have access to the internet and it is so easy to get information about anything these days, unlike in 1984! Whilst Uncle Norman was in Ang Mo Kio chatting to my parents, I am actually sitting here in my living room in central London and yet I am still able to speak to my many readers in Singapore through my blog and social media - isn't technology amazing eh?

Welcome to the digital age.

Singaporeans of my parents' generation just love taking stories like Uncle Norman's; they would tell and retell Uncle Norman's stories to emphasize why we should not move to the west and how Singaporeans are so lucky to live in Singapore, that we cannot possibly thrive anywhere else in the world, that we're doomed to failure should we move to the west. I feel they're doing this to justify their own choice to stay in Singapore - after all, my parents would have never been able to move to a country like Australia or Canada: they're not highly skilled migrants, they don't even have the language skills. So they are more than happy to condemn an option that was never opened to them in the first place, the term 'sour grapes' comes to mind. Their negativity was depressing, it was all about how we cannot do this, how we cannot do that - I wish to offer a more positive story, about how we can do so many wonderful and interesting thing in the world outside Singapore. Don't be afraid, be excited!

If Uncle Norman is still alive today, he would probably be in his 70s or 80s. I wonder where he is and if he is still telling people about his time in Canada. That was the story I grew up with and I hope that at least for my nephew, for the next generation, they will talk about uncle Alex, aka Limpeh the blogger from Ang Mo Kio who moved to the UK and realized that life in the UK was far better than in Singapore, that he was far happier in the UK than he ever would be in Singapore. Uncle Norman's story was just depressing - it was, "look he moved to Canada and failed, hence the rest of you will fail too, just like him". Whereas I hope people would be able to look at my story and say, "that's one man who was smart enough to take the opportunity when it presented itself, he worked hard to adapt to a new country, learnt many new languages, was street wise enough to figure out how to fit into a new culture and see? People can successfully move from one country to another as long as they are smart enough to adapt to the new environment."

There are two sides to every story.

So how much has the narrative moved on in 30 years? To be frank, not that much actually - it is still pretty difficult to adapt to life in a new country but nowadays, you usually need to be a highly skilled migrant in order to even get a work permit in Canada these days. Uncle Norman was an exception in that he gained entry into Canada by marrying a Canadian rather than trying to secure a work permit, he clearly wasn't a highly skilled professional. Thus highly skilled Singaporeans would probably have little difficulty thriving in a country like Canada, whilst lowly skilled or unskilled migrants like Uncle Norman would still struggle. Whether or not you thrive in the country where you are depends on how skilled, how educated, how highly trained, how intelligent you are: shifting the focus onto racism is wrong as it distracts us from putting responsibility on the individual for his relative success or failure. Let's take an objective view on this issue, rather than pander to racist stereotypes.

Perhaps my younger readers may take it for granted that we should take an objective view on the issue - but good grief, if you were around in the 1980s, you would be aghast at how horrifically racist Singaporeans were towards white people and how they assumed the very worst of white people. To be able to even have an objective conversation about the migration to the West is already a huge step in the right direction, given how ignorant and racist Singaporeans were back in the 1980s. There has already been so much progress, but that's not the kind of progress Singaporeans celebrate much - because to do so would require us to admit how racist and ignorant the older generation have been (and probably still are). What about the situation today then? Have Singaporeans actually become less racist? I don't think so - it's just that the most racist older Singaporeans are slowly dying off with the passage of time and the younger ones growing up today are (hopefully) a lot more enlightened about the world.

I want to offer you some encouragement and positive stories.

There is so much negativity in the world, there are so many horrible people who just wanna bring you down and make you feel bad and there are so many people already depressed in this world.. Well I want to be that one person who can give you that little bit of encouragement today, to tell you that it is not all doom and gloom out there, that there are wonderful opportunities out there in the world, there are some wonderful friends to be made in other countries and that yes, you may actually be a lot happier if you left Singapore but so much of that depends on you.

So my friends, what are your ambitions? What kind of future do you want? What are you hopes and dreams? Where do you picture yourself thirty years from now? How do you intend to make your dreams come true? How hard are you prepared to work? Your destiny lies ultimately in your hands, not the hands of others. Many thanks for reading.

Winter weather doesn't bother me the way it did Uncle Norman!