Singaporeans..
Who have no dreams, goals.
Some educated youths don’t even know what the real world is without parental support and maids. By Elia Diodati.
Jan 10, 2007

The blogger received the following article from a new forum member, Troodonand I’m glad he shared it.

Dear Diodati:
I was back in Singapore recently for a holiday and I was talking to my friends about financial independence and things like that. Good times.

Life in Singapore is so different: I just realised I no longer am used to living in Singapore. People hate their jobs; people have no dreams, no goals.

The biggest thing in their lives right now is to get married and buy a HDB flat. I don’t even know why some of them are dying to get married.

Being in Singapore in the last 2 weeks has confirmed my suspicion that quite a few Singaporeans love to not think for themselves. They like things as they are [in their] huge reality distortion field.

Reality will start biting them in their mid-30s but by then it’s too late to turn around.

There’s actually a very good reason for this and it makes a lot of sense: a lot of it has to do with Singaporeans living with their parents, and having a maid to take care of everything.

The real world doesn’t really bite them until they start living for3 themselves. But it’s kind of sad because elsewhere4 you start living by yourself when you start working, or in your case, in school.

In Singapore you start living by yourself [only] when you register for a flat and get married, which kind of sucks because so many things hit you at the same time.

You haven’t even learned how to manage your own finances; now you’re expected to manage finances of your new family and cope with a bunch of other things and make decisions, which have been made for you for the past 20+ years.

So it’s a big culture shock I think for Singaporeans: people need to feel some sort of impact in their lives before they care about things.

People don’t care about politics early on because it doesn’t seem to affect them, but when they start working and realise how screwed they are they start trying to care but it’s normally too late by then.

Like one of my friends doing his PhD in Singapore now. He has this delusion that he will be [going into academia in Singapore] just because he is doing his PhD in Singapore.

I fear for his future. This guy doesn’t even go to the lab he stays at home most of the time. He self declares off because his adviser is very slack apparently.

[He] goes to church most of the time instead of going to do grad research in school. Yeah, this is the quality of Singapore PhD candidates. Sigh.

So I asked him, ‘What is your thesis?’ Or at least, do you have any idea what you want to do? He said no, [he’s] not sure yet but he has time. His attitude is pretty sad, I will say shocking.

If he had this kind of attitude in my lab, my prof would have fired him in like a week. The thing is, he’s not even interested in research. I don’t see any sort of passion or drive from this person. It’s really sad.

I wonder how the hell he got admitted. Why is he doing his PhD, you ask? It’s a good question.

Well basically his parents told him “to study more” so he is studying more. Yeah, I am speechless. He has the impression [that] Daddy will get him a job after graduation. Isn’t that nice?

The thing is, he is getting married anyway next year without any sort of income. They are both church-going types but he won’t have income and she might quit her job.

So his parents will pay for the flat, which is scary but if he’s fine with it, ah well. The scary thing is he’s fine with [his fiancée] paying for the flat through her CPF like it’s a non-issue but [his fiancée]’s CPF will run out [really quickly] if she does it.

It’s retarded, [these] Singaporeans with no concept of money at all.

Anyway, it’s his life, but sometimes I feel that as a friend I should advise him a little on financial awareness.

You know, one in two marriages end up in divorce, and most of the time the reason is money.

[Yet] he told me marriage has nothing to do with money and he doesn’t need money for a stable marriage, and he doesn’t read the news or cares about politics or anything.

All he needs is a Bible, and he said if God wills him to be jobless, there’s nothing he can do about it.

It’s a little scary to hear what he was saying to me, but anyway it’s his life. His parents are paying for his wedding and his flat, among other things.

He just has no idea how hard it is to support yourself in the real world - it’s an alien concept to him - so basically when he graduates with his shiny PhD in 3-4 years time, that’s when it will hit him really hard.

He still has illusions [about his future]; when I tried to tell him how unrealistic his expectations are he didn’t believe me. He just shut himself off.

So there, lots of people in Singapore get married for the wrong reasons.

The main problem is that the world is changing too rapidly for most people to cope. This goes all the way from the average day person up to the upper echelons of the civil service.

So I have to say that Singaporeans make me sad. People like him are just sad. Troodon

Comments

l’oiseau rebelle says:
The effects of the trend of Singaporeans living with their parents even after graduation have recently been explored by Oikono, Elia Diodati, and some private conversations with takchek.
Oikono describes how students who live with their parents are less likely to incite social change.
Elia Diodati (or rather, his reader) talks about how living with parents can make people less attuned to the harsh reality of supporting yourself in the real world.
And takchek complains, like a true blue Singaporean comments on how conformistic Singaporeans are - everyone wants to get married and sell their souls buy a flat.

agrainofsand says:
l’ois brings up a good point in her entry: you just can’t afford to live by yourself in Singapore unless you marry.
The measly paycheck (put another way, we get paid more in America because we have to pay for room and board ourselves) and the government regulation on HDB flats for couples only (I think patently unfair) ensure that status quo.

quitacet says:
Ultimately individuals are responsible for their own lives, or do you think it’s so unfair that people like that reap what they sow.

straydog says:
Considering the environment here it is hardly surprising the scenario you described do happen, especially if you throw the religious factor here.
Mind you, it’s not that religion is bad, but how it was applied. Let’s just hope that there are not too many such cases here.

wj says:
Just because one person is a spoilt brat PhD candidate doesn’t mean that all Singaporeans below the age of 30 are.

Bjorn says:
This guy is totally useless and a drain on resources invested in his education and family by the government, his parents and wife. If he doesn’t know what his purpose is in life, be it in his research, a plan to fend for his family independently, he has no use as an adult of this country.
Sadly, we won’t know for sure how common this guy is in Singapore. We run the risk of being too presumptuous, too if we think living with parents result in a common outcome of being too dependent and having a distortion of reality.
We should really focus more on this kind of drifters in Singapore ‘cos these are symptoms of the Drifter Singaporean, a breed who is cushioned too much by traditional Asian family values and our paternalistic government which influence career and social planning too much.
Because when these people finally hit maturity and discover their bubble of the world is cracked, they will be so disillusioned of the whole social system that they might turn out to be the trouble-makers of our society, complaining needlessly about the government and society which had given him so much but left him defenceless and without skills once left to fend for himself in our competitive, REAL world.

chuwen says:
People are different - accept it. I know of some just ORD-ed guys who have more savings than grads who have been working for a good three years.
People are just different and sometimes, we just love to bitch about them. Your blog entry is so human. I love it!

femtoflyer says:
I’ll generally agree with Troodon (my background - Singaporean, self-financed PhD overseas and now working back in Singapore) about Singaporeans not being able to think for themselves, broadly speaking, although I wouldn’t really go so far to make a similar comment about contentment (or lack of) in their lives.
The example of his PhD friend is also rather extreme; after having worked with several Singaporean PhD candidates over the last few years, I’d say it’s an exception rather than the norm (at least in my field).
But, rather than gripe and lament about the sorry state, I would like to ask him as well as everyone else: what are you doing about it?
What can we, “the enlightened”, as we no doubt like to think ourselves to be (*grin*), do about it?
Are we setting a good example to the younger generation? Or are we just segregating ourselves into two groups - those that stay here and “have no dreams”, or those that leave?

felumpfus says:
femtoflyer, I doubt any one who has left Singapore did so without a heavy heart.
The point isn’t whether we are trying to “to anything about it”, it’s whether the environment is even permissive for such efforts.
I can’t help feeling that the powers that be would much rather we stay and content ourselves with what they have laid out for us – The Grand Plan To Keep Everyone Moderately Happy Even If In Self-Denial.

femtoflyer says:
felumpfus, that’s a reason I hear a lot, and used for just about everything: environment’s not right for creativity, entrepreneurship, etc.
Now, is this really true, or do we simply use this as an excuse to not even try? A lot of the barriers are in our mindsets, rather than some shadowy “environment”.
From my experience here so far, you can change things with a very, very simple question - “why?” And don’t let up until you get a satisfactory reply.
Even if it doesn’t change things immediately, you’re forcing the other party to think about why they’re doing what they’re doing.
It’s a softer approach than preaching and telling them outright how things should be done - that would put them on the defensive immediately.
Start with the small everyday things in life, and the big things will take care of themselves.
We need to speak up - one frequent gripe from management/higher authority is that Singaporeans tend not to give feedback.
If we can’t show that we care even about the smallest things, the powers that be aren’t going to entrust us with the decisions regarding bigger things. There’s no conspiracy from up there - just a lot of apathy from the ground.
It’s an uphill task undoubtedly, and change doesn’t happen overnight. You’re not doing it for yourself, but for the generations to come.

LayZ says:
Eh! There is nothing wrong with being slack, different people view a PhD differently.
For some people it is a rush to graduate but for others, the joy lies in the process no matter how drawn out it may be.
Anyway I find it interesting that from one lazy PhD student, people can draw so many conclusions about the system and attribute many of his flaws to his unique Singaporean upbringing.
A typical double standard in which we view the flaws of our own countrymen more harshly than others.
I have seen many lazy slackers outside of Singapore as well. Where do you think the word ’slacker’ came from.
Even if he is unable to take care of himself so be it. That is his problem not ours.

http://diodati.omniscientx.com/2007/01/07/marriage-for-all-the-wrong-reasons/