e pur si muove

Jorge Cham (of PhD comics fame) will be speaking on campus tomorrow.

Those were the tags on this tomorrow.sg post about a Muslim student aishahhamza who was supposedly denied a place in an overseas community service trip because the team leader couldn’t figure out how to accomodate her dietary requirements.

Here’s what aishah wrote (bold mine):

The “leader” who is a local Chinese fella from Science fac, asked me about my dietary preference. I said well, I can only eat halal food.

HALAL food, he says, will be quite problematic because over yonder, there is bird flu, so we’ll be eating meat and veggie and pork. And we have to share utensils. He made such a HUGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE deal out of it. He was like, I’m sorry, we’re going to eat PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK. And NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO you can’t eat maggi mee or instant noodles because everyone else would want to do that and then there will be no team unity. So it’s PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK. Can’t you make an exception he asks.

[...]

I wasn’t picked for Project Angel 7. Go figure.

Of course I demanded a detailed explanation. And here’s the exact reply.

“I heard you demand an explanation. If we can’t take chicken some of the team cannot take beef you cannot take pork then wat options are we left? And I cannot get you personal utensils. And I will not allow my team to survive on maggie. The list was finalised on feb21 and I couldn’t give you a week’s notice to the meeting or any events that might come.”

[...]

I questioned his leadership abilities when he said he was doing all this because it was best for the team. I explicitly told him that what is best for the team, is not only material comfort, it’s to fucking build up on their characteristics and traits. One of which is to TOLERATE others’ religious practices and beliefs. TO RESPECT. What he said in reply pissed me off further, aside from claiming that it is because of logistics reasonings, he said he has Muslim friends who are more flexible.

[I shall refrain from commenting on how this reflects on yet another popularly held belief on the lack of command in grammatical English among NUS science students. [Singaporeans, there are good reasons why over here, the arts and sciences are almost always lumped into the same college (faculty)!] And name-and-shaming? The organizer’s name and email are on the frigging website. [Do your research! Execise your google fu!]

But instead, let’s look at the broader context. I mean, what is this supposed to mean? This is taking place in supposedly multiracial, multicultural Singapore. Obviously we don’t know what actually took place, but assuming the quote is trying to depict accurately the emotional overtones, the team leader is clearly upset to have to consider “bending-over backwards” to cater to a Muslim’s no-pork diet.

And the butt-covering and back-pedaling after the team leader was accused of being disciminatory? It’s not a pleasant thing to be accused of (after all, it’s potentially seditious!) but catering to the needs of the many is part and parcel of planning a trip for more than one person.

Is planning for the needs of the lives of many making life difficult for you?

Sorry dude, that’s life in a nominally democratic, nominally multicultural society for you.

Which reflects a greater systemic problem in our society, by the way. Singapore has believed in the one-size-fits-all modality for so long, far too many people have become entrenched in the socialistic “greatest good for the greatest number” style of planning and decision-making. Which inevitably ends up alienating Jehovah’s Witnesses, Falun Gong practitioners, homosexuals, and all sorts of minorities all into the mix.

It’s ironic, really, considering that the majority itself is far from being a homogenous bloc. Yes, the majority of Singaporeans are ethic Chinese (the topic of how Singaporean Chinese believe themselves to be 99% compatible with, or even superior to, mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, etc. is an entire exposition onto itself) but once you look more closely, the solidarity just disappears. Just think of who you know who is aHan Chinese who pays lip service to generic Buddhist/Taoist rites when ah ma makes him do so, 1.62m tall, weighs 62.1 kg, scored 13.5 points in ‘O’ levels, can do 5.2 pull-ups in 60 seconds and comes from a household with 1.2 children. (No, I just pulled those numbers out of nowhere.)

Statistics mislead when not properly intepreted. For example, consider that any human being has on average one breast and one testicle. Does that drive home the point that statistics coarse grain out all the diversity in life that makes people different from each other? Why, then, do we insist on running our country with slavish adherence to metrics like GDP per capita statistics, percentage of ‘A’ level students with perfect transcripts, mean take-home salaries and number of concert-goers that patronize the Substation (or SRT, etc.) every year?

At the end of the day, a GDP per capita of US $30,000 per annum is little comfort for the Ah Soh who sweeps under the cubicle of the statistician who spent days crunching the numbers for the crisp, clean, officialed-stamped-of-approvaled annual report.

Maybe why so many of us in this society are disenchanted and feel disenfranchised. When society feels like it’s run like some mashup of 1984, Brave New World and The Rise of The Meritocracy; when students go through the education system grinder being able at the end to recite three properties of chlorine gas but are unable to apply the knowledge to figure out how bleach disinfects swimming pools; when deviants : is it any suprise then, that so many of us young Singaporeans are considered politically apathetic?

What we need to have in order to progress as a multiethnic society is mutual respect, not just mutual tolerance. That means not just going to certified halal restaurants when going out with a Muslim friend/colleague/associate in the dining party, but going one step further to understand where he/she is coming from. (Note to Muslims: do you as a devout Muslim know exactly why pork is unclean?

The people who are viewing this as yet another example of how Muslims expect the world to bend over backward for them are missing the point altogether. Many times, Muslims get the flak because they have very specific needs and are in general not afraid to vocalize their concerns. Having a situation where religious considerations appear to have been the sole reason for disqualification is the point.

If you cared enough about another person to do something together, the least you would do is to compromise on something that both people agree on. Why shouldn’t this argument scale up to apply to logistics on a larger scale? If you want the best for your trip, then you should really consider whether getting people to eat maggi mee all day or haivng the muslim applicant willing to pack her own utensils is the more realistic compromise. And on top of that, have the integrity to put dietary requirements on the backburner, to be considered only after more sanguine measures of merit (physical fitness, passion for volunteerism, experience, etc.) have been applied.

You know what that team leader needs? He needs to go study abroad somewhere where he would be a minority, and learn to appreciate what it’s like to be different from the mainstream. Go to some part of America (like here in the Midwest) where there’s no decent Chinese food and watch him eat steak and fries for four months in a row. Then put him in charge of the Angel 7 expedition again.

How ironic, that the NUSSC website goes by the proud byline, “Unity Through Participation”.

[Update 0301: tomorrow has fixed the post title, so I'm removing that comment.]

Pro-independence Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian obviously feels no qualms in upping the temperature across the Taiwan Straits. He has just scrapped the National Unification Council [Wikipedia], a governmental panel established to work on cross-strait relations with the eventual intent to reunite Taiwan and mainland China.

It’s really a symbolic gesture, considering how the NUC has not convened since Chen’s presidency beginning 2000. On the other hand, he’s openly gone against his pledge in 2000 to maintain the status quo in cross-strait relations.

Opposition party leader Ma Ying-Jiu has (predictably) blasted the president’s move as being detrimental to Sino-Taiwan relations. Which of course is the whole point, perhaps. Pundits view this move as a desperate attempt to save the pro-independence platform.

Singapore has already expressed official regret over the surprise decision. But really, the whole world is waiting with bated breath as to what kind of explosion this latest move engenders from Beijing. How high are cross-strait tensions going to get? And how is Chen Shui-Bian going to think that this move is going to score brownie points with anyone other than his home crowd? Only 25 countries still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan after Beijing demanded compliance with its One China policy. Is Chen asking for a showdown?

The host is experiencing high load so I’ve switched off the Kiwi theme, which was apparently hogging the entire CPU load of the server. I’ll probably be shopping for another theme. Any suggestions?