To be Singaporean

One late night I took a cab home after a few drinks. It was the end of a long day and chatting with a taxi driver is the last thing you wanted to do. As if able to read my mind, the taxi driver started asking the usual questions: where I'm from, how long have I been in Singapore, what I'm doing in Singapore, etc. The taxi driver turned out to be a fellow countryman who has been living in Singapore for more than 20 years. He named a small city of Kendal, in Central Java as his hometown.

The conversation took a different point that point onwards. The below conversation was conducted in a mix of English and Indonesian. Or rather Indonesian spoken with a Malay accent, much like how the locals speak.

TD: Nona (yeah... nobody uses that word anymore these days), are you Chinese?
C: Yeah.
TD: Can you speak Chinese? What dialects?
C: None.
TD: How come? A chinese should be able to speak it. I am Malay, but I can speak Hokkien, Mandarin. I have very good friends who are Chinese. You know, if you want to get ahead in Singapore you have to make friends with the Chinese. I am Malay, but I hang out with the Chinese.
C: Just never learnt it.
TD: You're very pretty.
C: Thanks.
TD: I am Malay but I like Chinese girls. Many Singaporean chinese men go to Indonesia for girls, you know. They go to Batam. I also go to Batam. There are many different women in Batam. They keep mistresses from everywhere in Batam. I have a chinese girlfriend there, too.

My disinterest only kept him going more. It's aggravating to learn that his way to assimilate himself in Singapore is to join in all the 'festivities' all the other 'Singaporeans' do. There was pride that he could speak more dialects that I do; and that he's so well integrated that he gets it with the local Chinese ladies. And he's proud because???

I wonder if he is who he is (as he claimed to be) because he is a sleazebag, or because he's trying to fit in. Living in Singapore is easy enough, but living in all sense may not be as simple as it seems. When shopping is the national sport and everyone is obsessed with their image, one can not help to start feeling self-conscious. Am I not meeting new people because I'm not pretty enough? Am I too fat? To what extent would one compromise to be able to live in another country, in a new place? To be able to feel like they belong?

I will let you know in the near future.