2 posts tagged “singapore”

i was still listening to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, looping since I woke up this morning. i fixed myself and went down, a bit nervous but i can't really be bothered by it now. i took the train going to singapore's business district - where my new office is.

it was like an opening scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis: men and women in black and white - the clothes, i mean. people rushed in and out of the trains and you can tell if they took a bath this morning with the scent in the air. chanced, an old japanese businessman reads the daily papers as one man candidly sneaks his way nearer to a young office lady to where he can almost smell her. suits clashed with shirts in an almost dizzying yet organised manner.

this is my stop, i told myself as the door slid open followed by the clacking of leather shoes and high heels on a monday. lost among this crowd stood my hard-to-be-unnoticed red shoelaced sneakers. i am one of them now, the hoi polloi of the metropolis.

the scent was bugging me ever since i woke up. it was a scent i got when i first came to work in ogilvy, the scent of a  maturity (new office!)... of corporate proportions. it is renewal. it's like deja vu, only with scents. it smells like an ad agency.

i went to my workspace, set up everything and was introduced to over 50 people and i only remembered like 4 to 6 names. my ang-moh accent gave it away again, they knew im filipino. they said i look asian but with a british-american accent, i told them a lot of filipinos speak naturally like that.

everyone was fine, but i dont think it's a place you can afford to fuck up. illiterally, i mean. but i like it. it's a place wherein i can explore ideas again, wherein there is a good team to back and produce your ideas to life.

after work, which is six o clock in the evening, i went back to my previous company to get my last pay check. i bought them some chocolates, the ones i always buy them from that japanese grocery, meidi-ya. i saw my 2 hamsters again, 1 was sleeping under the grass while the other one was so excited to see that i am back. they've grown quite fatter the last time i saw them, which is a good thing.

i saw kelvin, going to his drum lessons at yamaha in plaza singapura at dhoby ghaut. i also saw jacklyn, one of our pretty friends who works at yumeya, the japanese restaurant downstairs my previous company.

so yeah, that was first day's work.

: )

i've been in singapore for nine almost months already. i still remember the scent of this place when i first came here as a tourist, as a foreigner. i'm 22 years old and i work here as a senior designer for a small interactive agency where i learned a lot of things - on a personal level.

sometimes i would be amazed when people mistake me for someone that i am not. taxi drivers would talk to me in chinese, people would ask me my race, and when i tell them i'm filipino, they would always ask: "...and?" just to be uber cool, i could've told them "and... jamaican mon", then there's this one time at the bus stop when this guy asked me: "すみません、日本人　じゃですか?" he was surprised when i said "いえ、外人です" and walked away... (suplado ang puta hahahahaahahaa.) then lastly, there's this time when they asked me about my "ang-moh" accent, i was quite surprised that i thought i there's something wrong there but that's really how me and my age group speak english. sometimes though, cabbies would tell me: "you're filipino, sir, aren't you?" i asked why and he said: "it's the way you speak english". i whispered is it that easy to tell?

at first i would feel a bit uneasy (to pissed off) when they ask me these things. but i can't blame them, though, their version of my race is mainly based on people they employ to wash their dishes. and sadly, my friends, that's the most politically correct way i can say it. most of the filipinos in singapore are composed of DHs, and i have nothing against them really, except... when i wake up one weekend to the sound of "sasakyan kita" blasting through my bedroom.

so yeah, almost every bit of the world is in singapore so you cant help if racism is deployed here and there. its a delicate subject and i had learned to take them as something to laugh about especially during a night with friends at some pub.

yeah, suibian.

*ang-moh means caucasian
*suibian (pronounced suypyen) means whatever, anything goes.