Would a true blue singaporean win a olympic medal?
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Originally posted by SexyChin:
we had one true blue singaporean that won the olympics, 48 years ago to be exact.
You don't know enough do you? He was borned in China as well.
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Originally posted by Agenda:
You don't know enough do you? He was borned in China as well.
he came to singapore first and work before deciding to do weight lifting in olympics and LJY dey all is talent scouted and being paid alot to pay for singapore... singapore getting silver is also so much more den china getting gold in terms of prize moni.. so who is more happy :D -
What is true blue to you?
Born in singapore, but spent whole of my life overseas.
Is that still singaporean?
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Originally posted by Pitot:
What is true blue to you?
Born in singapore, but spent whole of my life overseas.
Is that still singaporean?
but dun forget... these ppl ald given up citizenship... -
say a girl was born here but never gave up sg citizenship, went over seas for education and training. eat potato one. one fine day, singapore olympic committee asked her to represent sg for olympics. is she still a true blue sg?
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Originally posted by kramnave:
I don't agree...I mean..even if go to the U.S for a few years i don't expect to come back with an american accent
I do agree to your statement to certain extent. For an adult it's hard to shed the slang but for a young teen? LJW came here at 14 now she is 27. 13 long years not enough for a young teen to shed her China Chinese slang and way? Hmmm.... -
Originally posted by FocusPoint:
I do agree to your statement to certain extent. For an adult it's hard to shed the slang but for a young teen? LJW came here at 14 now she is 27. 13 long years not enough for a young teen to shed her China Chinese slang and way? Hmmm....
way more den enuf.. its only if dey want to or don't want to.. -
Originally posted by Pitot:
say a girl was born here but never gave up sg citizenship, went over seas for education and training. eat potato one. one fine day, singapore olympic committee asked her to represent sg for olympics. is she still a true blue sg?
this is a valid point as well. think mary pierce. she represented france in professional tennis but was never really accepted by the french community becos she lives in canada (i believe) most of her life.
i think if one is born in singapore, went overseas to become good in a sport and represents singapore is a much lesser evil than getting a `quickie' athlete from abroad.
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Lesser evil? But at the end of the day a whole new breed of moralists will simply spawn who will consider these "locals" invalid would they not? What then can we say?
Why stop at a lesser evil? Why not go all the way?
I feel personally that the backlash against our FT sports come not really because of the individuals involved, but more because of the lopsided way we percieve our government is treating FTs and local Singaporeans. Which is not an unjustified reason, but that we might sometimes lose reason if we argue with too much passion against it but I digress.
That aside, I would postulate that we would actually be more accepting of our FT sports talent if we see our government treat locals and FT on a more level footing, this would also mean that we have a truly organic pride in the greatness of our country and would find it an honour to have others want to join our team to fight for us. AFAIK, the Americans have less hang ups about having FTs play for them for the simple reason they are confident in their greatness as a nation (despite all the flaws) and have no qualms about freshie "americans" joining them, whatever the reason may be.
But of course this is not the case with us, but I suppose if we want to claim Singapore as truly our nation, then we should stop seeing our nation through the lens of everything that the government does. Yes, some of it we may not be happy with but we ought to look to the big picture.
Are there problems with the FT scheme? As I said before, yes, but that should not detract from our national pride to be Singaporeans or react with much hostility towards those who have worn our flag, whatever the reason may be. This is part of maturing as a nation, and a unique one at that.
The truth is what would make us happy now, in the current situtation? That suddenly LHL announded that our silver medals were hollow and that the money ought to be taken from them and spent on our local sports? That we drive out all the FTs we have now unless they can speak Singlish and swear on a blood oath they will never leave us? It might appeal to our emotions but frankly I suspect we are just trading one villian for another, and it's not even a lesser evil.
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I do agree to your statement to certain extent. For an adult it's hard to shed the slang but for a young teen? LJW came here at 14 now she is 27. 13 long years not enough for a young teen to shed her China Chinese slang and way? Hmmm....
Personally I am not sure if they ought to shed their slangs and way, assimilation into a culture does not mean the anniliation of whatever made them "different from us", we need to draw the distinction.
Problems arise when immigrations do not want to learn the ways and customs of their host nation and insist on staying as a seperate part of the population, this is a real concern we should be worried about. However in my opinion the solution does not lie in "Singaporeanizing" our immigration population by making them like us.
This is the Indonesian solution to their Chinese population, and frankly those measures are deeply disturbing. Truth be told, the hallmark of assimilation into the host nation should not be turning into a member of the population indistinguishable from the rest, but the intergration of their own unique cultural DNA into the host culture to add something to it.
What I mean in laymans terms is that I feel that first generation Singaporeans from china should not drop their slang just so we feel comfortable with them as one of "us"... this is an unresonable and somewhat unethical demand that looks okay at first but is actually a rather selfish request. I would so much rather they keep what they have, and intergrate it into our culture and hitch onto the new thing that emerges.
This is because they are a new type of Singaporean, and we cannot expect them to be like us who were born here. But at the same time our culture cannot be one that is rejective of them as well. This is raw material into something new and what we make of it is still, and will always be our choice. If we look down on them or shun them for not being like us by our own familar standard, we can hardly blame them for being alienated because our demands on them unfortunately are indeed unreasonable to begin with. And of course this would then move on to spawn other problems like a growing divide between us and them.
It takes two hands to clap, but I would like to think that before blaming the other side, let's do our part first.
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Originally posted by DamonAng:
Most amount of teenage ice cream sellers :Singapore
Most blasting of music on bus: Singapore Malays
If only olympic got such petty stuff
So, only the Malays, eh?
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Originally posted by Rejected:
So, only the Malays, eh?
haha nice 1.. -
pls la, give ljw a break la. She came here at 14 and have stayed here for 13 years already. If she stayed another 2 years, she would have spent more time in singapore than in china.
want to slam ljw, slam her skills and composure la.
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Lol, if you look at the lives of those medallists in China, do you actually envy them? There are much better ways of making $$$ without making your life a living hell
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Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:
Lesser evil? But at the end of the day a whole new breed of moralists will simply spawn who will consider these "locals" invalid would they not? What then can we say?
Why stop at a lesser evil? Why not go all the way?
I feel personally that the backlash against our FT sports come not really because of the individuals involved, but more because of the lopsided way we percieve our government is treating FTs and local Singaporeans. Which is not an unjustified reason, but that we might sometimes lose reason if we argue with too much passion against it but I digress.
That aside, I would postulate that we would actually be more accepting of our FT sports talent if we see our government treat locals and FT on a more level footing, this would also mean that we have a truly organic pride in the greatness of our country and would find it an honour to have others want to join our team to fight for us. AFAIK, the Americans have less hang ups about having FTs play for them for the simple reason they are confident in their greatness as a nation (despite all the flaws) and have no qualms about freshie "americans" joining them, whatever the reason may be.
But of course this is not the case with us, but I suppose if we want to claim Singapore as truly our nation, then we should stop seeing our nation through the lens of everything that the government does. Yes, some of it we may not be happy with but we ought to look to the big picture.
Are there problems with the FT scheme? As I said before, yes, but that should not detract from our national pride to be Singaporeans or react with much hostility towards those who have worn our flag, whatever the reason may be. This is part of maturing as a nation, and a unique one at that.
The truth is what would make us happy now, in the current situtation? That suddenly LHL announded that our silver medals were hollow and that the money ought to be taken from them and spent on our local sports? That we drive out all the FTs we have now unless they can speak Singlish and swear on a blood oath they will never leave us? It might appeal to our emotions but frankly I suspect we are just trading one villian for another, and it's not even a lesser evil.
your lesser evil is not in reference to what i wrote in context. but then i dun know if you are replying to my post.
this has nothing to do with assimilation. tao li speaks more than a smack of singlish, but the fact remains she is brought in to try to bring singapore glories. it is her livelihood. she makes her money from it (representing singapore).
my bad, maybe i am closer to a purist on such things. when sports is your career, it is done at club or state level. when someone is called up to represent his/her country, there should be certain inalieanable traits attach to it. now, in the name of sporting glories, this trans-national representation makes a mockery of representing a country.
what the other countries does is up to them. recreational drugs are legalized in the netherlands, does it mean that it has a place in singapore too becos "other countries also have it"?
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Getting back to original topic, I dont think a home grown Singaporean is likely to win any medals soon. Even if it happens, it'll just be a rare event.
Singaporeans are too focussed on studies, not sports.
Compare this to Australia, which, as I wrote in another thread, is first on a per capita basis in medal wins.
If I compare Sydney with Singapore, you can see a huge difference in priorities.
(both have almost the same population)
In Sydney, Rugby League is a $1.5 billion industry. It's so big, that Rupert Murdoch tried to take it over about 15 years ago. It was one of his rare failures that he didnt succeed. There are tennis courts everywhere. In the winter tens of thousands of kids enrol to play weekend soccer, netball and rugby, and cricket in the summer. Professional sports clubs even have their own licenced buildings which have restaurants, poker machines and bars.
In Singapore, there is no real sports industry to speak of. On weekends kids go to Mcdonalds to study.
The Singaporean culture of study has, of course, contributed tremendously to it's financial status, so that's not a bad thing.
But dont expect many home grown sporting champions any time soon.
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Hanor, hanor, last I heard LJW will not be playing for the next Olympic any more due to age and she is going back to China to study in University of Beijing. So does that mean she will be a PR in China instead? It will be freakingly pathethically funny if that is true. Can someone verify that?
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Does everyone think that our sports have achieved so much just cos we won a medal in table tennis?
1) There was no team competition in Athens 2004. The team competition was held for the first time in China this year.
2) To Singapore's advantage, we went out to recruit 2 players who have already spent several years training in the Chinese team but could not make it to their first team. This gave us the overall strength in depth needed to win a team competition.
3) With the exception of Tianwei, only a Singapore citizen for 8 months, few of our players have shown the ability to defeat their opponents one on one. Jiawei failed to beat Kim Kyung Ah, Yuegu lost to Dang Ye Seo, while Jiawei and Yuegu failed the moment they encountered top level opposition in the individual tournament.
4) Jiawei finished 4th in Athens 2004, she finished 4th in Beijing 2008. In my opinion, she actually had a better chance to win in 2004, when she met the Koreans in the semis instead of the Chinese.
5) We had to do it all at the expense of our men's team, who cost us money to import as well.
6) We had to sit back for the next few days and watch the most "impressive" state of affairs in our beloved STTA.
7) We are still no closer to producing local born and bred talent.
Still think our glorious achievement is worth celebrating? Draw your own conclusions.
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Singapore can win international spelling bee or A-maths competition