Identity

From SgWiki

Identity, yes that's very very important!

In Singapore, do you have an "identity"?
If no.- then you must be a foreigner! An illegal, or even an alien! And this is in the thinking context of Singaporeans' thinking here, But people out there- from far away lands will find it very, very strange! Singapore must be a strange place to go, all they want when we are there is your identity card please! May I have your identity? Etc, etc! Said some chinese-like good looking young ladies who came from Canadian Eskimo lands...they just don't need identity and all they say "I am - “ Tonia Chocolate” from the Dog-Rip tribe along the Peace River from Novato land! When they produce is a piece of driving license with their pictures and that is as good as any identity card here in Singapore!

Singaporeans who are born here on the Island of Singapore had their birth recorded immediately <or as soon as possible - by Law>. I had mine <IC,name birth record etc> when I was born, but the old slow colonial BMA administration came to record my humble birth event many days later -

GonetoChina

As a Guest in the USA among many homes with welcoming doors

Here is my original Record of Birth, and it's old- well over 60 years ago! So in Singapore we have a great book, known as Register of Death and Birth- just like a list of names found in a Guest book!

Then we later after when we became of age, we register for a piece of plastic card known Singapore Identity Card

That's weird, and I know but we do that to help identify people by names addresses etc, so that we can lived here in peace and happiness<? >I mean we have well over 4,000,000 people here and so how to find them? All must carry Identity Cards, and it's not like a small town in U.S.A or a half a dozen people in a tribe in Canada's Northern Territories among hard to find Eskimos!

U know we are a people of an Ultimate Island of paradise, so it's like a glorified bird cage! Well, some of us are happy that way, but many young people wants more - they want the freedom like other s from Strange Country like U.S.A.! So why don't they migrate? Some did, when they ,legally> have the means and money - or when they managed to sneak in and stay illegally then join the queue to become aliens in a foreign land or landed aliens or under a process of re-acceptance call "amnesty" become ...finally citizens! So. To be contd.

1 The Search for a true identity
2 "hi"
3 Who are U really?
4 id

[edit] The Search for a true identity

Who are you? is a queation strangers will ask you, however those familiar with your face and person never need to ask the same identity question. With distance friends who may have forgotten your name and face, they will need to know for sure, so they ask again

Are you Mister so & so? I should know you eh? However i forgot your name, though not the face!

Then you replied

[edit] "hi"

my dear old friend, name is not important but Me - you know okey!

[edit] Who are U really?

When I was born..I have no identity yet, my mother is my closest next of Kin, and the place where I was born was place of birth for me..so I could not think except cry feeel and enjoy the sucking and comforts around my enviromental, I guess my survival instinct was excellent..I live, so IC..
.. is my identity representative of U or Me? Well, well..really even dogs also needed tags so that it be identified, and in Spore we are identifieable ..hehehe by an oIC...Is that really You or Me?..

I hope to chabok lah!! when I get bankrupt I can leave this place to go another lol, then even change my name, my face so waht?..Well that will be a future cri-siss for the garmen to figure out..BTW I have no reason to ran yet! [hehehehehehe]]..chaboh .no yet lah
I'm still having great time here, why go so fast?

[edit] Kampong identities

Once upon a time, we never need to carry anything: even a wallet (we don't need- no moneyor rich enough to need one lol) so we don't have pocket with an I.C. paper. what is a I.C a piece of paper or thing, people are not things: we have characters!!!! Person at least have a body or personality, why must we need a I.C.? hehehehehehehenot very funny. in my heydays I know Aw choon=woo,(my old friend lol) he was our kampong head's son. However it's a face I recognize anywhere I see him, and I did never need to address him by name, just a "cha pa bey?" will do lol. Besides so many people have names Ah Pig, Ah meow, Ah Snake King, Ah Monkey, Ah Cow even Ah ghost(!Ah kwee) and so many funny identities or ways to name people, yet we never know their real names until they died, until then once in a lifetime their real names are made known! Such funny names or alias or nicknames are very common in the 60s and be4.. Beside we all Singaporeans are multi-cultural, and multi-racial cosmopolitans however i am better because i have another citizenship in heaven! I never need to chaboh...hehehe

[edit] When I go will God know me?

Yes, I believe it's written in the book of life: Norman Oh Alias Eng Yok born 7.7.1946 died ....? Place of birth : Singapura of Chinese parent..etc, BTW my God know all of me, I cannot cheat, & therefore I will bow down and humbly say "my God, my Lord..thank you for dying for my sins!"..and I know because my real character is written in God's Book of Life when I accepted Jesus as my Savior in 1967 at age of 21.
BTW i won't sell my heavenly citizenship papers for money or anything, nobody can take it away either , the promise is found in God's Word see it in my written Bible within Me!>>>it called the Lord Himself incarnated as the Holy Spirit within my heart! amen

[edit] faces IN THE WEBSITES

i PREFER TO KEEP MY IDENTITY "PRIVATE" however, if you ever sign up and join some Internet setups ( like Facebook[[1]]) among so many you may use a a.k.a or alias though some people prefer to use their real identities!. I meant on the Internet we meet all kinds of users, some kind, good-hearted yet there also some who may abuse others' info to do wrong .."be careful" is a word of caution when U r in the Net..though there's nothing to fear :[[User:Terry|wowowow|]] 05:19, 14 January 2009 (SGT)

[edit] history

The period after Singapore's withdrawal from Malaysia in 1965 saw much public discussion of Singaporean identity. The discussion tended to use terms, categories, and basic assumptions provided by the government and ruling party. One basic assumption was that there was not, at least in the late 1960s and 1970s, a common Singaporean identity, but that there should be. A corollary was that Singaporean identity would not spontaneously emerge from the country's ongoing social, political, and cultural life. Rather, it would have to be consciously created and "built" by policies, directives, and educational campaigns. The content of the identity remained somewhat ill-defined, and it often appeared easier to say what Singaporean identity was not than what it was.

The ideal seemed to combine, somewhat uneasily, a self-consciously toughminded meritocratic individualism, in which individual Singaporeans cultivated their talents and successfully competed in the international economy, with an equally self-conscious identification with "Asian roots" and "traditional values," which referred to precolonial India, China, and the Malay world. Singaporeans were to be modern and cosmopolitan while retaining their distinctively Asian traditions.

Singapore's leaders explicitly rejected the ideology of the melting pot, offering rather the vision of a confidently multiethnic society whose component ethnic groups shared participation in such common institutions as electoral politics, public education, military service, public housing, and ceremonies of citizenship; at the same time they were to retain distinct languages, religions, and customs. Singaporeans were defined as composed of three fundamental types--Chinese, Malays, and Indians. These ethnic categories, locally referred to as "races," were assumed to represent self-evident, "natural" groups that would continue to exist into the indefinite future. Singaporean identity thus implied being a Chinese, a Malay, or an Indian, but selfconsciously so in relation to the other two groups. The Singaporean model of ethnicity thus required both the denial of significant internal variation for each ethnic category and the highlighting of contrasts between the categories.

Being Singaporean also meant being fluent in English, a language which served both as a neutral medium for all ethnic groups and as the medium of international business and of science and technology. The schools, the government, and the offices of international corporations for the most part used English as their working language. The typical Singaporean was bilingual, speaking English as well as the language of one of the three component ethnic groups. Hence the former English-speaking Baba, Chinese or Indian, would seem to serve as the model of Singaporean identity. The resulting culture would be the type social scientists call "creolized," in which a foreign language such as English or French is adapted to local circumstances and the dominant culture reflects a unique blending of local and "metropolitan" or international elements. In the 1980s, there were signs of the emergence of such a culture in Singapore, with the growth among youth (of all "races") of a distinctive English-based patois called "Singlish" and the attraction of all ethnic groups to international fashions and fads in leisure activities.

Singapore's leaders resisted such trends toward cosmopolitan or creole culture, however, reiterating that Singaporeans were Asians rather than Westerners and that abandoning their own traditions and values for the tinsel of international popular culture would result in being neither truly Western nor properly Asian. The consequence would be loss of identity, which in turn would lead to the dissolution of the society. The recommended policy for the retention of Asian identity involved an ideal division of labor by language. English was to function as a language of utility. The Asian "mother tongues"--Mandarin Chinese, Malay, and Tamil--would be the languages of values, providing Singaporeans with what political leaders and local academics commonly called "cultural ballast" or "moral compasses." Stabilized and oriented by traditional Asian values, the Singaporean would be able to select what was useful from the offerings of "Western" culture and to reject that which was harmful. This theory of culture and identity resulted in the effort to teach the "mother tongues" in the schools and to use them as the vehicle for moral education.

In an extension of the effort to create a suitable national identity, in 1989 Singapore's leaders called for a "national ideology" to prevent the harmful drift toward superficial Westernization. The national ideology, which remained to be worked out in detail, would help Singaporeans develop a national identity and bond them together by finding and encouraging core values common to all the country's diverse cultural traditions. Suggested core values included emphasizing community over self, valuing the family, resolving issues through the search for consensus rather than contention, and promoting racial and religious tolerance.

adopted from > Singapore Table of Contents Source: U.S. Library of Congress

*** I go for tea. Well coffee for me! And tea for friends from China who are here<visiting> already - bye! excuse me165.21.154.108 20:51, 4 Oct 2005 (SGT)alien & another time!

see Core values

also identify

ideas

All are born free

Emancipation

All are born equal

All are destined to die

Each and everyone is given a name

Each and everbody has the right to choose

All are accountable to one another

That is basics to all human constitution

But Some may claim
All are born free, but some more freer than others
All are born equal, but some more equal than others
Each and everyone is given an ID plus a name or nickname name too @alias then U choose Ur a.k.a.
Each and everyone has the right, some more right than others
All are destined to die, but some are destined to live as if forever!
All are accountable, but they want other to be given accounts
This is basically what we do to our own constitution

goto:<find out> who am I really? GotoSEE FREEDOM

[edit] Nothing in my hand i bring

I cling

..only to Thy Cross I cling..

what exactly is the spirit of all our core values.?.

It comes from our roots in history of our people whom we all can be proud. If there is one, it is our willingness to survive in spite all obstacles, all odds against us. I remembered when the days when my mother would get up early to go and work in the construction sites as a coolie to feed me and my siblings, however sometimes the Kang towkay would not be able pay her fellow coolies or she wuld be cheated time and again<!>, and with no money to bring home! Yet, we all survive! Singaporeans will always remember these people our forebears had survived and they are our heroes and heroines to recall! The true value of any Singaporean is the ability to overcome our situations and difficulties and survive well. I speak for a lot of us here!

I remembered those days when my Grandfather and grandmother spoke of the Japanese occupation: yet in spite all the bad things around them, they spoke of festival spirit and remembered those good old days to encourage us to go on living. There is a always a silver lining in the dark clouds of hard times: with three and half years of the Japanese occupation. Let's us never forget our indomitable spirit of our forbears !

Today, we have believe and see, and come to share some of the blessings of a wealthy rich and prosperous nation among so many poorer nations surround us, let us then, be thankful and by a real way be generous to share with our neighbors and remember the " fatherless " and those " in need " among our many own people, and those the " have-nots "

This is no other better spirit than this great spirit of generosity which we can learn to cultivate among Singaporeans for ourselves and our children's children !

I would encourage the Garmen even though I don't agree with many of their operating principles and policies, to be what we all Singaporeans really want, a nation of people living in an environment of freedom and openness with the sort of creativity spirit to flourish in our humble spirit of love and kindness with all our surrounding neighbors!

All such values can be cultivated in us when we all as a people are willing to be part of the Great Spirit whom our Creator had put is our souls for ever as long as mankind has a divine purpose and destiny here on earth!

WE will find natural loyalty and a true feelings of wanted here in our own Country, our Singapore [[User:Terry How|: Terri ^talk 01:12, October 8,2005 (UTC)]] 02:11, 6 March 2006 (SGT)

This is no other better spirit than this great spirit of generosity which we can learn to cultivate among Singaporeans for ourselves and our children's children !

WE will find natural loyalty and a true feelings of wanted here in our own Country, our Singapore [[User:Terry How|: Terri ^talk 01:12, October 8,2005 (UTC)]] 02:11, 6 March 2006 (SGT)