encounter in the fish bowl

this will make a lot of people happy, especially the sea culture night guys...

i was in the fish bowl yesterday night, trying to scan some stuff. a caucasian interrupted me in the midst of my work, and told me that he was very impressed by the show we put up last saturday during our southeast asian culture night, especially the skit, which he thought protrayed the singaporean education system very well. he said that he was quite ignorant of the system before, and the skit helped him understand it so much better.

we then conversed about how the education system in singapore is a little rigid, and bemoaned the lack of a good liberal arts education system. i told him that such a situation is inevitable, given our small population size and the fragility of our economy, and the need for the government to optimize the education system to channel the best talents into what it deemed viable: this meant that the focus was on producing engineers in the 80s and 90s, biotechnological researchers and IT specialists in this decade. the inculcation of liberal arts, and the appreciation of it, took a back seat, and will continue to do so for some time to come. it is heartening, though, i told him, that the government is actively promoting singapore as the cultural and performing arts centre of S.E.A., although the methods of such promotion is skeptical at times.

i was really, really surprised and happy to hear what he said. this goes to show that the promotion of our culture is successful. the fact that he would come up to me out of the blue to congratulate me on a job well done says a lot about how he thought about the show, and singaporeans in particular. i can only hope that we will be able to reach out to more local americans, and help them understand who we are and what we represent.

it is a happy day for me =)