the odyssey that is singapore

As I write this, 14 senior IE-EMG students from Mapua are currently in Singapore for their one year OJT.

It started badly.

The housing was not up to the taste of some of the students. Apparently, the beds where these students slept house bed bugs too. In other words, may surot :- )

Let the games begin :)

This is not about who did not do their jobs. Nor is it about "less than virtuous" businessmen who are out there to make money from unsuspecting customers. This is after all, for their customers, is not yet the "real world". This less than perfect situation happened while being enrolled in a school-supported On-the-Job Training Program :- )

This not about that.

This is, however, about how our Asian counterparts see us, Filipinos.

For students reading this, this might come as a surprise to you but, I think, it is better for you to know it now rather than later. You see, Singaporeans signal their arrival to the world and that they have made it BIG by having a Filipino as their house help. Period. Don't blink. You read it right :-)

Of course, they appreciate Filipinos for other and many things too but we, as a people, play THAT peculiar role in their society.

Let me be clear on this. I am not demeaning the role of being a house help. I lived and grew up in a home where we have house help, a kasam-bahay. I respect all the manangs that made our home their home too. I truly believe that our country will be worse if we did not have the manangs who faithfully and dutifully serve in our respective homes.

Ok?

Now, this is my itch to scratch. Singaporeans actually could not believe why we, the Philippines, allow and sends her best, college graduates, to their shores to become a house help. This "exodus" of sort have been going on now for years. And because of this, there are sectors in the Singaporean society that have started to treat us, Filipinos, as a whole, as a people to look down on.

So, for the 14 students who are out there in the country that's probably 20 times bigger than our per capita GDP at PPP but pales in comparison to our natural resources, if the situation is not as comfy as home, you can blame those who came before you. For they have done a job that made our Singaporean brothers treat us the way they are treating you now - housing you, the Philippines' next generation, in houses where you have to share your bed with surots :- )

Or you can get angry and do a superb and excellent job worthy of Lee Kuan Yew and of Jose Rizal that you make our Singaporean brothers feel embarrassed and ashamed for housing you in such conditions because they have misread and underestimated Filipino version 2010!!!

I hope and pray you choose and decide to do the later.

You are all in my prayers.

"... why think like mere men!"