Tuesday, March 22, 2005
A dog-eat-dog world

The two main Universities in Singapore, NUS and NTU had just made a vibrant and successful open house over the past few weeks. I should say credit must be given to both Universities for the attractions they carved to invite people, the elites i suppose, to their open house. But in any case, I think NTU have the edge now after enagaging with Perfect 10 98.7FM in what seems to be a collaboration that seem to benefit almost all the parties invovled including the radio listeners.

Yet Open houses, is just a superficial way of knowing a school and in this matter---NUS and NTU. Verily I suppose, those aspiring JC students would have flocked to these 2 open houses in a hope to a catch a glimmer of their "future" school. Pardon me here, I am not undermining the calibre and traditionally upper-classed bunch of students, but I am pointing out to the harsh reality we, in particular, the Malays are facing.

There are many hidden agendas in this well-governed country of Singapore. Yet, when Malay was made the national language after being granted Independance by the Federal Governement in KL, the language itself has played little or no significance in the realm of politics, economic and social aspects here in Singapore. The supposed national tongue, was made second language in the form of Mother tongue which 70% of students loathe it when they reached higher levels. In fact, efforts have been made to prosper the language of Mandarin through ads and campaigns islandwide.

But, this is not to say that Malay is not a celebrated language here in Singapore. Nonetheless, on each year, a month was reserved to be Bulan Bahasa which, i must deliberately emphasised, is rather a tame effort by the government. Such unprecedented events, are only being participated by students in particular embracing the Malay Elective Programme(MLEP) which is only offered by Tampines Juniour College. Hey, i am not promoting my school here but those in the stream of MLAO or MLA are deprived of such privilages. It is, in other words, organising events like Bulan Bahasa specially reserved for the "elites". Yes, the Berita Harian do promote events Islanwide such as launch of books and dictionaries, (KAMUS NUSANTARA was launched last year during Bulan Bahasa), story telling at libraries but sadly, attendance have been at appalingly low rates. In fact, the people of the race themselves are not bothered by such activities.

Efforts have already been made to surpress the beautiful language of Malay itself. The recent university criterion had already dismissed the usage of MT for entry in local universities. More importantly, one can in fact can afford to fail or obtain a D7, which is the bare minimum to enter local universities. Why is this so? It's simple, Chinese is extensively a tough language to learn.

But why? Here you are in Singapore, with Malay language being painted as National Language in National Education boards, but you have the option of screwing it up because you need to strike a balance with other races. The French, for instance, are extremely proud of their language. If you happen to be in France and speak English with them, the "universal language", then i believe you will either get hammered by the Monseiurs or you are saying your last prayers in English. Why the Malays cant take pride in something they have close relations with? Their language!

Back to the original topic itself, ok2...visiting the university open houses is in fact a useful act, wise i supposed because it gives you an idea what requirments are needed, the course syllabus, the FEES and many more. Yet, as i have state earlier, it's just a superficial act. You are only scratching the surface of what seems to be a deep and intriguing journey that awaits you in Uni life. At the end of it, if you walked out of the Open house, and you made up your mind of going there, it is not just a matter of saying it, you need to work extremely hard. You need the drive, determination to go along with your hopes and aspirations, but you Malays out there, can you really achieve it after visiting such Open houses. It takes a tall order to be in there, and please dont joke that the only time you're in NUS and NTU is during their open houses, instead of being an undergraduate there. Please do work hard, as the Unis here do set quotas for the entry of Malay students every year. Its like in the Export-Import trade you see. For example, every year, they set a number of Malay students that are allowed to enter their Unis..and their cant be excessive number of Malays as it could only lead to Unfavorable Balance of Trade, viewed in purely economic terms. This could in turn leads to Balance of Payment Disequilibrium and thus, some Malays, which considerably obtain ok2 result are deprived of their places in the Unis.

So, for those of you who have visited the Universities, please make it a point to make it there again next time, as an undergraduate. I shall pray for all of you to be a successful group of people.

Anak alaf tiga...Generasi terakhir manusia~