Singapore

A few weeks back I got the chance to go to Singapore for the first time. My dad had been many times before, but he had never brought me along. He always described it as “the shopping mall of Asia” so I fully expected to just see miles of stores and shopping bags. While I am sure that does exist, I learned that Singapore has a wide array of museums and parks, all that I can not wait to check out as the year progresses. Living in Johor gives me the opportunity to go to Singapore more often than the other two locations that YES Abroad students are in because Singapore is literally right across from us. You can see Singapore from our downtown and many joke that if you want to go and not waste your time in the customs line you should just swim across (please don’t in actuality, customs will be angry) What amazed me from the start was how similar America was to Singapore. Just going down the highway and being able to read all of the signs made me feel closer to North Carolina than I had for the past three months. I most definitely texted my natural family excited exclamations as soon as we crossed the border. This trip, I got to go to the Pernakan museum, I highly suggest going if you ever find yourself in Singapore. Here is my reflections from my Instagram (go follow if you want, my username is sejal_mxp): 

When I was younger, one of the many nicknames my parents called me was ‘happa’ which basically means half ‘n half. As a biracial person I have always strongly identified and been proud to be happa. Yesterday, I got to go to the Pernakan Museum in Singapore, a museum solely focused on the history and culture of the mixed raced (generally) Chinese/Malay/Indonesian in South East Asia. It was so interesting to get to learn about a solely mixed race culture and how it was shaped by their ethnic origins. While I myself am not what would be traditionally called pernakan, I felt as though I could relate to the people because I am also biracial. Today especially, I am very happy to be happa :)

On this trip I also got to meet my host mom’s sister and her family. Unlike many in Malaysia, the cousins in Singapore actually grew up speaking English as their first language. I also learned from the older cousin a little about how Singapore taxes their citizens. Apparently, the Singaporean government takes a considerable amount of their citizens income and puts it aside in a makeshift 401 fund. However, according to the cousin, many people do not ever get to see this money because it is only available at a certain point in the citizen’s life, causing many elders to have to continue working much longer than older people in some other countries due to their lack of a sustainable pension. This was really eye opening. Before this conversation I had thought that Singapore was a paradise that did not deal with issues that we do in America. (I don’t know that much about the topic but this we situ seems to be have a good explanation https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehearttruths.com/2012/12/30/singaporeans-this-is-it-this-is-how-our-government-takes-our-money/amp/)
It reminded me not to make assumptions about other places until I actually do the research.