{"id":4562,"date":"2017-11-14T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T15:07:54","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T19:07:54","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-singapore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-singapore\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From Singapore … Featuring Camillia @ Twenty Three Pages and Jia @ Film & Nuance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nIt’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last week’s  So Your Character is from Bangladesh … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span>
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<\/span>Disclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts are as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/span>
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Hi everyone! My name is Camillia and I am a book blogger over on Twenty Three Pages. I live in Singapore and I am a journalist. I am currently doing an internship with my country\u2019s flagship newspaper, The Straits Times and I am waiting to go to university soon where I will pursue journalism. In my spare time, besides reading, I love to write poetry and to binge watch the SacconeJolys and TV shows that have ended years ago.<\/span>
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<\/span> Hey guys! I\u2019m Jia Wei from Singapore and I live in Bukit Timah which is in the Central-West region of Singapore. Tennis is my first love and I live for indie and independent films. I love watching and reviewing movies as well. I love Literature, reading literary criticism, listening to jazz and rap, and hanging out with friends. I started university in August. ?<\/span>
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<\/span> You can find my blog at www.filmandnuance.wordpress.com where I write film criticism and movie reviews. Sometimes, I write poetry, book reviews and talk about anything from music to life. <\/span>Thanks Victoria for having this multi-national\/multi-cultural platform that not only creates characters that are a more accurate reflection of their social\/cultural habitus but also raises awareness and promotes diversity.<\/span>
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\nWhat do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
\nCamillia:<\/b> This is going to sound really weird but Singapore is very well known for being clean, green and strict. So our country is very clean. We have rubbish bins every few feet and you actually get fined pretty badly for tossing rubbish on the street and littering. That\u2019s something I feel is quite unique because I\u2019ve never really been to another country that is so clean. I mean I\u2019m sure there are but I just have yet to see it.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWe also have a lot of greenery here. We may be a concrete jungle but our government has done a lot to incorporate greenery and nature into everything, which in my opinion makes everything so pretty.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nFinally, Singapore will fine you for literally everything. There are even fines for drinking alcohol in a public place after 10pm and chewing gum. Gum is actually not allowed here. It\u2019s not sold and you get fined if you\u2019re caught with it.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nJia: <\/b>Singapore is unique in the sense that we\u2019re still trying to determine and define our true identity. We\u2019re a young country without the experiences of real crises that adequately challenges and forges the identity of a Singaporean collective and narrative. I\u2019ll just say it right now that I would really much prefer to be living in Europe for many personal reasons but there are things to be grateful for living here. Marina Bay Sands Hotel (pictured) has replaced the Merlion statue as the public face of Singapore and it\u2019s a cool place to check out. There are nice restaurants and bars to check out in Clark Quay and Orchard.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nTell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/b><\/div>\n
\nCamillia: <\/b>Singapore is very hot and humid so being outdoors especially in the afternoon can sometimes be a nightmare. We are also a very small country (a tiny red dot on the world map) so we don\u2019t exactly have the most amount of space.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nThat said though, I think we have made use of what space we have quite well. One of my favorite places to go is the beach with my family or sometimes the airport, which I know is really strange. I love the airport because all my life my family has gone there for meals and it just holds a very special place in my heart. Our airports also happen to be one of the best in the world so that helps.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nI also really like Gardens by the Bay. It\u2019s basically this huge greenhouse and flower dome and we usually go there with my grandma who loves plants. We used to take my grandpa too when he was alive so I really love it there even though it\u2019s very touristy.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nJia: <\/b>It\u2019s pretty clean over here in general. <\/span>There\u2019s lots of trees wherever you go. I love the tennis court because I play lots of Tennis when I can. Clark Quay is pretty cool for its nightlife, bars and clubs and restaurants. Blu Jazz is my favorite bar. Orchard Road is the Fifth Avenue of Singapore and it\u2019s pretty cool place to hang once in a while. Paulaner is a nice place with great German food and beer. Jones the grocer at Mandarin Hotel has some chill vibes and Din Tai Fung (pictured) at Paragon is my favorite Chinese restaurant because it\u2019s has a very modern yet cozy interior (wood, rock and stone interior). The food is awesome as well. Extra points for getting to see the kitchen crew in the middle of the restaurant who prepare their signature Xiao Long Bao\/meat dumplings. <\/span><\/div>\n
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\nDefinitely, check out Fat Boys for the most delicious burgers and the Far East Plaza chain lets you customize! For movies, I love going to The Projector which screens foreign selections, indie, and independent films. It\u2019s the go-to place for indie film and has this old-school yet hipster d\u00e9cor with beautiful fan-art posters, bean-bag seats and film selections that seriously put mainstream cinemas in Singapore to shame. But sometimes, I just enjoy relaxing with a good book and some tea at home. <\/span><\/div>\n
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\nTell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/b><\/div>\n
\nCamillia: <\/b>Singapore is famous for our food. We have a lot of really awesome food here though a lot of it is hawker food, which in general can be considered quite unhealthy. <\/span><\/div>\n
\nSo when I go out to a hawker center, for me that\u2019s like going to McDonald’s. It\u2019s just like you accept that you\u2019re going to have an unhealthy meal.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nMy personal favorites are chicken rice, fried kway teow and hokkien mee. Chicken rice is steamed or roasted chicken with rice that is cooked in a special way. Kway teow is basically flat noodles that are fried with black sauce and seafood and it\u2019s so unhealthy but it tastes amazing. Hokkien mee is only slightly healthier. It\u2019s yellow noodles in gravy with seafood. It\u2019s delicious with chili. <\/span><\/div>\n
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\nJia: <\/b>Singapore is famous for its hawker food which is basically food that hawker stalls in Singapore sell. It\u2019s cheap and really gives you a sense of the raw and flavourful profile of \u2018street\u2019 food in Singapore. There\u2019s just so many of these awesome places to try out and just too many to name. If you don\u2019t mind putting on the calories, seek them out! I love Laksa (pictured), which is this spicy noodle dish with a curry-based chili soup. I love Char Kway Teow as well which is an indulgent but absolutely smashing dish with fried rice-cake strips, eggs, and various other things. For me though, my favorites are more Westernized and less local. I love steak, mac and cheese, and burgers ?<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nTell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/b><\/div>\n
\nCamillia: <\/b>In Singapore, we have this thing called \u2018Singlish\u2019. Basically, it\u2019s a mix of Chinese, Tamil, Malay, and English. This strange mixture, which has developed through the years, has created a sort of language that is so uniquely Singaporean that you will be able to pick it up anywhere in the world.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nWords like \u2018Lah\u2019 and \u2018Lepak\u2019 and \u2018Shiok\u2019 are words that unite us. It\u2019s quite funny because I\u2019ve heard many foreigners come to Singapore and they try to use Singlish but there\u2019s just something off every time. A lilt in their voice or the way they roll their tongue. They just can never replicate it unless they\u2019ve grown up in Singapore.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\nJia: <\/b>The funny thing about Singapore is that because we\u2019re so multi-cultural, Malay and Indian slang is often mixed with Chinese dialect jargon, that the English we speak in Singapore has its own unique vernacular and style. Some say it\u2019s what makes us Singaporeans though I\u2019m certainly not proud of it. Still, I can\u2019t help but laugh (in a self-deprecating way) when foreigners don\u2019t get what we\u2019re trying to say. I don\u2019t really have a \u2018Singaporean\u2019 accent when I speak but sometimes fall into it when talking with friends. \u2018Lah\u2019 precedes statements when we\u2019re exasperated or lamenting about something\u2026which is something Singaporeans love to do. <\/span><\/div>\n
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\nSometimes, we leave basic grammar at the door, it\u2019s almost as if when we got our independence from Malaysia in 1965, that\u2019s where we also bid adieu to proper language. \u2018Where got\u2019 is often used when trying to say \u2018Really?\u2019 or \u2018Is that so?\u2019 and \u2018Why you so like that?\u2019 sounds ridiculous but it\u2019s a ubiquitous phrase used to convey \u2018why are you behaving like that?\u2019. Fascinating thing is that parts of minority languages (mainly Malay) have been integrated into the day-to-day speech that almost everyone (Chinese majority) also use them from time-to-time. <\/span><\/div>\n
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