the price of success

Hot on the press right now is the success of Singapore striking silver in the Olympics with our foreign talent scheme. I congratulate the Singaporean team effort and applaud them for their accolades.

That aside, I will not backlog the amount of debates going on in the papers and online forums of the brickbats of foreign talent is yadda yadda. If you are bored, go read them, each side of the fence having their own detractors and supporters.

My focus however does tread on the topical issue of foreign talent. Scholarships are being offered to more overseas scholars to bond them to our country, in the hope of them being chained down to Singapore, of some even willing to sacrifice their own mother land citizenship.

Granted that Singapore has a small talent pool of say 20,000 soon-to-be local students each year (numbers are just an estimation), and only 200 makes it to the elite universities, the rest of the cohort attends local universities or sponsors themselves overseas.

Also granted that all of us cannot be academically inclined, naturally those that are financially strapped are unable to afford tertiary education and move out into the big bad working world.

I believe that are many local aspiring students, each wanting to do well, craving for success and each embarking on the opportunity to strive through the hardship of getting a breakthrough like American Idol.

However, the sad case is as such seeing scholarships being offered to foreign students, each not having a strong inkling of what is Singapore made of, how our forefathers churn out their own success to create a 1965 backwater town to a 2008 bustling cosmopolitan city. In a way, they are here to emulate the success of striking gold, striking rich of having the guile of venture from where they originate tom come to stress-bound Singapore.

For that, I give them credit and hats off to them.

The only thing I cannot stand, is the fact that these scholars are ungrateful. Reading up news articles of same scenarios of mine, a personal encounter or chat with such a scholar really made me infuriated.

The bond holds them down to Singapore for 6 years or so, but essentially they are not proud to be Singaporean. The person was not proud to be associated with what carried him/her to success and is thinking of various mechanics on how to break or circumvent the bond breaking.

Not to digress, bond breaking happens to both Singaporean and foreigners alike, but that aside, I have acknowledged it as existent and each has their own circumstances.

The plight I am trying to bring forth is why support foreign talent that are here to seize the opportunity and abscond when they can whereas local talent has more of its roots here and essentially want to establish themselves here.

On a PR note, I know it is not the case for many and I am not trying to draw conclusion that one encounter is the mould of all scholars but it seems a prevalent cases from what is echoed around the walls and the black print I get to read when I do my morning dump.

I just find it very saddening that our own parents taxpaying money is to support ingrates rather than their future offspring.

It is understandable that if there are better opportunities out there besides our little red dot. And if many could leave for better options, who would be silly to not escape from the coop. But to weigh the scales of a true blue Singaporean and a make-shift Singaporean who’s here for the opportunities, who do you think is likely to escape. Again.

P.S. I understand it’s a dog eat dog world out there, a desperate climb to the highest rung of the ladder, but I do have this hope of humanity, that it is not about chasing for top dollar and #1 distinctions, but I understand what the government is trying to do is for the goodwill of the prosperity of future generations, but maybe on this particular note, the result has turned out rather flawed =(