“The problem is we are yellow, not white.”

This was a comment given by a friend when we were on the topic of dismal service standards in Singapore.

Sad isn’t it, 40 years since we have become a nation, and 42 years since we ceased to be a British colony… we are very much still sub-servient to our past colonial masters, even though they aren’t that anymore.

This reminds me of a local bully, who cut the queue and boarded a taxi. He had a heated and animated argument with the cab driver, who tried to remind him that what he has done isn’t fair to the people in the queue. No one (not even I) raised a finger to help the taxi driver until an angmoh in the queue – in a suit no less – moved forward, pulled the fellow out, and unceremoniously dumped him onto the road. He then turned around and asked the first person in the queue to board the cab, and went back to his place in the queue.

And what did the local bully do? He didn’t even dare mouth a word, when we could all hear him swearing at the cab driver in a string of hokkien vulgarities directed at the mother’s private part a few moments before. The bully quickly left the scene, without even daring to look back.

So much for ‘nation building’ when even local bullies are afraid of our former colonial masters.