Lately there has been a big drive in Singapore to ‘Speak Good English’ and radio deejays have been discussing whether we should all be speaking proper English instead of the Singapore bastardisation of the language which we call ‘Singlish’. What heartens me is that there are people who ring up these radio stations and insist that Singlish is part of our identity and should remain for the long stay.

When I was little growing up, my parents put me in Speech and Drama classes, I took part in Oratorical competitions in school and had a short stint with debate. I used to turn my nose up at Singlish and think it was such a poor man’s language, if you can even call it a language. However through the years, I’ve acquired a certain fondness for the mish-mash of dialects and languages that make up Singlish. When I was reading Law in Manchester I realized how much Singlish has become a part of my life. Hell, I realised how much I loved Singapore and all her idiosyncracies.

I had dreams of travelling the world and staying overseas when I was younger, but somehow my time in the UK made me appreciate what I’m proud to call my home. When I’m away from Singapore, I enjoy the experiences overseas and the memories I take back, but only when I’m back does my soul settle and do I feel that this really is where I want to be.

There has been so much criticism about Singapore and how to improve the country and her people, which is never a bad thing. I think people should always be thinking of how to improve the better good of a society. There are some things that drive me crazy about Singapore but these oftentimes are the silliest things I miss most about home. Singaporeans are known to love shopping and eating. Ask most Singaporeans on the street what their past time is and it would definitely be one, if not both of that. I personally am not big on shopping, but I do love my food. Many of my non-Singaporean friends laugh at how much I love my food and sometimes mock me for that, but the truth is we’re no different from the British who love their ale, the Americans who love their reality tv and the Australians who love their sport.

Ever since I’ve gotten back to Singapore, I seem to have become super defensive about anything bad said about my country. It’s one thing to have a short little bitch session with fellow Singaporeans about this or that that annoys us about Singapore, but when any non-Singaporean decides to have a go at the country, for some reason I take it personally. It becomes such that they’re not criticising the country or random people in the country, but that they’re coming up to me and telling me the meal I cooked for them just tasted awful (I think the food analogy just proves how much I love my food!).

As it is so many things in Singapore have changed from when I was a kid. Old buildings have given way to new fangled malls. More and more open spaces are cleared to build a new apartment and the history of my beloved country has made way for urbanisation and a giant drive to be a hub in every conceivable industry. I guess I can see the logic of it. As a country, Singapore has no natural resources to speak of, hence nothing by way of commodities to offer the world. So to get people down we have to be snazzier, louder, more over-the-top. I get that. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that my heart aches because it feels like my childhood is slowly being erased and flattened just so there’d be another Gucci or Prada that we can shop at.

So when people talk about doing away with Singlish altogether, it breaks my heart. I can make peace with old buildings giving way to new, a country’s heart at the end of the day is really in its people. But that we want to take a country’s worth of people and tear them down like some decrepit warehouse and make spanking new malls out of them, that troubles me. Who would we be when that happens and what would we stand for? A country full of people who speak with a fake accent just so the world would understand them? I dread to think of that day and I pray in my heart of hearts that that day wouldn’t arrive before I die.