One evening in Singapore I met up with a friend from undergrad and his fiancee to get Chili Crab. In case you didn’t know, Chili Crab is one of the most popular dishes to get in Singapore. Amidst a pool of spicy chili sauce, a succulent whole crab is cooked to perfection. Thanks to a custom in Singapore in which napkins are often not provided for meals (though moist towellets are), this is probably one of the messiers meals you can have. Think BBQ ribs, and multiply the messiness by a few factors and you’ll start to get a sense of how hard it is to eat this food without getting food stains all over your clothing.
My friend, originally from Singapore, speaks perfect American Engish. And so I was surprised during the meal when he spoke to waiters in an accent. Such was my introduction to Singlish, a Singaporean version of English which blends our language with Chinese, Malay, and other languages. This is the language which includes the famous “lah” suffix which is sometimes added to the end of English words. The accent can be so pronounced, sometimes, that a Singaporean speaking in Singlish may not be understood by an American.
I commented to my friend on his “accent” and made fun of him a bit about it. It was only after I got back to my hotel that I started thinking, who am I to call his accent an “accent?” Said differently, to Singlish speakers, someone from America has an accent – an American accent. I don’t know why, but I felt like this realization was significant. You can go through life looking at the world through your own lense and think that anything outside of your experience is different. But I think it is important to realize that other people are doing the same thing, looking at life through their own lenses, and to them, you are the one that is different. Kind of makes you wonder what the right way is of doing something (like pronouncing a language) vs the wrong way. Or if there even is a “right” way.
Lessons Learned
–Chili Crab is amazing! Bring your own napkins if you ever have the chance to try it
–Your way of viewing the world is not necessarily the right way. Or the wrong way. It is just a way
–By this logic, there may not be any right way of viewing the world, in fact. Just different ways of viewing the world. I suppose that introducing morals into “right” vs “wrong” is a way to help ensure
What are your thoughts about right vs wrong? Is there a way to define “right” independent of your own world view?
The Jewish version of morality is: “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you.” The Christian version of morality is “Do unto others as you’d have them do to you.”
The way you do it, or don’t do it, is just “style”.
Makes sense to me!