Happy Birthday Singapore!!
Yay to another long weekend! It's Singapore's independence day tomorrow. We're celebrating Singapore's 55th birthday. We're a pretty young country having been part of Malaysia before being colonized by Britain, occupied by the Japanese army, merged with Malaysia at one point before separation from Malaysia and becoming our own country. And being a tiny country with just about 600km2 of land back then (now 721.5km2 due to land reclaimation), and no natural resources at all, we relied greatly on trade and healthy relationship with other countries. Our only natural resources, as always claimed by Lee Kuan Yew, is our people, thus high emphasis on education and grooming of its people.
I'm proud to be Singaporean always, though overseas, I get alot of...
"Where is Singapore?"⇒ We're a little red dot in the map, at the end of Malaysia, one degree north of the equator.
"Is it part of Malaysia/China/America/Europe?" ⇒No. We are an independent country.
"Why can you speak English/Mandarin so well?"⇒Because Singapore's national language is Malay, but the official language used for formal instruction in school/government is English. In addition, we are taught our mother-tongue in school based on our ethnicity. So most of us speak English plus one mother tongue, and bits of dialects, Malay and Tamil.
"Are all Singaporeans of Chinese ethnicity?"⇒No... most of Singaporeans are migrants from the colonization period. Malays are the indigenous people but they now only take up 15% of the population, with ethnic Chinese being the most at 76%, ethnic Indians around 7%, and the rest are ethnic Eurasians and a mix of other ethnic groups. Most of us have lived generations in Singapore and have already lost touched with roots where our migrant ancestors came from... so it is always weird when people ask "did you come from China/India etc?"
I actually enjoy and have alot of fun teaching about Singapore's multi-racial, multi-relligion, multi-ethnic, multilingual society when I was on JET in Japan interacting with the Japanese teachers and kids as well as other teachers from other countries. We are a pretty unique country in our own way after all.
Sharing one of my favorite National Day songs "We are Singapore".
Click to viewEvery year there is a new National Day Parade song released. My favorites are still the old classic ones, some of which are from even before I'm born, like "We are Singapore" is from 1987!
烧包成长日记
Our little ShaoBao is growing well! Today is exactly one week since he came home with us. He's napping away as I type this after a morning of play. He's really adorable. He now knows his name, "sit" "peepee" and "poopoo" and is able to do his businesses on the balcony by himself (with abit of accidents here and there occasionally). Really one smart pup. Now we're trying to teach him "shake hand" and "wait" while also trying to stop him from mouthing/biting too much. Most of the time he really just licks and mouths gently, but when he gets too excited, he sometimes nips abit too hard, which is still fine since his teeth are still tiny, but I would still hope to teach him not to bite. Tips and advice welcomed!
Shaobao's instagram here!
I really cant wait for him to have his 3rd vaccination later this month and then we can bring him to meet Yuki and other doggos!
Food
My 2nd attempt at making claypot chicken rice using my rice cooker. It turned out even tastier this time because I added more soy sauce for flavoring and salted fish! It is so good 彼 finished a whole bunch of it. Looking forward to cooking more of this in future.
Cai Png aka mixed vegetable rice. 彼 got me my favorite food - steam egg, stir-fry brinjal and sweet-sour pork~
Bought this from taobao! I've been keen on trying all the China instant food. I love this, it has a vinegar and chilli mixture taste, both of which I love. 彼 isn't a fan of vinegar so he passed on it.
Mala hotpot! 彼 dabaoed from AMK. Is really good~~