Post-colonial ruminations

This afternoon, it occurred to me for the first time that I’m living in the land of my former colonial masters. Well, being in Northern Ireland (NI) technically I’m living in the land that had been colonised and subsequently subsumed under my former colonial masters – but basically I’m in the UK, and Singapore was once a colony of the British Empire.

While on JET and interacting with British, Irish, Jamaicans, Australians and Americans, I came to realise that Singaporeans are far less hung up about our colonial past and a lot less aware of issues relating to colonialism. The vast body of literature on post-colonialism would hardly resonate with Singaporeans – in my experience, reading post-colonial academic and fictional works is just like learning to see things from a different point of view.

I can only speculate on why this might be the case. The biggest reason might be that most of us are descended from migrants who came to Singapore only after the British arrived, hence have no sense of having been colonised as our ancestors are not indigenous anyway. It might also be because the history books have told us that Singapore is what is today due to forces set in motion by the arrival of the British – as well as the Scottish actually. Perhaps it’s also because our short history and collective consciousness is more coloured by our separation from Malaysia than anything else – even our occupation by the Japanese due to the incapability of the British to defend us.

These thoughts came to mind due to some very first world problems.

I received the bill for our landline today and was shocked by the huge amount owed. It turns out that calls from landlines are fairly expensive, but we have no choice but to use the landline as our area has abysmal mobile reception. So if we need to make calls from home – which I need to do in my effort to settle in, find work and find ballet classes – we have to use the house phone, and the free talk time from our mobile plans are as good as useless. It made me feel poor, that I’m charged for services that I do not get to utilise fully, and that I’m being over-charged for services that I can use.

Boo. Whinge.