Wednesday, April 23, 2014

More Public Holidays?

It's never an easy job to be integrating outsiders to this land scarce island, especially with this huge influx of outsiders at one go. There's little wonder that there's constantly conflict between the locals and FTs. The most recent one is this one:















photo taken from: facebook (the real singapore)

With overcrowding EVERYWHERE! And the increasing shrink in the size of new homes, there is little space for everyone. People are suffering from claustrophobia. Every wrong step anyone do is gonna trigger some other people.

It seems like nowadays we do not talk about the four major races anymore. Instead, we are always talking about gloablization and Education's ultimate aim is to foster global-ready citizens. In public schools, we can see that there are many many many International students coming from so many many different countries.

With this objective to foster global-ready citizens, we should start off by also celebrating other countries holidays. A good start will be to make Philippines Independence Day - June 12, a public holiday. That way, I think people will be more willing to include them as part of our community as the fifth major race. But wait, it's not fair for them yet, since we celebrate 3 days (I think, or is it less) of public holidays for each ethnic group here. So I scrolled through Wikipedia and hand-pick these 2 more dates:

1) Bonifacio Day - 30 Nov, celebrate the birthday of a National Hero of the Philippines

2) Day of Valour - Commemorates the Fall of Bataan during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, and by extension, the courage of Filipino and American soldiers at the Fall of Corregidor, theBataan Death March and throughout the Second World War

Oh wait, someone just told me we don't just have Pinoys, so these 3 dates for our Indonesian Friends

1) Independence Day - 17 August

2) Day of Silence - 31 March, New Year of Balinese calendar

3) Heroes' Day - 10 Nov, Commemoration of the 1946 Battle of Surabaya

Not forgetting our friends from the Western (I'll just group them under Americans)

1) Independence Day - 4 July

2) Memorial Day - Last Monday in May. Honors the nation's war dead from the Civil War onwards; marks the unofficial beginning of the summer season

3) Columbus Day - Second Monday in October. Honors Christopher Columbus, traditional discoverer of the Americas

I think with these 9 more days of PH, citizens of Singapore will harbour less resent towards the FTs working in Singapore, allowing everyone to come together and live harmoniously as:

















PS: Have I missed out on any countries?