Singapore Immigration Problems of the Curry Kind.
"If you think Australia has immigration problems, consider the atmosphere in Singapore right now, where local Chinese, Indian and Malay Singaporeans are all equally fed up with a large intake of foreigners in recent years, including some northern Indians considered insensitive to the largely southern Indian Tamils of Singapore, and Chinese from the People's Republic of China seen to be culturally very different from Singaporean Chinese, who often owe much more of their cultural makeup, and in many cases their ancestry too, to their Southeast Asian environment and history, than to the land of their forefathers, China.
Things really came to a head the past week or so, after a PRC Chinese immigrant family knocked on their Singapore-Indian neighbours' door in an apartment block and asked them to stop cooking curry because it was too smelly! The worst bit was that a government-backed community mediation group then actually advised the Singaporean family to cook only when the Chinese neighbours were out, a decision that has outraged Singaporeans.
Food is a religion in Singapore, and curry is a national obsession, across the races, so this incident has caused huge offence and generated extremely creative protests across the Internet (as well as deliberate public "Curry Cook-ins" in public spaces).
A well known satirical webmaster, Mr Brown, and team, have concocted a gentler attach, a whole new version of Don McLean's classic, Vincent, better known as "Starry Starry Night" song, now aka "Curry Curry Night"!"
One man's meat and another man's poison. Maybe they could have fought back with smelly toufu or belacan. Frying salted fish would help to neutralise the curry smell. Or durians.
ReplyDeleteThe better solution is to share your dish with your neighbour and if they get hooked, then they would not stop you cooking the dish.