What is your race?

Recently(or not so recently), the Singapore Government has decided to let its citizens to choose the race they want to put on their NRIC for those born of mix marriages instead of the old rule where you follow your father's race.

Firstly, what is the government's motive for doing this? There have been complaints that a person’s race is causing restraints on certain people. For example, an Indian Muslim girl whose father is an Indian and mother is Malay and chooses too adopted Islam as her religion cannot apply for financial assistance because he or she is an Indian and should go to the Indian association for funding. With the new ruling, she would be able to choose her race as Malay and hence be able to apply for funding.

This topic is very relevant to me because I too have been born from a mix marriage. My father is an Indian while my mother is a Chinese but are both Christians. My father said that when me and my siblings create our NRIC, we should choose Chinese as our race as chinese due to HDB’s ethnic integration policy because Indian is a minority race and it would be easier to get a flat in the future as Chinese. Also, we take Chinese as our second language, it would make sense to be a Chinese. Although the government keeps on emphasizing that every race is equal. HDB’s ethnic integration policy provides a loophole.

I do understand that there are advantages to be a Chinese instead of Indian. However, in my opinion, I would feel guilty to discard my Indian heritage altogether. It would be like not respecting my ancestors which my school is always emphasizing (饮水思源). Therefore, I am in a dilemma which race I should choose next year when I create my NRIC.

Fortunately, the Singapore government decided to allow people to carry both races in their NRIC. Therefore, I would be able to choose Indian-Chinese. That I feel would be the best decision for me. It (I feel) would be able to describe me perfectly without feeling bad to any race.

On the whole, I am glad the government listened to his citizens and came to this decision.

New Year= New Blog

This would be the first time I blogged in ages. This blog would be still for academic purposes except that this year there would be one major change in my blog. There has to be a FOCUS.

Well, to me that's very difficult because if you read the posts I posted last year(http://www.kickingking.blogspot.com), it was quite random. Sometimes I posted about my life, sometimes about school, sometimes about current affairs. However, this year, I can only choose one specific thing to post about because to have a good blog, you must be focused on something. That is a quality of all famous blogs( which I just realised this year).

Therefore, this year the only thing I will be posting about would be current affairs. Well, the main reason would be there would always be stuff to post about. It would not be good to post about my hobbies because I don't think I can do more than two posts on them.

Yeah, so look out for more posts on Current Affairs!

(P.S. Another change this year would be that I need at least 25 followers for this blog. So please do not hesitate to become one. Thanks!)