Saturday, January 3, 2009

Experiencing the 'Flatness'

In one of my previous posts, I did mentioned about my thoughts on Thomas Friedman's 'The World is Flat', and about how the real scenarios that are painted in the book, although it seems to be a little too distant for us here in Singapore to fathom, are already taking place all over the world. Well, you know what, I am sure that the employment scenario over here in Singapore is also evolving to what is stated in the book.

In my previous posts, I did mentioned about how the menial tasks that are usually done by locals are slowly but surely taken over by 'expats'. And mind you, we are just not talking about the regular jobs like cleaning and health-industry related jobs here, but more so in other sectors, which used to hire local youths! So what does that leave us? The only sure way now for our youths, and I am talking about people like those of my young charges, to get jobs is for them to also 'upgrade' themselves...or even, to get jobs that are paying them even lesser! Horrifying...yes! But that is how the world is evolving now. It looks like a doomsday scenario when even our kids are not able to get a job behind the counter of a local MacDonalds', but seriously, that is what is happening right now!

Which brings me to my experiences during my recent hiatus to Europe, in which I purposely went on an eating binge at the local fast food outlets of each of the major cities that I visited. And guess what, each of these outlets are manned by what I can consider, non-locals...except for the one in Switzerland. But bearing in mind that the latter is an independent state out of the EU, that situation is more of an outlier than the norm. My point here is that, if things are really evolving as per what the book has mentioned, and if the local employment scenario is to follow with the likes of the industrialised countries, it will be just a matter of time when the local fast food outlet counters, instead of being manned by the likes of a student or an ex-student of mine, I will be instead be greeted 'Good Morning' in an English heavily-accented with Russian perhaps, or worse still, greeted by sign/hand language by a mainland China Chinese, who does not understand English, just like how I experience it when I went to Jalan Kayu for dinner yesterday? :(

No comments: