Contact Singapore?

The week started off great! Couldn't have it any better as i had a special guest arriving for a short visit. The gang was talking about a Contact Singapore event, which i don't remember i had an invitation to until the day before. My good ol' pal Mervyn dropped me a call telling i had already accepted his invitation previously.

The event was a dinner with the 'Contact Singapore' assistant director and senior manager held on Wednesday (23/05/07) night. Guests invited are the 'usual gang', like Bernard, Lindsay, Mervyn etc the professionals working here in Brisbane. However on the hind side, there are alot more professionals, i know of in Brisbane whom i've talked to, who can't be bothered and who chooses to remain under the radar.

The dinner conversation was light and easy in the beginning. I guess it was their usual way of getting us up to speed on certain things and also to provide us with 'fresh' news. They are also getting us psyched up by giving us sneek peeks into the policies of the Singapore government and making us feel 'appreciated' by the government back home.

Then the drop of the stone into the pond came. Contact Singapore is a government unit alright. From its name we would think that it is meant to keep Singaporeans in touch with things back home or even try to entice us back home. I couldn't be more wrong. They are contacting Singaporeans overseas to try to use us as proxies (or in a uglier word as pawns) to attract 'foreign talents'. They are trying to use us to entice professionals working side by side with us to go work in Singapore and the most important thing is that they must not be Singaporeans. The info pack given on the night seemed a bit more tuned for these 'foreign talents' than for us overseas Singaporeans. A true blue Singaporean would snigger at the numbers they put on the printouts! Ok ok... i didn't snigger i was actually laughing at the numbers.

When I heard of the actual objectives of the dinner i was getting a bit peeved. So overseas Singaporeans aren't talents? So like Singaporeans in Singapore we are now rated of secondary importance? So i dropped an innocent question to the assistant director, "Are overseas Singaporeans considered foreign talents if we were to go back to work in Singapore?". I got a cold, short and 'end of story' reply of no. He never even bothered to explain or entertain me and went on to his objectives.

From that point onwards, I've no interest in any further conversations with the two representatives from Contact Singapore. From what i can see, the others were enjoying themselves for the night. So i just let myself wallow into the true blue Singaporean 'boh chap' mode and just put up a front to entertain the hosts.

At the end, the dinner was paid for courtesy to the Singapore Government! Kudos to them and also thanks for the goodies which i have managed to grabbed!