nursing an immigrant mindset
January 9th, 2005 by boon
i don’t have anything against the growing trend of chinese malaysians migrating abroad. quite a common thing now are students who have studied abroad and intend to convert their student visas to permanent residentship. i suppose this is partly due to growing up in an environment where we’re told that our country is still developing, so it may be worthwhile to take our stuff and settle down somewhere else.
national issues amongst post baby boomers are on the low, these days. test our knowledge of our judicial system, past heroes from the liberalization from imperialists, literary works or just about anything that’s not related to food… and you shouldn’t be surprised to find that we don’t really know much. we have legal documents establishing our status as citizens, but sometimes it’s a question whether we really treat this place as home.
is there a need for a change? i suppose it could do this country some good. moaners and complainers don’t exactly make good citizens. like, i decided to finally stop driving like a maniac on the roads. 
it was fun while it lasted, but pissing people off isn’t really what i set out to do when i started driving years ago. however, signalling when i turn, making room for peds and motorbikes, and generally sustaining a safe driving lifestyle… wasn’t really on my agenda either. but i’ve got to start somewhere.
i don’t really know whether it is beneficial or not to remove myself from this context. the past 20 odd years of my life has involved a lot of consumption, and i haven’t really grown to enjoy giving anything towards the national cause. i just recently started paying taxes. i suppose i should read up on what the government does with my money. it was a learning experience to find that americans my age were worried where their tax money went to, and about who they were going to be voting for… at the state level as well as the federal.
my take on this is that maybe we should all find out more about how we can make this place a better place to live. sure, it may be easier to just ship out and graze on foreign soil. but i do believe that we should give this country a chance.