One evening in Singapore I met up with a friend from undergrad and his fiancee to get Chili Crab.\u00a0 In case you didn’t know, Chili Crab is one of the most popular dishes to get in Singapore.\u00a0 Amidst a pool of spicy chili sauce, a succulent whole crab is cooked to perfection.\u00a0 Thanks to a custom in Singapore in which napkins are often not provided for meals (though moist towellets are), this is probably one of the messiers meals you can have.\u00a0 Think BBQ ribs, and multiply the messiness by a few factors and you’ll start to get a sense of how hard it is to eat this food without getting food stains all over your clothing.<\/p>\n
My friend, originally from Singapore, speaks perfect American Engish.\u00a0 And so I was surprised during the meal when he spoke to waiters in an accent.\u00a0 Such was my introduction to Singlish, a Singaporean version of English which blends our language with Chinese, Malay, and other languages.\u00a0 This is the language which includes the famous “lah” suffix which is sometimes added to the end of English words.\u00a0 The accent can be so pronounced, sometimes, that a Singaporean speaking in Singlish may not be understood by an American.<\/p>\n
I commented to my friend on his “accent” and made fun of him a bit about it.\u00a0 It was only after I got back to my hotel that I started thinking, who am I to call his accent an “accent?”\u00a0 Said differently, to Singlish speakers, someone from America has an accent – an American accent.\u00a0 I don’t know why, but I felt like this realization was significant.\u00a0 You can go through life looking at the world through your own lense and think that anything outside of your experience is different.\u00a0 But I think it is important to realize that other people are doing the same thing, looking at life through their own lenses, and to them, you are the one that is different.\u00a0 Kind of makes you wonder what the right way is of doing something (like pronouncing a language) vs the wrong way.\u00a0 Or if there even is a “right” way.<\/p>\n
Lessons Learned<\/u>
\n–Chili Crab is amazing!\u00a0 Bring your own napkins if you ever have the chance to try it
\n–Your way of viewing the world is not necessarily the right way.\u00a0 Or the wrong way.\u00a0 It is just a way
\n–By this logic, there may not be any right way of viewing the world, in fact.\u00a0 Just different ways of viewing the world.\u00a0 I suppose that introducing morals into “right” vs “wrong” is a way to help ensure <\/p>\n
What are your thoughts about right vs wrong?\u00a0 Is there a way to define “right” independent of your own world view?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One evening in Singapore I met up with a friend from undergrad and his fiancee to get Chili Crab.\u00a0 In case you didn’t know, Chili Crab is one of the most popular dishes to get in Singapore.\u00a0 Amidst a pool of spicy chili sauce, a succulent whole crab is cooked to perfection.\u00a0 Thanks to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"geo":null,"yoast_head":"\n