there're 2 ways to look at singapore's first medal in 48 years i guess.

and both of which were voiced by 2 separate friends yesterday.

the first, is that the members of our silver winning table tennis team are all from china anyway, so what's the big deal about the chinese winning a silver (again).

and my other friends retorted that we should embrace these 'new citizens', to quote the pm, as our own. afterall, didn't our ancestors come from china too?

i tend to lean towards the first view more though, seeing that i feel no sense of pride whatsoever despite ending a 48 years medal drought. this contrasts sharply against how i felt when our football team went further than we ever did in the world cup qualifiers. despite us losing to perennial asain powerhouses uzbekistan and saudi arabia, we went down kicking and screaming all the way. and somehow, despite the team having 'naturalised singaporeans' too, i felt that they truly represent me. that they are truly singaporeans.

maybe the government should declare a national public holiday in celebration of this medal.

pm lee defended the foreign talent policy saying that china has a population 300 times larger than ours, and thus, for every 300 medals that china wins, singapore gets to win only one.

maybe.

but if that is so, then i'd rather that the one medal that we bring back be brought back by a singaporean, someone that the nation can identify as one of her own, as one of us.

but then comes the difficult part. how to you define nationality in its full nebulosity, caused by globalisation, and a willingness bordering on eagerness on our part to hire talent to don the national shirt to hopefully, shorten the odds of 300-1 of us winning a medal.

edited*

anyway, i just saw this off mr brown's webpage, with singaporean lee jia wei saying: "自己是个北京人, 又是中国人。 我希望能在自己的本土， 自己的地盘上， 能够取得一枚奖牌。".

so much for national pride huh.

anyway, does this mean that i won't get my public holiday now?