Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow

If you’ve been following food bloggers on twitter, you’d sometimes read grouses from food bloggers about new citizens. In real life situations, when we (the team at RERG) encounter xenophobic people, we always stand up and speak out against xenophobia, or sexism, ageism, racism and homophobia. But since our tone may be misconstrued online, we keep quiet – and then we feel guilty about not speaking up.

Food is supposed to unite people, so by having this entry, we hope that other food bloggers and readers consider that new citizens are humans too. They feel hurt when you insult them. We as humans all want better lives and they come to Singapore to seek that better life. They contribute to Singapore too. So before you say anything bad about new citizens, consider if you’d like it if the same thing is said of you.

“Yucks, three PRCs sitting beside me.” Substitute “PRCs” with “aunties,” or “ah lians,” or “homos” or “Singaporeans” or “fatties.” Would you like it if the statement is made against you?

Standing up against prejudice is the reason why we went down to “Bake a Singapore,” a grassroot initiative by Serangoon Youth Executive Committee (YEC) and People’s Association Youth Movement (PAYM), held on 4 Aug 2012. To celebrate National Day, the event is aimed to foster community spirit among students and residents including new citizens who live in the area. They all worked together to make a Singapore flag mosaic out of 25, 000 cookies, a Guinness world record.

While helping out, the new citizens were taught the significance of the flag: what the red represents, what the white represents, etc.

Students from Dimension International School and Serangoon Secondary School also contributed to the baking of cookies.

The day before the event, we visited the kitchen. Each cookie was made from scratch, painted with jam by hand, and then packed.

I helped… by eating two cookies, which tasted more like butter cookies than Peranakan cookies. (oops, now there were 24, 998 cookies left. Sorry for party rocking.)

Andrew (in red), Christy (chairperson of Bake A Singapore), and the NUS boys who helped.

On the actual day of event,

there were free Ben & Jerry ice cream,

free balloons

free photo-taking,

and an exhibition by Youth Expedition Project by PAYM to help out Cambodia.

Just a quick note: although PAYM sounds like it is under PAP, it is not; It’s an autonomous group. And although the event was held at Aljunied GRC, it is not related to Workers Party. This event is truly a grassroots event, run by citizens. Kudos to PAYM and YEC for their passion and hard work.