When the Fish Bowl is the Centre of the World

 

“You got to be Kidding Me” – An Australian Businessman to a Young Singapore Girl who asked “Where is Calcutta? Where is Bahrain?

Last Friday, I nearly lost it with someone, who was apparently a regular in the media scene. My Chubby Tiger partner had mentioned that she works with someone who promotes Georgian wine and he had proceeded to insist that there is “No such” country known as Georgia. I actually had to show him a map to prove that Georgia, the country actually existed:

https://www.infoplease.com/atlas/asia/country-of-georgia-map

 

 To be fair to this chap, he’s not the only person I’ve meet with a dreadful knowledge of basic geography and I guess if you look at the big picture, there are plenty of people who don’t know basic geography. My stepfather, who once lived in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky, where people had no concept of anywhere outside their Appalachia. He was introduced as someone from “beyond there, yonder.”

However, this isn’t Appalachia or Hill Billys we’re talking about here. The people who are demonstrating their lack of knowledge beyond the Goldfish Bowl of Singapore, are “intelligent” and “educated” people (defined as having a basic degree) and in many cases working with international companies and therefore used to working with people from elsewhere.

The best part about this “lack of knowledge” of basic human geography isn’t even specialized knowledge that you need to be trained to know. Its basic information that you can get from a simple Google search on your smart phone. All you need to do is to just Google a world map:

https://www.mapsofworld.com/

 

Somewhere, somehow, we seem to have developed a mindset that tells us that we’re the centre of the universe and the only truth comes from what we hear from news sources.

Unfortunately, Singapore, despite its strategic location, is a very small place that is barely locatable on the world map. While we’ve been the poster boy of “small is smashing,” our lack of size means that our very survival is dependent on our ability to read the world beyond our shores. If you read Lee Kuan Yew’s books, you’ll see that he developed an ability to read elections better than the local politicians in the USA and UK because our survival depended on it.

Yet, how is it that our local people don’t have the basic knowledge about the world outside. Why can’t we be bothered to do a simple Google search when it comes to anywhere outside? This is a worry question especially at a time when many of us feel crowded out by arrivals from elsewhere and in the job market and we’re told that looking outside Singapore is going to be a must.

Let’s take one my favourites, which was having someone from Saudi Aramco tell me that people had asked him which part of Dubai he was from. Yes, I am well aware that Dubai’s PR machine is exceptionally good at what it does but the reality is that Dubai is only an Emirate within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and even within the UAE, it’s the “second” main component (the main one being Abu Dhabi). Then, even when you look at a map of the region, you’ll understand that the biggest place in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is actually Saudi Arabia:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-GCC-member-countries_fig4_364155709

 

 

Another favourite is mistaking Sikhs as coming from Bengal. Yes, the Sikhs from Punjab come from India and so do the Bengalis. A quick glance of the map will show you that it’s around 1,500 kilometres between Punjab and Bengal and it would take you nearly two hours by plane.

https://www.distancefromto.net/distance-from-west-bengal-to-punjab-in

 

I think of one of my favourite Australian businessmen who got exasperated with a young graduate who didn’t know where Calcutta and Bahrain where. I remember remaking that she was blessed with a huge chest because that was the only thing worth mentioning about her after this display of general knowledge.

Jokes aside, it seems that we’re not curious about anywhere outside our own little parameters and this becomes even more so when you talk about anywhere that they may consider an “s***hole” country – i.e. filled with dark people instead of pale ones. I think of the time I tried to share something funny with someone and the reply was “I have no time to waste on a dark skinned one.”

Unfortunately, our little Goldfish Bowl is not the centre of the world. Unfortunately, many of the opportunities are coming from places that Donald Trump so eloquently called “s***holes.” Instead of burying our heads in the sand about these places and being callous towards them and their culture, isn’t it time we got curious enough to find out about such places and people in order to maximise the opportunities for ourselves?