I can’t believe it’s Imperial students who’re talking. Yes, they’re Imperial ‘cos one of them had that red lanyard dangling ’round his neck.
Student 1: “So John Howard is the Prime Minister of..?”
Student 2: “New Zealand, I think”
Student 1: “Oh. Really? I thought he was Australia.”
Student 2: “Yeah, New Zealand’s part of Australia.”
I mean… whadda… I can understand if people think that Singapore is a part of Indonesia (or Malaysia, or whatever larger neighbours we have)… but to mess up Australia and NZ? C’mon. If I wasn’t struggling to come up with the correct change at that time, I might well have splurted out the correction to their err.
Perhaps there is a reason why we’re not a college of the social sciences (or maybe it is because we’re not a college of the social sciences)…
on Nov 10th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
i think u will find this common in many countries. Most people do not read more than the daily local news and the big headlines. There was this survey i remember reading about how before the current gulf crisis, most people couldn’t even place iraq, afghanistan or israel on a map. Some probably still can’t. I’ve been once asked if Singapore is a province of Japan (yeah, in WWII mate) and another time, if we were a nation of pagans, etc). Considering we are a member of the commonwealth (well so is oz and nz), its quite amazing. Its all part of globalization, that the world is losing its borders…..haha. At least they got the location vaguely right. Now if they had said NZ was part of australasia, they’d be right (i think)!
on Nov 11th, 2006 at 3:55 am
if it helps, think of the geographical/biological/socio-political knowledge of the average Singapore teenager, or even undergrad…
on Nov 12th, 2006 at 8:27 am
lol funny
maybe it’s like the americans all think we ride roos down here