The significant thing about this story is that how a taxi man was able to share something of his stories to a passenger for the entire journey as if it was already his life to entertain them until the passenger reaches their destination. He compared Singapore as to how it was then and the now. Singapore definitely is a country that has many people with different culture and race coming in and out of the country therefore it is a tourist destination whether domestic or international travels are happening every year. The taxi man mentioned about Singapore’s family planning. This was due to their population wherein the government has to implement a scheme for families and provide incentives so that the country would boost and be more encouraged to have more babies. The fact that it was really encouraged was how Singapore was worried that they have older generation and middle-age generation than younger generation. It can greatly affect the society’s imbalance in population because then the elderly would have to fend for themselves and that leaves the society to have problems producing more people in the workforce in the future.
This is still continuing in Singapore, there are more elderly that can mean a greater chance of decrease in population and lesser younger generation because more and more people are focused on their careers in which the people would rather choose to marry at their early or late 30s – thus, fewer babies born each year. The solution to Singapore’s problem would be tourism industry and talented workers from another country so that there is still a sector that can further provide solution to boost the economy. With that being said, Singapore focusing now more on integrated resorts or tourism industry and talented foreign workers coming in for job opportunities, many are influenced and exposed now to different cultures and practices.
Therefore, when the taxi man mentioned that nowadays the younger people are unlikely to obey their parents, most likely in this case Singapore was influenced by globalization. Globalization – one of its disadvantages is the loss of culture. Loss of culture happens when more and more people are getting to homogeneous culture adapting western culture wherein we tend to forget about the traditional practices of own native origin. Perhaps that was why the taxi man was able to conclude that younger generation tend to disobey parents and even becoming more of that western children as if they were not brought up without respect for their parents.
I can relate this to my life because there are times I may have also disobeyed my parents but not for the reason of making troubles for myself but how ungrateful I am sometimes that I forget the hard work they paid off just so I can go to university. I hope to be reminded of my actions and how I appreciate the things I do for myself and my entire family especially to give something back as my appreciation and love for my parents. I should also not be careless of my actions because then that would mean I am wasting my opportunities in making a life for myself in the future.
To sum up my reaction paper, in my opinion, I hope the older generation would not so much focus on how it was back then for them when they were still young, comparing the younger generation to them because that would only mean as a tension between them that may keep us apart from appreciating the old-fashioned way they had gone through. Instead, I hope that the lesson they were able to inculcate in their own time be passed on to us with much patience because there are things that is truly different to cultivate and understand now than for them back then.
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