It was a struggle growing up in a Hokkein speaking family and adjusting to this island's policy of misrepresenting my heritage. The first day I was in Kindergarten, neither do I speak nor understand any Mandarin and English at all. It was made worse by the fact that my schools had all these "Speak Good English" campaigns and that most of my peers wanted to look like that blonde chick or dude in the covers of the coolest magazines. Nowadays they are more diversified; tried to fashion themselves and socialise as if their parents raised them up from the streets of hiphop commune!

That awkward and confusing period of accepting my background and home-spoken language is long gone. I speak and write their tongue now but never in my heart. There are still millions of us scattered all around the world. We may all be peasants, labourers or carving a living in the lowest class of the society, but we grow crops and put food to your mouths, build the streets or maintain the infrastructure whilst earn peanuts for all that toiling. Yet there is never enough for the obscene greed, no matter how we bend ourselves to fit into the mould of the perfect worker!

I understand the grand scheme of it all. They are no liberators. They are capitalists, bankers and dictators all rolled into one. The only hope I have for these childhood terrorists is the turn of tide: The day they are gagged-mouth and watch by the sideline...their own tongue and culture being phased out...their own children raised in a decadent culture.

If any of you feel it's stupid for Singapore agency or NTU to advocate the learning of dialects, hold a rally and say that loud to millions of us who grew up and spoke these dialects. A press statement issued from the comfort of air-con shelter via the the press goes to show how ignorant, intolerant and panaroid the authorities are to cultures which they deemed inferior. Have they ever spend quality time with the dialect-speaking population and get to know about their culture?

For sure, dialects are never gonna take over the national language one day, so what is stupid about offering them as an alternative subject for youths to engage in culture learning? If Amy Winehouse, Chris Brown and all that MTV pop culture is acceptable on national and cable TV, what's this double standard of stupidity?

TO CONVERSE IN DIALECT IS AN ART OF CULTURE BONDING, NOT A CRIME!