Just met Warrent Jabbar and his family just now around my block. He said he'd come to visit SWO Francis Ng, who was sick. I don't know Francis, but Jabbar was my former APC CSM, quite a friendly nice and reasonable guy. We smiled and exchanged pleasantries.

The funny thing is that I met him just whilst I was musing to myself about my own prejudices about people. I don't think I'm racist, in fact I like the Malays and Indians in my own country (in general, there're always unpleasant people from every race): I feel they add spice and colour and commitment to the country. And I like WO Jabbar, and other Singaporeans from other races - they are pleasant, committed, and very good friends. I consider them my brothers.

It's the immigrants that I feel a sense of aversion towards. Well, particularly from a particular C-country. The darker-skinned foreign workers have been known to disturb Singaporean girls, but I'm even quite fine with them. It's the C-people that somehow disturb me, partially because they're all over ... extremely ubiquitous. Partially because ... they are a part of me, yet so different. Culturally, even linguistically. I find myself speaking a lot in Cantonese to distinguish myself from them.

But I have good Chinese friends, from NUS. I helped out in the PRC Camp and I loved my group members - a lot. And they are fine, nice, decent, fun-loving. It's just this feeling that they're different, that they haven't assimilated into what is effectively a Singaporean-Malaysian culture (yes, we're all culturally Singaporean-Malaysian more than Chinese. We are all so NOT Chinese in terms of culture). And the fact that there are so damn MANY MANY of them. It's a fear that they'll outnumber us eventually - it's not a misplaced fear, considering the government's policy of importing Chinese people from China in droves. And there's the feeling that they are not committed to this country. (Not that many locals are committed too, considering emigration rates. But that's another story for another day). It's this feeling that these MANY foreigners are here to take our country for a ride, and our government is letting them do so.

It's Xenophobia, prejudice all over again. And the best way is to make friends from the race/people group that you are afraid of, to give them human faces.

To find out that at the end of the day, they are humans like us.

True, there are materialistic, scheming, evil, downright manipulative Chinese people who treat our country like a stepping stone. But there're evil, manipulative people from every race and country - even from Singapore - and we must recognise this.