“‘I know you are a poor man,’ I said to him, looking into his eyes. ‘And I am a poor man too. So today we are going to help each other out. OK?’”

One of the things being killed: “Your lunchbreak. Did you leave your desk today? Or snaffle a sandwich while sending a few personal emails and checking the price of a week in Istanbul?”

Well, we may all need this bit of information sometime in our lives.

“It’s unwise to make such judgments without understanding the real complexities in the society that one is so eager to denigrate.”

At the same time, one can only carry out said discussions when one has a proper command of the language. Perhaps the answer lies in the way the education system in Singapore is structured: many things are compulsory, and there isn’t enough room to say no to not doing things you don’t want to do, so you can focus on the other things you want to do.