Where's my citizenship.

I applied for Singaporean citizenship at the month of November last year. Typically, the time taken to process this would be just over 6 months. My friends from Malaysia, China, Taiwan and Indonesia all got it within that time frame. If we follow this trend, I'd be on track to get my citizenship around May to June.

If I got it around that period, I'd be totally fine.

However, I did some poking around and found that one of my Filipino friends still hadn't gotten his citizenship even though he applied in June of 2009. That is close to 2 years ago. 2 years is the time he spent in national service. Potentially, the time he spent waiting for his citizenship will exceed that time period.

His case is not an isolated one. At least two other filipino friends' of mine, whom I met through National Service, are undergoing the same plight.

I really have no idea what's going on, and why there's this apparent discrimination against Filipinos. Honestly speaking, we Filipinos are a GARANG breed. We might go into NS hesitantly, but when we're there, we make the best out of the experience. You'll never hear us complain about the tough training. Philippines is a tough neighborhood. We've experienced worse, and we're happy to be here.

In my Basic Medic Course, there were 5 of us who were Filipinos. We were fierce. Three of them wanted to get out of medic course to get posted to GUARDS. They personally appealed to our Officer Commanding to get OOC-ed, and subsequently sent to Guards. When they were denied of this, they dropped out of medic course and moved on to more garang units. One of them eventually signed on as an ADF regular.

What of the other two? One was me, and I don't want to blow my own horn, but I was a darn good soldier. The other one went back to his unit to become a platoon medic, and I'm pretty sure he did a good job.

So what am I trying to say here? We went through the same kind of shit that everybody else did. We might have done it better, we might have done it worse...but at the end of the day, 2 years is 2 years. We sacrificed 2 years of our lives for this country, and yes, we want what's rightfully ours.

I don't know what's causing the delays. Some say it's the elections, and personally, I think it is. They just want to artificially deflate the numbers. But it's unfair. I don't want to be an unwitting pawn to these charade they're putting up. My university is starting very soon, in August. Just let my citizenship come by then, for goodness fucking sake.