Never again will I bitch at ugly cake designs. Never.

Went for a BlackBerry press event today, and we were all thrust with ice-cream cakes, with the sole task of designing them to be judged later.

So we were given a bowl of cream to slather, and an array of toppings for the ‘design’. The only condition was that we “seamlessly embed” the white chocolate ball somewhere, much like how the white pearl scroll ball on the phone is “seamlessly embedded”—y’know, PR marketing jazz. Fine.

After coating the cake with the cream, I was ready. So far so good.

Then I embedded the “pearl”. Whoops. It started looking a bit obscene so I threw rainbow dots on them.

Then people started looking uncomfortable, so I smiled bravely and began randomly raining toppings on, in an effort to hide my cake’s naked shame.

Uh…Yum?

Have you noticed that Singaporeans really love to hate themselves? In a country that’s taken pains to ingrain ideals of national pride and ‘identity’ in her people, contrarily it’s somehow fashionable to hold Singaporean-ness with disdain.

I confess I’ve often been guilty of the same. I laugh at the way many Singaporeans speak—the inability to pronounce Ls, the random insertion of Ts and Rs—and the sort of inexplicable comedy in mainstream media (if it’s there, more than one person likes it, but why?).

However, amidst all that, the one thing that I don’t understand is this unwillingness to look local. I don’t mean people are walking around trying to look white, but I realise, when people say that someone looks Japanese or Korean, it’s a compliment.

(This discussion excludes those outside of the 85% Chinese-dominated population here, of course.)

I don’t get it. I have a feeling there aren’t too many Japanese or Koreans walking around thinking, “Man, if I could just look Singaporean…” and so the point is, why is that?

What is it about a foreign East Asian appearance that is so attractive to us? I see people blushing with pride, beaming with joy when people say they look like a ‘China beauty’. So you know it isn’t an anti-Chinese thing.

It’s an anti-Singaporean thing, isn’t it. I hate to point it out, but stripped down, we all really do look alike.

I often wonder if it’s admiration for another ethnicity’s culture, or general despair at the lack of our own.