Unlike many people I know, a stint in America didn't leave me mesmerised by the West. Instead, I developed an acute awareness of the shrotcomings of the Occident.

As Tolstoy (that reformed Westie-wannabe who preceded us) pronounced to great inconsequence many, many years ago: What then shall we do? I will make my suggestions towards the end - you see, there might be hope - but first let me distract you with some observations. Two things struck me deeply soon after I returned from a back-damaging flight to our tropical island fried rice paradise.

One, that there were fewer improvements between my visits in 2001 and 2003 than my visits in 2003 and 2005. In 2003, there was Citylink, Esplanade, Northeast line, EZLink, (TVMobile? not sure if that can be counted), and various random upgrades of my neighbourhood, but in 2005 there was only Raffles Hotel getting owned by Colony.

Of course this might only mean that the economy will bottom out and improve soon enough. But I'm naturally paranoid (you know, kia-see) and I thought, what if the economy never bottoms out? There are a good deal of odds against us.

One is that we've started to jettison a skilled workforce in favour of bland consumerism and airhead talk about media, culture and art being central to reviving our economy (hey you mean *borrowed culture*, yes?).

Even after a few centuries, the Swiss never got rid of their precision engineers, but Singapore has mostly gotten rid of our bomohs, sinsehs and organised criminals. You know, if we were a bit like America, I mean having a huge continent to ourselves, and a cheap, willing China ever ready to make our toys, we could maybe survive.

But no, we already have lawyers (and some doctors) ripping apart their countrymen's throats (even if it is their duty and/or privilege) before our country has produced a single Google. To make matters worse, our Christians are not even beating their Christian fundamentalists at being fundamental.

Two, that there has been a infestation of enterprises whose main goal is to capture the international market with "home-grown" life-style products. Ah Beng and Ah Lian, you know at the bottom of your heart, that Creative will not become Apple (although I hope), Yeo Hiap Seng will not become Coca Cola Company, BreadTalk will not become Delifrance, Esplanade won't become the Sydney Opera House. Singapore also won't become Dubai if we can't tolerate gold-plated toilets. I wish TCS would become BBC, but ST also won't become Samsung.

YES, SAMSUNG! We must all be like Samsung and LG. (aka Lucky Goldstar) You know, we used to ape the West directly. Now that we realised we can't beat the west at being western, we should beat the Koreans at being Japanese. (Apparently their unwavering support of online gamers paid off and our policy of banning school uniforms in LAN cafes didn't.)

Okay, better give you some hope or I might never get published. First of all, we don't all have to aspire to being a pretentious prick. As a start, we could develop our own Asian-flavoured business models into something globally palatable - NOT KAYA TOAST. For example, pasar malams and piracy. We should pirate our own homegrown products (art of nose-picking, transvestite porn, etc. etc.) and flood New York City's (Amsterdam's) flea (flesh) markets with Singapore Ghost Stories (Singapore Girls in Sarong Kebayas). Recently I heard some black dudes hip-hopping to a very Ah-beng tune and beat. Just imagine what bilingual TCS Ah Beng imitations can do!

Secondly. We should develop our Singaporean skillset to the Ultimax. SMU needs to train a new class of professional kaypohs, and DSO needs to spearhead spinoff spy equipment for both your auntie-consumer and the small-and-medium enterprises. If the West has any values that cripples their otherwise superior business acumen, it is their political correctness and respect for privacy. Why is it that no Ang-moh realises that racist jokes contribute to racial harmony? What is the rationale for protecting intellectual property rights when there is no intellectual property?

No my friend, at this stage we must promote the "horizontal transfer of ideas". (That being said, we need to have more PCKs to make fun of Chinese. And we need to take care of those PRCs too.) Thirdly, in order to support our international cartel of pasar malam pirates, we need to encourage our young and talented polytechnic storeroom tinkerers to come up with killer apps like dedicated WiMax phones, variable length dildos for those who grew up asian but have caucasian aspirations, instruments that look up a schoolgirl's skirt to tell the jikopeh that she is not a transvestite, and various other nifty gadgets to cater to both the feminist and patriarchal markets.

After all we have been trained in the army to be expert at satisfying everybody. Moreover, the chief role of A-star should be to settle lawsuits that should inevitably arrive from our Western rivals, not funnel money into dubious ideas that the Californians didn't bother to pursue. If the government wants to be a nanny, she should be a good nanny and protect her spoiled brats, not cane them.

Eventually, by exploiting the universal human need to pry into other people's business and practice perversion in public, we might finally transform the durian from "a fruit from an orang utan's anus" to a pungent delicacy unavoidable on the boulevards of Paris.

Forget those cheesy neo-West names like Bakerzin. Top bloggers in the west may confuse you for a Canadian company. For example, even my friend Paul Yong - a talented design student - couldn't avoid becoming Paul Young (and Swedish).

By the way, when we get to first world status, it would be nice to have made-in-Singapore aeroplane seats that soothes my thoracic curves with ideas gleaned from foot reflexology.