Several netizens have called out Education Minister Chan Chun Sing for being a disgrace or xiasuay after he related an encounter in which he misheard a school student.
Mr Chan wrote about on his Fown acebook page, describiong it a “funny moment of school visits” . He s that when he asked the student what their Co-Curricular Activity (CCA) was, the student said “stem club”.
Mr Chan responded: “Oh, that’s nice. I collected stamps too! Must be hard to collect stamps nowadays? You write letters? You have pen pals?”.
He also asked: “Where do you get your stamps? Which countries’ stamps do you have?”.
Following an awkward silence, the others in the class explained that the student was not in the stamp club but the ‘STEM’ club.
“Ahhh! Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics….!”, wrote Mr Chan.
Instead of appreciiating the minister’s candour willingness to show himself in a less than laudatory light, netizens who commented on the post were quit unkind to Mr Chan.
It may be remembered that xiasuay was the incendiary word that Mr Chan, who was then the Minister for Trade and Industry, used in a closed-door meeting on Feb 10, 2020, with members of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In a leaked recording of that meeting, Mr Chan had used xiasuay to criticise the panic buying at supermarkets and other shops by a small group who had behaved like “idiots”. That criticism must really have smarted because that word still comes up periodically when he is criticised online. /TISG