My most cherished writing moments take place when...

...the rain suffuses softly outside, and indoors my scented candle’s flame dances languorously on its wick. I feel safe cocooned in my rainless room, from which ironically inspires a deluge of introspection about the bustling day past.

Today was such a day – such a concatenation of cold-calling clients and ferrying proposals to the more prospective among them – that I might have missed an insidious grating against my cultural senses.

It was when I was day-dreaming about the pitter-patter of the drizzle outside that it all hit me. As I gazed at the accumulating pools of water, I visualised the clean liquid mixing with the dirt around it, sullying the whole mix. Totally randomly, I visualised the dried chicken shit in Lim Chu Kang mixing with sky juice to form a cocktail no one would crow about (excuse the puns).

And the memory of the China national waitressing at the café jarred me. The tiring afternoon had justified a coffee treat, but “one cappuccino please” was greeted only with an incredulous stare. Atop her very-Chinese head sat a sharp, proud French beret.

I did not expect an “Oui Monsieur”, but surely comprehension of basic menu items is par for the course at a joint with ‘français’ in its name?... Non.

“Cappuccino! One cappuccino please!”
“Har?”
“Cappuccino!! Oh god, er, coffee with milk.”
“Har?”
“Erh. Ka fei...”
“Orh... ka fei... ka fei yi bei,” she drones to the coffee stirrer (also wearing a beret).

There she was, in full disjunctive glory, iconic of her ill-adjusted legion swarming our streets with their pride and their spit. There she was, an English-illiterate beret-capped Chinawoman in an al fresco French eatery, a crass coalescence like rainwater lustrous now, but soon dirt-diluted – and headed for the drain.

I am no anti-globalisation advocate, but if imported workers resist assimilation and fail upkeep the standards their local predecessors were held to – and retrenched from – then they should not be in their host's employ.