Recently in Personal Category

“Evey, please. There is a face beneath this mask but it’s not me. I’m no more that face than I am the muscles beneath it or the bones beneath them”

V for Vendetta

I’ll be drinking a radioactive toast to my over-active thyroid gland in a few hours.

I’ve been largely silent about my struggles with hyperthyroidism, partly because it’s one of those things I’ll always be coming to grips with, but mostly because putting it out in the public isn’t the most worldly-wise thing to do, given that employers are googling everything these days. But the truth is what it is, and there is more to be gained from the sharing of this experience than what could be lost going in through its omission.

It’s the end of the year, and as 2010 approaches, it is the time for change.

I’ve done the unwise - leaving my job at the Ministry of Education without first securing another, but somewhere in my heart I know that it is the right thing to do. It is both the fleeing from the inevitable apathy that comes with dogmatically sticking to a set routine, and the embracing of possibilities.

And all I have at hand are a set of vague plans.

As with any plan, there is a need to pray, and ultimately the surrender of our plans and submission to God’s. Guess I’ll come clean and say that I don’t know what He has in store for me either.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”

J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

This resonates so, so much, and so deeply.

It’s odd that two separate parts of my past would converge in Monterey last week.

===

There was a young boy once who would show up every now and then at the basketball court. He was chubby, and being a few years younger than the rest of the guys, considerably shorter. Not one of the regulars of this particular court, he didn’t get to play very much and would just shoot the ball around on his own.

He kept doing that until one day he wasn’t so short anymore (still a little chubby though), and we asked him to join us. The time and effort he had put in shooting the ball all that time paid off - he certainly had more game than many of us.

I never knew his name, until many years later when Cheryl brought him to church.

His name is Leon, and I remembered the relentless work ethic he brought to the courts so many years before.

I also noticed that he was now taller than me.

===

20 years ago I was entrusted with taking care of a young girl over the course of a 4 day church camp. I was supposed to write letters of encouragement to her, pin it up on a huge notice board without revealing who I was. I don’t remember what we wrote each other, but I do remember it being deep and heartfelt.

Over the years I have seen her transform from a little girl who wore frilly victorian-styled dresses to the amazing woman before us. Though the years and geographic proximity would render us more distant, I have always felt entrusted with her well-being, albeit through thought or prayer.

It was until she brought Leon to church when I realised that this imaginary role now belonged to him. I remember my initial reaction being one of relief. This boy would definitely try his darndest.

I’ve been creating the website for Teachers’ Day for the last few years. It’s a site to celebrate Teachers’ Day in Singapore, which falls on the 1st of September. We’d normally invite the public to write short notes to the teachers who have touched their lives in one way or another.

As part of system testing, I’d always write to Mr. Ng, who taught me English Literature in secondary school. I’ve not been able to find Mr. Ng, not on Google or Facebook, not on MOE’s internal staff directory. I hoped that he’d eventually read my short messages and get back to me.

Because he was a really special teacher to me.

When all other teachers were exasperated beyond belief at my disinclination (to put it mildly) towards the doing of assigned homework, Mr. Ng took time to converse with me, person to person. I loved literature, but always found writing down answers on a piece of paper the most inefficient way to expand the mind. It was during my many conversations with Mr. Ng that I found a fellow journeyman who hadn’t lost the awe and wonder that came with reading wonderfully written lines. We spoke about Shakespeare and about life; and he never did ask me to hand in his homework.

It is an intimate relationship when you know someone by the pieces of text they hold dearest in their hearts. Mr. Ng’s favourite poem was “Convergence of the twain” by Thomas Hardy. Its cadence and the build up towards the impending collision between the Titanic and the iceberg appealed to him, he said.

It strikes me deeply that I’ll never have the chance to tell him how wonderful he was to me.

This year, like the other years, I built the Teachers’ Day website and launched my first dedication message via Twitter. I received an email hours later from a friend, who also happened to be many years my junior in secondary school, asking whether or not I had known that Mr. Ng had passed on a few years back.

The finality of it all sunk in. I was at a wedding dinner when I read the email, and everything went about in a blur. The one thought that kept coming back was: “I missed it.” I should have said thanks earlier. I should have spent more time with the people that matter. I shouldn’t have procrastinated.

Like the poem, we all see this coming, for all our relationships. It’s what you do between the first line and the last line that matters.

It’s been a crazy past few weeks, thanks in large part to the AWARE saga and the H1N1 virus. Add to that 1 year-old Caleb’s experimentation into alternative sleep patterns and milestones at work, you’ve got yourself an involuntary blogging hiatus.

In the midst of all this, it has dawned on me that it is time for change. It was out of a deep desire to gather myself and retool for the future that I applied to Medill’s Masters Programme in Journalism. The letter of admission on my table, and I am forced to think hard now that the deadline fast approaches.

Among the multitude of thoughts floating about randomly in my head:

• The cost of the the programme: pretty much my life-savings
• The need for education: I’m interested in new media journalism rather than old-school print, and a lot of it could be learned doing rather than studying
• Believe it or not, the fact that Medill requires me to use a Windows machine. The community I’ve been a part of: the designers, coders, great communicators are predominantly Apple people. I’m a little shaken that content at Medill is tied to a platform
• Medill is a top-notch journalism programme and maybe part of me seeks that validation as it would open doors to the established media giants now seeking to reinvent themselves
• But that would mean relocating. I see so much potential for Singapore to grow, to come into her own as a mature society, and I want to be a part of that.
• Sometimes I feel that the best way to do that is actually outside of the government, although being inside has many benefits as well.
• Maybe I am a journalist. I am in love with storytelling and the exploration of issues.

I don’t know what exactly it is I have to do, except that I’ve never been comfortable with routine. Like muscles, jobs, roles and their players need to be broken and rebuilt to grow stronger.

I need suggestions. You guys got any?

Dearest Anne and Caleb,

The year was 2003 and Aunty Min and I were students in Tucson, Arizona. In the evening, I drove to the mountains to photograph the sunset, as I often did, while Aunty Min caught back-to-back episodes of “Friends”.

The skies were a flat grey - terrible conditions for a sunset - and it was threatening to rain. Were it not for the narrow mountain roads that made it hard for me to turn back, I wouldn’t have driven all the way to Gates Pass.

Every evening, the carpark at Gates Pass would be 3/4 filled, with families hiking up the trails and couples snuggling up the side of the mountain waiting for sunset. I was the only one there this evening, and it didn’t look as it I was going to see any sunset at all due to the very thick cloud cover. I took a short hike up to the vantage point, looked around a bit and headed back to the car.

“Wasted trip”, I thought to myself.

As I started the engine, the skies glowed a most unreal blue. I grabbed my camera, ran out and took photos from the parking lot.

Like Shawn Colvin’s song goes, “I never saw blue like that before”.

In my opinion, the main impediment stopping Singaporeans of this generation from making a similar breakthrough to that of our forebears (LKY’s generation) is our obsession with competition. Singapore’s particular idiosyncrasy is that if you look closely enough, we care less about winning than about making the other party lose. Point is, the obsession with making the other person lose is driving us apeshit crazy.

A Singaporean will go to an expensive buffet. Rather than enjoying the good food and ambience, his first inclination is to “attack” the high-ticket items in order to justify the money he’s paying for the buffet. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t like oysters, or prefers cod to crab. He does it so that the establishment doesn’t win, without for a second realising that his arrangement renders both parties losers.

What I’m trying to define here is an extension of the popular Singaporean adjective “kiasu”, which denotes a fear of losing. We’ve actually gone one-up, I feel. Not only must we not lose, the other person / organisation / government / country must be made to lose.

But in the words of the ephemerally-famous Jon Stewart, “this is not a [expletive] game”. Working on a win-lose model restricts us immensely. While it served to move us from third-world status to first-world, it is incompatible with any possible evolution towards a higher form of society. There is no noble cause in obsessive competition, no moral lessons or goodwill. There is only the raw animal instinct for survival, and we will stay at this base level if we continue the way we are - content to snap at everybody else and at each other, always bemoaning the fact that someone has it better than us. More money. More happiness. More.

We have missed the forest for the trees. We are failing to see that we have plenty, and with it a responsibility to help those who do not have as much. In this time of need, let us redefine ourselves as a people of action, willing to do what is right at our own expense, rather than waiting for the phantom hand of government to right all wrongs while we snipe from our armchairs.

I think we’ve come along far enough, at least economically, to realise that no one needs to lose. It would be an utter shame for people to be in desperate need while collectively we have so much.

And so it was without fanfare I enter my 32nd year of being. Well, no fanfare except for the dozens and dozens of birthday wishes on Facebook, my colleagues singing happy birthday during a division meeting and my family showing up at my office cubicle while I was at said meeting. Ok, so maybe there was a little fanfare. Faith always drums it up, making every birthday amazing.

I sit at a peculiar crossroads. Many of my peers have left Singapore, some for work and many more to study. Graduate school is the mid-life crisis antidote of choice these days, and I wonder if heading back to an academic environment will do me some good.

What I am about to write somewhat pertains to education, so the standard disclaimer applies: this is solely my view and not that of my employer’s, you know the drill.

The Singapore papers reported recently that Singaporean students were turning away from scholarships that came attached with conditions (in this case being in the employ of the sponsor for a specified number of years) and choosing instead scholarships that came without those conditions.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

In the Straits Times online forums, 2 responses were published:

1. Mr Jason Chiam who wrote that “scholars have a moral obligation to the sponsoring organisation” and;
2. Ms Corinne Hoo who feels disappointed that “today’s youth have little capacity for resilience and perseverance”

In 2000 I enrolled in the University of Arizona. I did not apply for a scholarship of any kind, but they offered me a bond-free scholarship via an email. I replied to ask if there were any conditions attached, specifically a bond of employment. While the details were that I had to maintain certain grades in order to keep the scholarship money going for the whole duration of undergraduate study, there was no bond of any kind. They wrote back, saying they were giving me the scholarship because they believed I could contribute to society after graduation. Not American society. Humankind.

I flew back the moment my undergraduate studies were completed. I made a promise to a girl in Singapore and I did not want to keep her waiting. So I left America and the University of Arizona. I left the people who provided me the most fulfilling phase of my formal education. Even today my heart feels the weight of gratitude towards the university, the country of America and her people. Maybe that is the “moral obligation” Mr Jason Chiam speaks of. Maybe he would consider me an ingrate for returning so soon, but Arizona has never solicited a single cent from me, nor has she made me feel guilty for the unpaid debt.

I decided to pay it forward, hoping to apply myself in the improvement of my home country. As many of you know, I now work for the Ministry of Education, helping her communicate in the increasingly complex spectrum of online media parents and students use today. I have endeavoured to go the extra mile, often engaging in efforts to improve the online communications of the Singapore Government as a whole. This is me paying it forward. Not out of moral obligation or for a fixed term stipulated on a piece of paper. I am driven by the faith shown in me by an organisation and a people not at all related to me.

Jason and Corrine are probably right to point out that some scholars feel entitled to a free education free of responsibility and obligation. But we need to bear in mind that it is a cultural problem not solved by the chains of forced labour.

Scholarships and bonds (I’ll use the term to describe the conditional scholarships) are totally different in nature. The former is crafted with hope and in good faith, the latter carved in the hard letter of the law. The first is a gift, the second a contract.

That our students no longer feel beholden when presented a gift of good faith is a failure on our part. We have not taught them gratitude. We haven’t given them many opportunities to learn. Our purely pragmatic perspective of the world doesn’t allow us to give without expecting anything in return. Our bonds are carefully calculated and embedded with repayment clauses to reduce risk because we view these top students as human capital, not humans. After years of conditioning, many of our children have forgotten the beat of their own heart.

It is all business, and they take what they can.

Moral responsibility isn’t a bond. Perseverance isn’t gritting one’s teeth while in chains. The claustrophobia of being bound to words on a page, signed while barely adolescent, destroys the human spirit. The display of the intrinsic good, human to human, just as the folks of Arizona showed me, will live in me all my life.

That is my bond. And I serve it gladly.

Maybe Faith is right in that there seems to be a need within me to be alone.

Here, thousands of miles away in Tucson, I retrace the steps I took in college while watching videos of Anne and Caleb on Flickr. It has given me time to fully appreciate where God has taken me. His blessings are truly more than anything I could have dreamed up or wanted.

I spent most of yesterday visiting my old haunts in School. Where I watched my first basketball game, my first viewing of a planetary object, my first hail storm…Tucson has been a place of many firsts.

Many things have changed here. The university has become a little more commercial and less bohemian. Classrooms are named after corporate sponsors. Open fields are not entrances to underground computer labs. Again I’m confronted with the reality that things change. Nothing is ever the same.

Dinner with Jonathan Louie last night reminded me of how long I had been gone. Mutual friends have gotten married, some are new parents. Many of moved to other cities. Teenagers I knew have graduated from college. I, too have changed. I’m a husband and a father. I’m coming to grips that I’m a public servant, and it’s time to change what that means, rather than shudder at the thought of what it connotes.

It’s been a good time to rethink things.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies
And all that ‘s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

- Lord Byron

Faith got a haircut yesterday. She looks stunning.

It’s extremely common for Singaporean families to hire domestic helpers from neighbouring countries like Indonesia or the Philippines. They keep homes spick and span, cook the meals, look after children or the elderly. It has come to a point most middle-class families can’t imagine life without one.

Many people have asked us if we were thinking of hiring help, especially now that we have number 2 on the way. An extra pair of hands is a tempting proposition. We spend a fair chunk of our weekend on housework , and our pad isn’t as organized as we’d like.

But there’s something to be said about doing it yourself. I tell myself that I’d like Anne the basic tenets of family living - that toys do not miraculously fly back to their shelves, or floors do not clean themselves. That keeping the home clean is the responsibility of the family.

We had a great time doing housework together this morning. After a few months of nausea, Faith finally felt well enough to tackle some cleaning. It was good to have by my side; her presence makes work feel light. It comforted me to see her on her feet - her nausea was a burden she has had to bear on her own.

So much to thank God for.

So I turn 30 in a few minutes and tonight was the usual family fanfare. Food, food and more food. I don’t have the metabolism of a 20-year old anymore, so this’ll probably take me a while to burn off in the gym.

This year is that I brought along extra help to blow the flame off the candles. Help would come, whether I wanted it or not.

What a difference 3 decades makes.

I’m sharing this experience specifically for the benefit of a friend who told me over IM yesterday that he needed more guts.

A number of years ago while I was in college at Arizona, I received an email from a certain Om Malik. He identified himself as a writer for Red Herring magazine, which I have heard of but never read. He wanted me to help him design a website. It sounded like a blog.

I was in the middle of my undergraduate education. I was on a scholarship which required me to maintain relatively good grades. I had already put some time in creating websites for the Singapore Student Association, the Management Information System Graduate Assocation and the Mentoring for International Students Association. I wasn’t sure if I could help Om out.

I did the Singaporean thing - the thing my mother would have asked me to do, which is to concentrate on my studies. I declined Om’s proposal.

I’ve regretted that decision almost everyday.

We got married 4 years ago to the day. Some of you were there - even some whom I’ve never met but read this blog and managed to find someone who knew where the wedding was.

It seemed like the perfect ending to a beautiful story; childhood sweethearts who got together, weathered extended periods of being apart and finally getting married. I must admit that the desire to marry Faith was a large part of my life, and when we crossed that juncture there was this amazing feeling, that everything felt right. What has transpired then? What happens after happily ever after?

The last four years of being married has been a whirlwind of activity and we’ve been swept up in it. We got our own place, and the never-ending housework that entails. I’ve changed jobs and battled hyper-thyroidism. And we’ve been blessed to have had Anne in our lives the last 2 years.

What is probably regrettable is that we lost sight of the game plan.

Just the other day I was sharing with my colleagues on the experience of having a kid.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done”, I tell them.

They then tell me that I should be an official advocate of child-bearing. Not sure if they noticed the contradiction in the comment they made to my statement, I clarify that I just said it was the hardest thing I ever did.

“It’s not what you said. It’s how you said it”, they tell me. Something along the lines of how I made it sound like a good thing.

The apparent paradox sums up the act of bringing up a child, as I am sure many parents can attest to the fact. It seems almost masochistic - that we subject ourselves to the sleepless nights, the arguments, the financial burden, but when the kiddo smiles time freezes and all the pain in the world ceases to exist for that split second.

Many people have been telling us to have number 2. Reasons given ranged from the “while you’re still young” to how Anne needs a companion should we ever kick the bucket.

The government has been trying to encourage Singaporeans to have more children. An aging population that isn’t replenishing itself doesn’t bode well. Sometimes I look around and I think they’ve given up on us. The influx of foreigners into our schools, our living spaces and our workplaces - aren’t they meant to replace us? Even as national day draws near and propaganda about how “Singapore is our home” starts perpetuating the airwaves, I find my appetite for sentimental notions for Singapore waning. I think Singapore is the pragmatic spouse. She goes where the money is. I can’t blame her, but I wish she’d stop blaming us should we do the same. Singaporeans who leave for other countries are called quitters, yet we’re actively recruiting people of other countries.

But I digress. While the government tries to address the peripheral issues of child-bearing, offering monetary incentives, the question isn’t answered: Why should we have children?

We have no time to enjoy our children. Dual-income families are almost a requirement here, with homes coming at quite a premium. Faith and I are perfectly happy living in basic government housing, but even that costs us a third of a million dollars. Anne is growing up fast and we’re missing the experience because we’re stuck in office cubicles. I’m up late finishing work.

Anne started school Monday. Faith and I weren’t there for her first day of school. I regret it very deeply. We’ve little precious time with her, what more if we have a second? We don’t really want to get domestic help - it’s absurd to give birth to a child and have him or her raised by someone else. The happy compromise is having the grandparents take over the job of parenting. But it is what it is, a compromise.

I want to enjoy my children. I do not care for repopulating the country.

It’s been 10 years since I met Matthew. We were in the same unit in the army. I can’t say I knew him well. So it was with a casual “how’re things” that I greeted him. He was the groom’s best man, and I was the photographer.

“Wow, you look very different,” was his reply. “You used to be handsome.”

I’ve never been one for good looks, either caring about them or even the knowledge that I possessed them. Even within myself I instinctively deny that I ever looked “handsome”. But what I do know is that I look quite different today than I did only a few years ago.

For every ten people who suffer from hyper-thyroidism, nine are female. A few years ago I had the privilege of being number ten. It wasn’t terrible, but hyperthyroidism left me with eyeballs that protruded out of my head. It’s taken a year and half of rather intense medication to get it under control.

I don’t look the same anymore. It doesn’t matter to me. Not most of the time, anyway.

Worked over the weekend. Worked yesterday while on leave. Today’s a public holiday, but there’s work to do as well.

Sarpino’s pizzas were great, but I think they were a little too rich for my battered constitution to handle. Sore throat and cold on the way. I’ve been pumping vitamin C the past few weeks to keep the flu at bay.

Hope it works this time. Or is my body telling me to just shut down for a while?

Three years ago on Valentine’s Day I posted a photo I took of a field of orange gerberas for Faith.

This morning I received a phone call at work from a delivery man asking me to collect a package at the door.

Faith sent me flowers and a cake for my birthday!

A few weeks ago my colleague asked if I ever had second thoughts about settling on a single girl so early in life. I replied that like all of life’s untrodden paths, it was inevitable to mentally probe the what-if scenarios, but I’ve never regretted my choice of a wife.

Faith gives me new affirmation every day.

Am I naive to expect things to stay the way they are? Must things change, must people move, can’t we all grow old together? Must we all seek after our own paths; can’t we work tirelessly for the good of the other person, and in doing so be ministered by each other? Can’t we love as purely and as deeply as our hearts can ever stretch, without questions of ulterior motives and ignoble intentions?

I just want to be the catcher in the rye.

I’m hopelessly in love with the magic of every moment I’ve ever lived, holding on to the hope that these moments and their magic would tarry a little longer.

Maybe forever.

Maybe forever is long enough for me to drink deep of its waters and have a deeper understanding of what living is, rather than the cloak and dagger brushes with an emotional reality barely touched.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both…

Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” is often misquoted as “the path less travelled”. Most are able to quote the famous last lines of the poem, “I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” in a Frank Sinatrasque “I did it my way” manner.

But the poem isn’t about defying all odds or grasping life by the balls, unlike Sinatra’s swan song. It is a poem about the uncertainty that comes with being unable to be at all places at the same time.

It succinctly sums up how I have been feeling of late.

The major academic junctures in my life play out like reruns of a bad movie: There I’d be, waiting for the result slip of the major examination I spent the last few years preparing for. And when I finally held it in my hands there’d be that tinge of excitement, fear and uncertainty. I’d walk out of school a little zombified, my finite mind trying to compute the infinite combinations life presented me at that point.

Months would pass before I realised I never did thank my teachers for the years they had to put up with me. While I had invested years of my life into the rather selfish pursuit of my own education, they had invested years of their life hoping we’d make it in life, whatever that meant.

They are our surrogate parents, the ones who bear the weight of educating us, often never seeing the fruit of their labour.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been slaving night and day, getting the site ready for launch. Unlike most of the other sites I’ve worked on professionally, I had a personal stake in this one. It was my way of saying thanks to all the teachers I’ve ever had in my life.

I invite you to leave your own note of thanks on Teachersday.sg. We’ll be running the whole hullabaloo of radio and print ads as well.

If Mother Teresa took time to blog, would she have lived a life as inspiring? Or would she be spending too much time behind the computer screen trying to capture the moments that just passed?

It is one of those times - where I feel I’m stretched a little too thin in too many directions for too many people. I’m tired, but happy.

Just wish I had more time to write, to think, to live.

Anne is growing up so quickly. It doesn’t seem so long ago she was little more than a foot long cotton wrapped package in our arms. These days, she’s a bundle of raw energy that scours faraway horizons for new sofas to climb, new cabinets to open and new medicine bottles to put in her mouth. Faith and I see her everyday, but the changes happen so fast nothing is ever in stasis. By the time we acclimatise to her new habits and behaviours, thinking she’d finally learned some novel trick we’ve been trying to teach her, she moves on. Where once she’d hi-five us whenever we offered an open palm, she now laughs and turns away, turning back occasionally to see if you’d play peekaboo.

Now that she’s babbling a lot, mornings are punctuated by what sounds like her version of singing. Ok, so it sounds a little more like Buddhist chanting, but you forgive her if she doesn’t yet know the words.

Being a parent reminds you of how old you are. I take a quick glance at my life to find many things changed as well. With the hyperactive thyroid, I’m visiting the hospital for regular checkups - something I once thought, not too long ago, was meant only for the elderly. Even right now as I type this I’m typing at the waiting room of Singapore General. Lst time I checked I’m classified as “borderline obese” and still clinging on to the belief that my metabolism can handle whatever amounts of chocolate I throw at it.

Last night, I sat in my computer chair feeling bloated. It’s probably due to the water-retention side-effects of my new medication. But there I was, feeling too fat to want to play basketball - a feeling I never ever thought I’d have. I can now better emphatise with women who feel fat. It is a vicious cycle. Chubby Hubby, while really very good, doesn’t help. But take my word for it, it is very good.

There are times, like tonight, when I’m so thankful for the people in my life right now, right here. I’m really blessed to have such a marvelous bunch of nutcases to surround my family with.

Then I turn on the computer and see a photo of the moon over Old Main at the University of Arizona, taken a few days ago. Then I remember that the me you see today was forged in a land so far away, in red brick buildings, sitting on mountainsides lit red by the setting sun, with a different church and different people. And I wonder how they are.

My heart can scarcely reach them so far away, so long ago.

Whenever people ask me why it is that I don’t hire a maid, my answer is “because I don’t think I’m mature enough”.

Maids (the local word for live-in domestic help, usually from another country) are commonplace in Singapore. Every other family has a maid. I am constantly appalled at how generally ok people fail to see how close to slavery this is. Yes, we pay them. And yes, the pay they receive here is probably better than what they could have earned back home. Does this excuse how we treat them though?

A law was passed recently forcing employers to grant their maids the minimum of one day off a month. I’ve heard Singaporeans extolling their own virtues.

“My maid should be thankful. I give her two days off every month!”

Faith and I have decided not to hire a maid due to a few reasons. The main reason, according to Faith, is the universal law dictating that “we clean our own shit up”. It’s a perfectly legit reason. We made the mess, we clean it up. If we don’t have time to clean it up, we live in it. I’m pretty sure someday down the road I’ll be made to eat these words. When work requires 16 hours a day and I have potato chips all over my couch, it is likely I am tempted to break this self-imposed law.

My own reason for not hiring a maid is slightly different. So called “better pay” aside, we treat them like dirt. It is a common sight to see the mother of the family buying groceries from the market, the father walking a couple of meters behind prodding a stylus on some new-fangled gadget he just bought, and the maid, much futher behind struggling under numerous plastic bags of vegetables, raw meat and canned food. She’s barely able to lift the bags. Her employers shout for her to hurry up. The mother sighs and exclaims loudly that her maid is lazy and inefficient.

I don’t want to be like that. But right now I’m not sure if I have the maturity to treat a live-in domestic help with dignity. Essentially, when you hire a maid you become an employer - a manager. Not everyone has the smarts to be one, especially being one 24/7. I’m just not sure if I do.

We were talking about new year resolutions the other day.

Many years ago I made the one resolution I actually kept; I made a resolution never to make another resolution again. It was the end to what seemed like a pirated copy of Groundhog Day.

On New Year’s day I’d promise to do all my homework, improve my grades, listen to my parents. I’d last for the first week and a half before coming to grips with reality. I had better things to do than rote writing endless lines of Chinese characters. Homework would be left undone, grades would fall and parents would nag.

Maybe next year.

What’s one new year resolution you’ve kept?

I leave for Myanmar tomorrow morning. It is the fulfilment of silent promise made many years ago.

Pray for me. I seemed so much stronger in the faith then. I feel so weak now; so unfit for His purpose. Break me, cleanse me, and use me if it is Your will. This I pray.

I started at a new place of work today. I’m now put in charge of building web interfaces for my wife. I’m literally married to my work.

There was a young Brazilian boy named Eduardo who loved cars. He wasn’t just content looking at them from afar, mind you. He was in love with the dream that he might someday race cars for a living. He spent countless nights lying awake, wondering what it would be like to zoom past the chequered flag and take his place on top of the podium, hearing the Brazillian national anthem play as the crowds chanted his name.

Eduardo came from a poor family who planted crops for a living. Whenever he could, Eduardo would ride his little donkey to the nearby go-kart track and watch the richer neighbourhood kids race, often imagining himself behind the wheel instead of on his saddle. After the races, he’d get on his donkey and head back to the farm. Sometimes the meaner neighbourhood kids would scare Eduardo’s donkey by honking loudly as they whizzed by on their new motorcycles.

The donkey was the only thing Eduardo owned. The only thing that was his in the whole wide world. He bought Livia when she was just a foal, or a baby jenny as young female donkeys are called. The stable dealt only with horses, and sold Eduardo the donkey at a very cheap price. It took Eduardo all of his life savings to afford her.

He became known as the boy with the donkey. Some villages joked about how Eduardo was the Brazilian version of English Mary, who had her little lamb. No one knew if Mary loved her lamb, but everyone who saw Eduardo knew that he loved Livia.

Maybe more than his dream of driving. Maybe.

And therein lies the dilemma, and the start of my story.

…as you’re growing, you must remember
that nothing lasts, except the grace of God
by which I stand in Jesus.

- “Grace by which I Stand” by Keith Green

Anne’s sitting on my lap. It’s 6:30 in the morning, and she has woken up every single hour of the night wanting to be coddled and this time she doesn’t look like she’s going back to sleep.

There’s a certain magic about babies. Somehow they make you forget how dastardly they were ten minutes ago. It’s some sort of amnesia dust that is sprinkled on their hair or something - undoubtedly God’s way of making sure humans won’t be too traumatised by their first child to want to have a second.

Yesterday I received a job offer. I don’t apply for many jobs - only the ones whom I think offer a chance to do good work. Had the offer come a week ago, it would have been a no-brainer, but I think God doesn’t like no-brainers. A lack of dilemma negates the whole concept of free-will.

A week ago things were looking undecidedly bad. I run my own business doing web stuff, and after Anne was born, I kinda burned my bridges. I declined on projects in order to look after her in the initial months. Given that most of what I land comes from client referrals, turning away projects breaks the chain; and starting all over again isn’t easy at all.

Now that Anne’s more settled and both our parents are getting some playing time, I’ve been trying to do just that - start all over. I’ve also been applying for a couple of jobs here and there. It’s been a humbling experience.

Everyone has stuff they hold on tight to - stuff which helps define who they are; separate them from the rest of the world. Some people pride themselves in being great at their job, others drive on the highways thinking they handle the wheel better than that “woman driver”, some in their paper qualifications etc. It’s hard to take pride in being a good father. Not that it’s unrewarding, but you’re a shoo-in for the job. You’re the best and worst candidate. You don’t get fired for doing a bad job, nor do you get promoted for doing a good one. Fatherhood redefines you - and I didn’t have the structure of a 9 to 5 to fall back on.

Just a few rejected job applications. Well, they don’t exactly reject you, they just don’t get back to you. It certainly disappointed me. I felt I had done well education-wise. Workwise I was, at least I think, pretty much ahead of the curve when it came to web stuff in Singapore. Heck, I’ve won every “employee of the month” over the course of the last two years, working in my one-man business. Slowly everything I held on to, that made me “me” was being stripped away. Being prideful as I am, I still hold on to them, taking out my trophies and polishing them every now and then. But in the middle of the night, especially tonight, it is not the past achievements that matter, but whether I get my butt out of bed and pick my daughter up, giving Faith some much needed shuteye.

Over the last few days, business has been pouring in and I find myself “in the game” yet again. And with the job offer to consider, it is too easy to go back to feeling great about myself and how “in demand” I’ve become. Then Anne poops and I manage to reach the tissue box and stuff a couple down her diaper just before the shit literally hits the fan.

That’d be me. Poop cleaner extraordinaire.

It’s Min’s birthday today.

Two years ago I’d have taken her to Applebee’s. Wenyang, Clifton, Carol and Zhenlin would have joined us. Now Wenyang is in Japan and Clifton is in Spain. Carol and Zhenlin are still in Tucson. They’re done studying.

Min wouldn’t have made a fuss over her birthday - she never does. But I’d have made sure we had some ice cream and DVDs anyway.

Happy birthday, sister.

It’s been an eternity since I’ve written. Paying work still eludes me, but I seem to be stuck with a lot of the non-paying stuff - friends of friends needing favours, that sort of thing. Throw in a flu bug and an always-awake baby, and it’s no wonder Faith and I are pretty pooped.

God willing, I’ll be flying down to Myanmar to visit an orphanage the end of the year. The people in charge there tell me that there is a need for:

1. clothes, worn or new, as long as they are wearable.
2. stationary and materials for craft (pens, pencils, crayons)
3. books - ones that teach basic English (like children’s alphabet) or simple English storybooks.

If you have any of the above to donate, leave a comment or drop me an email. lucian at tribolum dot com, or use the online contact form.

It seems so stupid, but sometimes we don’t do the right thing, even when we know it’s the right thing, because it’s a little late to do the right thing.

These are things not many people know about me.

When I was one month old, my parents left me in the care of a nanny whom they paid. I went home to my parents every Saturday night and came back every Sunday night. For the longest time I thought that my nanny’s family was my real family and my parents were the weekly abberation in the fabric of reality. I still call my nanny Mama, her children “Jie Jie” and “Kor Kor” (meaning brother and sister in the Chinese dialect we spoke). Till this day I believe that a large part of my character is derived from having lived there and having called them family.

But somewhere the aberration became the norm. I was moved back to my parents when I began formal education. I’d visit Mama every week. Slowly every week became every month. And every month became whenever. If ever.

Why don’t I visit more often? I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t know what to say. Or maybe I’m afraid that the person I see before me isn’t the same person I remember from my childhood. Perhaps some part of me wants things to be the way they are, not wanting to rock the proverbial boat.

I was in Mama’s neighbourhood today. I decided to take the elevator up. The entire place had recently been repainted, now looking more like a set of building blocks than apartment blocks. Red, green, yellow and blue replaced the old cream coloured buildings that had turned a stale light brown with age. That aside, everything felt so very familiar. Like walking to the bathroom in the dark. You know where the light switch is.

I walked up to the corridor and looked at her door. It was half-open. And I froze.

I didn’t dare look in for fear of being seen. What if she asked “what took you so long?” What would I say? Where would I hide my unfillial face?

I stood there for the longest time. Then I headed home and left home behind me, still unvisited. Unresolved.

Directly from the school of hard knocks.

Over the past two years, I’ve spent considerable time speaking to clients, giving them advice on web related matters etc. I forget that a job interview is somewhat similar, but also very different.

When at a panel interview for a job position at a certain government branch two days ago, the guy in charge of website matters asked me if I had seen their corporate website and whether it could be improved.

Rhetorical question, right? Think again.

I replied, albeit too eagerly, that it could be improved. Code bloat could be reduced and information better laid out. My spider-sense tells me it didn’t go down too well with the web guy.

If I had replied, “the site’s great as it is and pretty much needs no improvement”, the interview would have stopped dead in its tracks. What would they need me there for then?

Vanessa, who managed to secure a similar job, offered me great post-humous advice.

She said,

must say, it’s GREAT! i love it …. however, of course as times change, ppl might expect more xxx techy features blah blah blah

The perfect answer I didn’t think of. It compliments web guy’s work but acknowledges the inevitability of change, hence the need to hire you.

Led the singing in church this morning. It has never felt this difficult.

I’ve been following up on Katrina over the past week, reading up on the news from the ground as well as catching the new non-stop footage on CNN.

That’s a lot of people dying. Dying as I type this. Dying as I go to bed. Dying as I have my breakfast. How on earth am I supposed go to church, stand behind the pulpit and ask the congregation to praise God?

I know the questions. I hear them loud and clear. I even find myself asking them. Isn’t God all mighty? Isn’t He a loving God? Doesn’t He care?

Do I lead the singing pretending none of this happened? Do we go on about our own business as per every Sunday, thanking God that we’re not there? How do we sing even simple songs saying “Thank You Lord for this day”, when so many people out there are suffering?

Dearest Beloved in the Lord,

we are His hands and feet. We are His testimony here on earth. Thousands upon thousands have lost their homes, their loved ones, their jobs, everything. They’re not asking for a new Mercedes Benz, or the lastest Playstation or Xbox. They need a place to live, clean water to drink and food to eat.

If we believe that God is loving, show it. If we believe that He is Almighty, as His people we cannot stand by and do nothing.

We ought not to feel nothing.

Give.

Red Cross.

America’s Second Harvest - The Nation’s Food Bank Network.

Here’s a comprehensive list of charities you can donate to, via Instapundit.

It is shocking to think that a place like New Orleans could turn into Atlantis in a matter of days. I’m slowly coming to grips with the magnitude of the disaster.

Here in Singapore, there isn’t the kind of coverage you’d be getting in the United States. While there have been many comparisons to the Tsunami that swept Indonesia only months before, human sympathy should never be dispensed in degrees. Ideally one’s heart should weep, whether for a single starving child or for the thousands who die by genocide.

I hate it that I instinctively sweep Katrina’s devastation under the rug because it’s happening many miles away in a place I’ve never been, to people I do not know. I want to know, to cry and to mourn.

I want to care.

Min sent an email detailing her business trips to California and her short holiday to Vancouver. It has been a year since she graduated, and her new work visa is due to come in, which probably means she’ll be staying in the States. I’m guessing for another year at least. It’s a long time to not see someone I’ve lived with and seen every single day for most of my adult life. She seems very happy with her job.

I am happy. Sorta.

Having been kept awake by Anne and her flailing arms for the past 3 hours, this is probably going to sound like a teenage rant.

A hormonal outburst. Premature menopause without having ever had the meno.

Homemaker and baby-minder by day, web designer / developer by night.

And human being whenever time allows.

Whenever people see the poppy plant, they assume that someone planted it for the opium. I remember giant fields of poppy plants back when I was a child. They used to grow wild near the farm where I lived.

It was only much later in my adulthood that I learned of entire nations crumbling to the addictive smell of burning opium. Then they came.

The soldiers came with orders from the government that all poppy plants, wild or otherwise, were to be destroyed. It was an offence to have wild poppy growing even in fields that nobody owned. The landscape of my childhood would be forcibly changed into one that was acceptable.

I love the poppy plant. The way it stands upright, so beautiful and strong, unlike the grasses which sway in the wind. I love the way it grows: it starts off tender and vulnerable, slowly gaining strength and character with each sun-filled day. I scarcely remember it now. All I remember is the expanse of poppy stalks, all mercilessly decapitated.

I have often thought of planting her in secret, just to relive what I once knew so well. I would have if I were a nomad or a hired hand, but the stakes are too high now that I have inherited my family’s farm. I stand to lose everything if caught even with one stalk anywhere in its vicinity.

My life straddles two pieces of world history: one innocent and poppy filled, the other with stark reality and poppyless.

Maybe it is for the best that I am unable to revisit the plant of my youth. Now older and worldly-wiser, I may be tempted to crush her and smoke her, leaving me with neither the rejuvenation of childhood memories nor the security of present day life. I would be a husk, like the millions of opium addicts whom history has vowed not to recreate.

Is it impossible to love for love’s sake alone and not for self-centered pleasure? The worldwide extermination of my childhood symbol deigns the quality of our love tainted; that to love purely is nigh impossible.

Maybe they’re right. But what a price to pay, half a life lived - never to be lived again!

I remember a sunny morning after class when my English professor walks up beside me and asks whether I would write poetry or prose, given a choice between the two.

“Prose”, I answered. Maybe I needed the structure, a crutch upon which to lean. But when I read a poem that hits home, I know that I said prose because I could hide behind the verbiage that structure brings. Poetry is the language of the heart without the bullshit of the mind.

Over the last week I managed to watch Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, a tale of two strangers meeting, and the conversation that ensued. The movie was simplicity at its finest - no soundtrack or slow-mo to heighten any portion of what the characters said. A romance, like how it would happen in real life.

Anyway. A scene in the movie has our two lovebirds walking by a river in Vienna and confronted by a homeless writer who asks them for a word, with which he would compose a poem with, and receive whatever wage they deemed fair to give him.

Two strangers in a distant land, having just met. Falling in love. The word was “milkshake”.

Daydream delusion
Limousine Eyelash
Oh, baby with your pretty face
Drop a tear in my wineglass
Look at those big eyes
See what you mean to me
Sweet cakes and milkshakes
I am a delusion angel
I am a fantasy parade
I want you to know what I think
Don’t want you to guess anymore
You have no idea where I came from
We have no idea where we’re going
Launched in life
Like branches in the river
Flowing downstream
Caught in the current
I’ll carry you. You’ll carry me
That’s how it could be
Don’t you know me
Don’t you know me by now

If I had the courage to love without reservation and live without hesitation, I would write poetry. But I am afraid that if you removed the protection prose offered, you’d find a man of very little substance.

Don’t you know me. Don’t you know me by now.

Faith read my entry yesterday and said something rather insightful. While I was trying to get some feedback on how she felt about our current situation, or whether my grouses with the powers-that-be here was a minor hiccup, she said this: There were more “thank God”s while you were there.

You could say that my life has been a roller-coaster ride with the regularity of a classic sine curve.

The next few paragraphs are a run-through the major events of my life, to illustrate my sine curve observation.

I had two sleepless nights of tossing and turning, thinking about Tucson. Bringing up Anne there. Having to leave friends and family behind. Maybe not finding Tucson the same as I left.

There is an unsent resume, bound for a mailbox at the University of Arizona, written for a position that seems tailor-made for me. Reasons for leaving. I wrote “I love Tucson” as my only reason. Maybe I should have put down something about job prospects or something more substantial. But there is nothing more substantial than this. I love Tucson.

There are times I wonder why there isn’t the innate sense of loyalty my home country asks of me. Why can’t I be like the rest, seemingly happy in this utopia of efficiency? I used to think these people were oblivious drones, but perhaps the fault lies with me.

Maybe I’m brainwashed by the “outside” people who tell me that Singapore is draconian, or that democracy is but a facade here. Maybe the casinos are for my own good and I am too stupid to see it. Maybe there is a reason behind the fare hikes on buses and trains even though no plausible one was given. Maybe it is just that I’ve never been able to accept things handed to me as-is. I’ve always had to know why, where, what, who and how.

But maybe you’re right in that I, like the millions who live here, are too simple for the inner workings of grandoise plans like nation-building.

That is probably why I want to bring my family to a place where things are simpler. I stay awake thinking of flowers and cacti, sunsets and ice-cream, and sharing these at a slower pace with Anne and Faith.

Faith tells me that if I truly were as disgruntled with Singapore as I come across, that I should just pack up and leave. But I really, really want Singapore to work out. I came back wanting to change things.

Between numerous clients who laugh their heads off when asked to consider coding their websites so the visually disabled can view it and a “new” government who claims to listen but really doesn’t, my enthusiasm has waned.

I am almost convinced of this: If I were to stay in Singapore, I need to care less. I need to care less about how things are built and more about how they look. I need to care less about values as long as the ends justify the means. I need to realise I’m not living in friggin’ Camelot.

I have been described as a lucky bastard. I have the perfect wife and now the perfect child. We’re looking for a new home. I’m willing to renovate the old one if you show me how.

I miss missing places and people.

I miss pining for Faith, longing for good fish porridge, wanting to be home.

Because I am home.

The missing is missing.

The orange hue of a lamp along a dark street on a cold night.

Will I ever see you again?

Last night was our first at our new home. Faith and I spent the last few days doing some heavy lifting. You really don’t know how many clothes you have until you’re made to carry all of it from Point A to Point B. I had to employ a lot of ingenuity in the process - including wrapping all my clothes in my blanket and hoisting it over my shoulder ala Tony Soprano’s lackeys.

It was oddly melancholic, largely because moving here meant moving away from my parents’, where so many memories had been created in our twelve-year courtship and the first three months of being married. We know we’ll miss coming home to a house full of people: my sister Louelle watching telly, grandma daydreaming, aunty lyn bringing out soup she boils for dinner every night. Dad would be sitting at the dining table peeling some fruit for Mom, who would later complain that he was trying to make her fat.

When Dad drove us here yesterday there was a sudden sadness as we walked to the elevator and he drove back home. The physical parting of ways hit us profoundly.

There are times when independence sucks, and I want so much to stay stagnant in time. I thank God for the Asian family mentality, where extended families are common and staying with one’s parents an accepted practice. I know that there’ll aways be two spots at the dinner table for Faith and I.

I’ve just finished unpacking all our books. Faith has a ton of children’s books and I have a ton of geek books ranging from Dante’s Divine Comedy to How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. The bookshelf is a nice little escape from the spankingly new. The familiarity of books we’ve read takes us back in time somewhat.