In many sense this post is a response to Kwang Guan’s Fly Away; I am pretty intrigued by this personal idea to parody a blog entry.
He has been unemployed since he finished National Service in mid-January. He’s been ‘productive’ in the sense that he has accomplished much in his YEC and also teaching tuition and therefore inspiring the lives of young boys and girls while benefitting through the constant contact with matters of academia. While he has eventually decided to get moving and is now in USA spending US Dollars, I’ve consistently been on and off employment, experiencing new working environments, meeting people of different age, experiences and backgrounds, learning about work life and realities of society.
Like what Kwang Guan said, productivity is subjective and yet he is actually touting his form of it. Think about it, my journey have been way more interesting: I’ve admired the skyscrapers of Shenton Way, paced towards Lau Pa Sat as the lunch crowd was zipping towards and past me in both directions. I’ve rode the elegant elevators of One Raffles Quay, quietly observing the people who worked at the building, most well dressed up in office attire. I secretly enjoy observing the movements of the high class automatic turnstile (it’s not one strictly speaking, doesn’t even turn; so more of a very cool little gantry) as people scan their passes.
Saint Augustine once said, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page” because during those days, they didn’t have e-book readers and iPads. These days, the pages of the world comes to you as you touch the right buttons. Just yesterday, I was enjoying wonderful Lebanese food at Gulf Beach Restaurant at 41 Arab Street. It’s a rare chance to be born and raised in Singapore, and the unique opportunity of being born at this age where the country as matured sufficiently to accommodate so many more different cultures and diversity. Get inspired by enjoying the environment you have always been in but never tried appreciating. Lose your stress in the only place you can truly call home.
While Kwang Guan hope to come back with renewed vigor and a focused attitude on life, I already am and have been practising this attitude since the time I re-joined society. Won’t you say this is a better substitute than having to blog from a nanotechnology laboratory in Illinois, dressed in Goggles and Lab Coat?
Today while I was waiting for my classroom to be emptied after the previous tuition lesson so that I can prepare for my lesson which comes next, I sat down quietly outside to read my ‘Lord of Finance‘. The primary 3 kids asked me what I was reading and I told them the book is about money. In many sense it charts the change in paradigm of currency.
Unfortunately it unleashed an outburst of fantasy from the kids, toying with the idea of money being grown from trees and filling every space you can conceive in the world. They say that they would then be able to buy everything in this world and become really rich. I tried in vain to alert them that if money becomes so plentiful it will almost definitely be useless and would thus buy them nothing.
Well, they’ll learn it someday. I hope not through reality though.
Courage is not having no fears. Courage is having fears but doing it anyways.
When I was young people liked to ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. We had a couple of generic answers, mostly professions prescribed by parents; we could choose to be lawyers, doctors, actors/celebrities (a result of watching too much TV, I guess), engineers, architects, accountants, inventors (a result of fascination with Primary School textbook stories) and strangely enough, writers. I didn’t have any preference for those professions, and didn’t care to give those adults a firm answer. I would say I don’t know or that I probably would enjoy inventing stuff.
Then when I went to school and in Primary 3, I met this young China girl who was the same standard as me; she was extremely bright and intelligent with greater exposure to the outside world than kids like us who have grown up in Singapore and hardly any friends outside the country. When she introduced herself in class, she told everyone that she aspires to be a ‘neurosurgeon’. It was a term barely anyone at the age of 9 would recognize and we were wondering what on earth is a ‘beef surgeon’. Chinese for beef, 牛肉 is pronounced as ‘niu-rou’ and thus extremely close to ‘neuro’. Since we knew what is a surgeon, we were confused by the term but then later understood it to be a ‘brain doctor’. I was impressed by the girl’s ambitions though extremely put off by her arrogance.
While I was still unsure about my ambitions, I worked hard to do well in school especially in the sciences. I was interested in sciences and it was a subject I could compete with the young lady at. I read up more about sciences that are not within the syllabus because she challenged my knowledge of atoms and molecules. I was intrigued by the world of physical sciences, the laws and forces. At that point of time, I did briefly aspire to be a scientist and to try and devour all the knowledge of mankind. Eventually the China girl left Singapore for some other country to study and live but my interest in Sciences did not diminish until I went on to Secondary School.
Chinese High exposed me to the social sciences, which proves to be more appealing to me than the Sciences. Initially the lack of definite answers bothered me, but subsequently I enjoyed the discussions the subject spawned and the clash of opinions. Unfortunately, I developed the opinion that social sciences would not bring me the same sort of professional success the other careers like doctors, engineers, architects would enjoy unless I end up as a lawyer. I did briefly consider that but my poor grades in English prevented me from making that my ambitions. When the government announced that local banks have to consolidate, I became inspired to join the banking sector as a banker. It was something like an epiphany, a sudden desire to chase riches in the adult world. Academically, I was keen on doing Economics, a subject closely related to the sector but encompasses a whole array of other stuff.
Interestingly, while the desire to enter banking led me to Economics, the subject eventually led my ambitions out of banking. I became keen on becoming an economist who would cross between the spheres of academia, public and private sector. How will my future path be like, I’ve a vague idea of it; I’d start out in the private sector that spans the globe, zoom into government and then move on to academia before entering global organizations as economic adviser. It will entail job switches, loads of networking and writing, possibly speaking. I reckon it’ll be fun and that’s the way ambitions should be; things that really matches you at least at the moments when you stick with it.
Parallel Parking seems like a huge headache. I started it with a blank mind and had problems understanding the sighting points. Now that I get them, there is a whole load of trouble with the execution. Now it’s really time to go hardcore on driving. I’ll have to start imagining myself driving everyday.
Okay now I’m once again in sort of a NEET position. To be exact I am kind of self-employed. Freelancing is something cool that most people would hope to do – in many sense it is like making a living through doing what you like and accepting work only when you like them. In practice, freelancers often accept work because they need the money though I’m not in the situation yet. And besides that, another bad thing about Freelancing is that unless you’re very disciplined, you’ll almost inevitably procrastinate until the very last minute before submitting your work. And unless you’re really desperate, you don’t push too hard for your payments so they get delayed frequently.
Yet freelancing is admirable for the insecurity, the need for a balance of self-promotion, humility and service to others. To be able to work in the comfort of your home is not easy and it takes lots of discipline and a sense of routine if you do have lots of work to juggle. For me, I reinforce this discipline by sleeping at fixed timings and try to have my meals within certain time range as well. When you’re doing graphics design, writing, web development and possibly even a little bit of consulting sort of freelancing, it is always easy to end up chatting on the computer, visiting game sites and getting a little too hooked to Facebook games. To enforce this computer discipline, Mac users have this software called WriteRoom. I have it installed but hardly use it partly because I’ve been regulating my gaming pretty well enough not to affect my work.
I’m definitely enjoying my freedom.
I am lazy. I work hard so that I can slack later.
Wee Chern tells me this is has got to be the greatest motivational quote when I offered this in response to his query of whether I would feel lazy since I work so hard. For more ideas on procrastinating procrastination, check out my article ‘Slack Later‘ on ERPZ.
