2nd entry - A Preface

Reflections on my past 20 years

As an adolescent and young adult, my greatest challenge was trying to "fit in" in school, in the army and then in the office. Each of these environments are so different and yet so similar, and all of them presented unique difficulties to me socially.

At school, the most significant problems I had were finding acceptance among peers and recognition by "society" (defined by parents and school and the gossipy neighbours).

In the neighbourhood primary school where I spent 6 years, most boys wanted to excel in ECA, especially in sports, to gain acceptance socially and recognition for themselves. Unfortunately, sports was one area I was very weak in. I recall that I liked running around (e.g. I remember enjoying playing "catching" with my classmates in lower primary) but not in a competitive way. During PE (physical education) lessons I tried to play all sorts of games but never really did well in any of them. As an adult, I wondered why I can't seem to enjoy sports like everyone else, and on retrospection I realise its because I couldnt bear to lose. I was too prideful. Because I was not confident of winning but I was too lazy to try, I chose to give up trying instead. Regretfully I think I must have missed out on quite a bit of personal development there, both physically and socially. In addition, I think this has had a tremendous impact on the events that took place in my subsequent years.

One immediate consequence of my lack of participation in sports was that other ECAs like music, art and reading became my obsessions. In these activities that I found a natural liking for, I invested lots of my time and energy, and became relatively "good" in them. I was in the school music ensemble, playing the recorder. Although I never took music theory and was not good in reading music notations, I learnt the music score through sheer memory-work and practice. I loved drawing with crayons and painting with poster color. Even now, I enjoy art appreciation (e.g. I'm the sort who can spend considerable time visiting musuems and art galleries) and seeing beautiful things in nature (including human-beings too). I helped out as a librarian and not only enjoyed reading but also enjoyed sorting and arranging books in an orderly manner on shelves (isnt that strange?!). Not many boys in my school shared my interests. I remember that I rejected many of them because my pride, and my punishment was being ostracized by them.

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In secondary school, I was determined to "start life anew" by doing things differently. My first attempt at this was to join a sports that I actually liked. This turned out to be volleyball. I remembered there was no volleyball team in my primary school, and I had mistakenly thought volleyball was a sport for girls. There was a Japanese drama serial with a volleyball theme that I had enjoyed immensely, and I thought this was a chance for me to try the sport. I went through much pain in learning the sport, getting bruises and scratches and sunburns and headaches (due to long hours in the sun), but I was never any good in it. Nonetheless, it was the first time I played for a school team and this was a great source of pride indeed.

At the same time, I discovered a new passion - excelling academically. On hindsight, I realised that I would never have excelled in this aspect if not for peer pressure. In primary school, I studied hard to please my parents and to get recognition for good results. In high school, I was motivated by the desire to do at least as well as others, and this was tough because everyone there was bright academically. I knew I could never be the top scorer, and I never aspired to be, but I knew that if I had tried hard enough I could get pretty decent grades - in sum, I discovered that I can study and get good grades if I wanted to. It sure wasnt easy - 9 'O' level subjects, including Higher Chinese, which I hated - but I was glad I didnt give up when I was getting near-failures test after test, semester after semester. Even familiar subjects that I thought I could do well in the past, like English, Mathematics and Art, turned out to be quite a challenge.

The second thing that I tried to do was to make new friends, to be accepted socially. Up to that point I never had close friends, especially boys, I could confide in. I blame it not only on my pride, as I mentioned earlier, but also on my lack of understanding of what friendship is all about. I realised that I needed to invest time and effort to make and keep friends. Most importantly, I needed to show I love them and care for them. Thankfully, I got to know some really decent guys, 3 of whom are now still very good friends of mine. They will always have a special place in my heart, and I think I would be prepared to stick my neck out for them if necessary.

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Junior College (JC) was, well, an eye-opener for me. Never in my life did I ever meet so many people who were so full of themselves all located in one institution. JC to me was not a place for learning - it was a place for showing off. I confess that I never enjoyed any moment of it, except for some moments during the first week of JC when we had "orientation" and some moments during the 2 weeks that my class was in the UK to do field studies. I never made any real friends there except for one guy, who has since become a rather distant friend to me. I didnt do well in studies nor in ECA. Socially and academically I consider myself to be a failure during my 2 years in JC. Do I regret it? I dont know but things might have been different if I studied in a different school. Maybe.

In the army, I think I experienced what Hell (or at least a prison sentence) might be like. Other than the physical training that almost killed me (I was hospitalised twice for heat exhaustion), the food sucked big time and many of the soldiers I met were really nasty. In addition to guys with "bad attitude", I also met bullies and was victimised by some of them. There were 3 particularly terrible guys that I had since forgiven but not forgotten. Two were older than me, and they tormented me incessantly during their remaining 6 months in the unit we were deployed to up to their ORD (when they were released back into civilian life). The third was my age, and I half suspected at the time that he was used by the Devil to pick on weak souls like me. To be fair, I met some nice guys too but never made any real friends - they were just like colleagues to me - people I only wanted a working relationship with and nothing more. I also learnt a great deal about management and endurance and realities of working life (more of this later). The most significantly milestone in my life took place here, however, when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour through a fellow enlistee (this would be written in a separate blog entry). Somehow I felt that God was with me throughout my darkest days and helped me to pull through. Up to this point, I felt that I was merely existing; after accepting Christ, I know that I am living life with true purpose and meaning.

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Life in the university was Heaven in comparison to that in the army. It was vibrant, buzzing with exhuberant activity and fun, and I could do whatever I pleased, within legal constraints of course. Importantly I enriched my mind a great deal and learnt the secrets of doing relatively well academically. I also had the chance to earn pocket money and to be exposed to the cutting edge of knowledge. I was like a sponge, greedily soaking up facinating facts from journals and books and converting them to useful knowledge to improve my grades and broaden my perspectives. My only problem was that I spent too much time and effort on academic achievement and too little on making new friends. Thankfully, though, I had the privilege of meeting a handful good friends who I still keep in touch with now.

Working life was the beginning of a whole new chapter in the 20something years that I had existed on this earth. Starting only 4-years-plus ago, my career has been an incredible journey for me and I think I am enjoying every moment of it in many different ways, none of which has anything to do with the nature of the work or the subject matter that I was dealing with. This definitely warrants another blog entry, which I hope you will give me a chance to share with you.

To my wonderful guests reading this blog, I hope this has not been a boring preface. More interesting things are coming your way, so stay tuned. :-)