The Generation Gap: Ten things my Singaporean parents just don't get

I did wonder if this is a rather cruel blog post to write, but well, if taken in the right spirit and with a right amount of tact, perhaps it can just about work. This is just a little rant to get this off my chest and you guys can let me know if your parents are like mine. Now I am 36 and my dad's in his mid 70s whilst my mum is nearly 70 - they're extremely traditional and there are just a few things which I have practically given up trying to explain to them. I'm not here to criticize my parents - rather, I just want to explore the generation gap and how the difference in our ages (of over three decades) can affect the way we view these following issues.

1. Time zones

Groan. This is painful. Singapore is 7 hours ahead of London when we're in summer time and 8 hours ahead of London when we're in winter time. Every year, when the time comes for us to jump forward or backward by an hour, they don't understand how it has happened. I don't think the concept of British Summer Time is really that complicated or hard to understand for this is something that happens all over Western Europe as well as in many other countries really. However, as it is not done in Singapore, my parents just don't get it. Maybe I am really bad at explaining it and that could be entirely my fault for not having explained it properly.

Do time zones confuse you too?

But get this, my mum doesn't even understand the time difference between London and Singapore. I would normally call her up after I know she has had her dinner but before she goes to bed, so it would be like 2:30 pm in London and 9:30 pm in Singapore - this is something I've done for years. She would still ask me what time it is over in London and when I tell her it's 2:30 pm, she will be like, "is that 2:30 yesterday, today or tomorrow?" Groan. I don't know why but it's really something that stumps her big time - is this common amongst Singaporeans who don't get out much?

2. Being self-employed

Double groan. I can live with the fact that my parents just do not understand time zones, but what about the concept of being self-employed? Maybe time zones are confusing but here's the concept of being self-employed for you. When I work, I earn. When I don't work, I don't earn. There - that's it, is that so hard to understand? Apparently it is for my parents - I have been self-employed since 2004 November and they still don't really understand what it means to be self-employed.

I am self-employed, even if I am working for a company (as a contractor).

For them, having a job means getting a salary at the end of every month and if you want to go on a holiday, you must apply for leave and the boss will decide if he will grant you that leave. If you are unwell, then you must get a note from you doctor (commonly referred to as an medical certificate or 'MC' in Singapore) and you are allowed a number of sick days before the boss starts deducting your pay. I get it, that's called working full time for one employer - I've done that before, up till 2004 November.

Nowadays, I work for one company 75-80% of the time as a consultant - that means I am not a full time member of staff there, I am a contractor. As for the other 20-25% of the time, I can either work for someone else or I can just take it easy or study. The amount of work I do for them varies and at the end of every month, I invoice them for the work that I do and they pay me. Sometimes it is more, sometimes it is less and I don't have any 'paid leave'. If I want to take a holiday or just take time off to enjoy the Olympics, I just declare that I am not working and I am simply not paid for the time I am not working. Also, as a self-employed person, I fill in a tax return every year and pay my taxes that way - it is the most natural thing for me but they don't quite understand how the government trusts me to tell the truth on my tax return!

My parents still ask me questions like, "But what if the boss wants you to work during the Olympics?" Groan. I tell them that I am a contractor, not a slave. If he has stuff he needs done in this time, he can jolly well as another member of staff to do it. Furthermore, I am going away on holidays (like a proper holiday, not just an 'I'm watching the Olympics' holiday) after the Olympics after over and I don't need my boss's permission to go on holiday. I just tell my colleagues the dates I am away and they will cover for me then.  

I'm not working this 2 weeks, I'm having my Olympics holiday!

But they just don't get it - I don't see why it is so difficult to understand that I actually do have a lot of flexibility with my work arrangements. This boils down to the fact that I am a contractor and a consultant and the financial services industry in Europe tends to have a quiet period over the summer anyway. Besides, my boss knows that he can get away with paying me less this way - he pays me more when he needs me to put in a 50 hour week (I've worked a few 60 hour weeks last year) and when I wanna go off and do other staff, he doesn't need to pay me. I value this flexibility far more than the money I could earn, say if I worked full time for a bank. No thanks, I am taking a pay cut for the flexibility because I am already rich enough and don't need to work myself to an early grave. I wanna enjoy life and have a good work-life balance.

Is that so hard to understand? I don't think so, really.

3. Food & Nutrition

This one winds me up no end. You see, I am a health nut. I like to eat healthy foods, I understand nutrition and this started when I was a teenager. As a gymnast back then, we had to be very careful what we ate - we had to make sure we had enough calories to fuel our training sessions, but we had to make sure we ate the right kind of foods to build muscles. So yes to lean meat, soy milk, tofu and fresh salads, no to hot dogs, burgers, sugary soft drinks, pizzas and fried chicken.

Don't eat this - it is not healthy. Have a salad instead. 

After I stopped training, I still kept a keen interest on what I put into my body and I realized that if I wasn't training 4 hours a day 6 days a week, I had to eat even less to make sure I don't put on weight. So I began watching my diet a lot more carefully, learning more and more about nutrition and I wouldn't call myself an expert, just someone who does understand what our bodies need very well after years of taking an active interest in the subject.

My parents on the other hand, have no concept of nutrition. Hell no. Vegetables would be cooked to death, they were hell bent on cooking the life out of any vitamins left in the green vegetables. They look at the way I eat salad and tell me it is unhygienic for the vegetables are not cooked and contains harmful germs which need to be killed. Gosh, even something like beansprouts, I eat my beansprouts raw because they are so good for you. They cook their beansprouts to death by boiling it for ages in hot water or frying it with oil and I'm like - how can you do that to beansprouts?

Water has no nutritional value. 

We argue most about water. Now here's the bone of contention: whilst water forms an important part of our diet, it contains no medicinal value. If you do not drink enough water, you will become dehydrated. This is especially so when you live in a hot country and lose a lot of water through perspiration. Yes, but when we are unwell, you cannot prescribe water as a form of medication. Water doesn't cure anything - if you are unwell, you need to improve your diet by eating more fresh fruits and vegetables for the vitamin C. In any case, you don't need to drink litres and litres of water - everything you eat: meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts, bread, rice, fish, cheese etc - contains a lot of water anyway and your body is very good at extracting the water content from the food you eat.

Now they try to use the Chinese concept of yin & yang to justify their misconception about water as a medicine - but they misinterpret it. For those of you not familiar with this concept, let me explain it to you in a nutshell. Now foods can be divided into two groups: yang foods with a masculine force (eg. chocolate, fried chicken, potato crisps etc) and yin foods with a feminine force (eg. watermelon, fresh vegetables, barley). How the food is prepared also determines the nature of it - so you can take something like lotus root which is considered a yin food, but if we deep fry it in tempura batter (oooh delicious), then it turns into a yang food because of the deep fat frying. Often yang foods are labelled 'heaty' and yin foods are labelled 'cooling' in this context.

Do you have a balanced diet? 

In Chinese medicine, one believes in the concept of balancing one's yin & yang forces, so if you have a main course which has a lot of yang force (eg. spicy fried chicken nuggets), then it is necessary to balance it with yin forces (eg. a vegetable salad side dish along with a glass of watermelon juice). Any form of imbalance is bad for your body. This is where my parents go very wrong - they consider water (not soup, not juice, not tea, just plain water) a yin food which is cooling and I have to tell them that it is not true. Water is not considered yin at all, yin foods are cooling because of certain characteristics they posses. As water contains no nutritional value, it is therefore considered neutral - neither yin nor yang. It is definitely not 'cooling'.

They accuse me of being so westernized that I don't understand Chinese medicine and I have to tell them, au contraire, I understand Chinese medicine far more than you do. I have read a lot about Chinese medicine on the internet whilst your understand of such concepts is limited to what you have heard from your family and friends who are not experts and could have passed on misleading or inaccurate information to you. Then it all goes pear shape when they accuse me of being arrogant and I accuse them of being ignorant of their own culture and the conversation has to stop there. Oh dear.

Yes carrots are very good for you. 

4. Office politics

Perhaps it's because they've worked all their lives as primary school teachers - my parents simply don't understand office politics. They are lucky really, to have been spared some of the worst office politics that I've been through as it's pretty nasty how some people would gladly stab you in the back for either financial gain or to make sure they get that promotion instead of you. I had to be careful whom I could trust and consider a true friend and whom I had to be wary of - I am usually quite good at this but even I have made mistakes in the past.

I suppose in a primary school, the teachers give the students a sense of order, where the hierarchy is very clear. Amongst the students there are prefects, then if things go wrong you can always run to the teacher and then there are the head teachers, headmasters or principals. A student feels safe, knowing that s/he can always run to a teacher if things go wrong and the teacher is usually able to deal with most problems that come their way. It is indeed, a far cry from the corporate world and that's perhaps a reason why some people are attracted to the profession of teaching.

Do you know what it is like to be stabbed in the back in the office?

That's why I have stopped trying to talk to my parents about office politics because it's not that they are unsympathetic - they just don't get it. They expect the boss to behave like a primary school teacher who will resolve any issue amongst colleagues - well that just doesn't happen in the work place. Sigh. They have no idea how nasty office politics can get, so they think anything I face cannot possibly be so hard to resolve. That's when I go to my sister or my peers for empathy for they do understand office politics.

5. Winter weather

My parents so don't get winter weather. My mother thinks anything under 28 degrees is cold. They think that people should stay at home, turn up the heating and not risk leaving the house when the temperature falls below zero degrees just in case they freeze to death. Having experience -40 degrees and lived away from Singapore since 1997, I'm very experienced with winter weather especially since I love skiing. 

I love winter sports so much. 

Here's the basic premise with winter weather, if it's cold, you dress up warmly and you don't feel the cold any more. It's that simple really. The colder it is, the more you wear. So it can be -40 but you can still go out and carry on as normal as long as you're dressed appropriately for -40 degrees - that is why there are people living in places like Siberia, Alaska, Greenland and Mongolia where they experience bitterly cold winters. People live there - where do you think they go during the winter months?

And good grief - my parents once asked me how I dry my clothes in the winter months - they were convinced that the wet clothes won't dry because the weather is cold. And I'm like, firstly, my flat is heated in the winter, the temperature in my flat is around 21 degrees and even if I were to hang my clothes outside when it is very cold, they will still dry because evaporation occurs at all temperatures. That's just basic physics. Evaporation doesn't stop just because it is very cold. The clothes may take longer to dry but yeah they still become dry after 24 to 36 hours. They still don't believe me on that one. They're convinced I wear semi-damp clothes in winter unless I iron everything.

Forgive me for repeating this: but when it snowed heavily in London earlier this year, my mother said, "oh the poor children, they cannot go out and play because it is too cold". And I'm like, what are you talking about? Children love snow! They love snow more than adults! The moment it snows, they're out in the parks playing with the snow: snowball fights, sledding, building snowmen, making snow angels and having a fantastic time. As long as they dress appropriately, they won't feel the cold. Duh.

I love it when it dips below -20! 

6. Racism

I have talked about this in another post so I shall direct you there.

7. Learning something for fun

Again, this boils down to the fact that they are teachers and that is the framework with which they view the world. I love learning new things just for the fun of it, for no more than the satisfaction of picking a challenge, rising to the occasion and learning something new. I believe I become a better person for the experience and I have some fun in learning something new. My parents don't get that. Not at all. They believe that when you learn something, you must get a certificate or some kind of paper qualification to prove that you can do it so you can put it on your CV as part of your achievements. I don't buy that.

Take languages for example. I speak many language but have only formal qualifications for English, Chinese, French and Welsh. I speak remarkably good Spanish (it is my fourth language) - but I don't have a single piece of paper to prove that I can speak Spanish. I prove that I can speak Spanish by actually speaking Spanish and it has served me well at work. My boss doesn't care if I have a piece of paper to prove that I can speak Spanish - as long as I can use it effectively at work, that's all that matters. In fact, I think about all the Singaporeans who have done years of Chinese at school but can barely read or write the language as adults - what's the point of paper qualification like that when you can no longer perform the task you claim have passed an exam for?

Spanish is my 4th language after English, French & Chinese. 

8. The purpose of education

This is something I have talked about before, so I shall direct you to a post I have written earlier.

9. Social networking and making friends.

My parents don't understand social networking at all. Social networking sites like Facebook have been so useful for me in terms of tracking down old friends and making new ones. For example, when I worked in Singapore last year, I rapidly expanded my social network in Singapore thanks to Facebook by talking to friends of my friends and then talking to the friends of my new friends etc. This seems like a perfectly natural process for those of us who use Facebook all the time - but it is an alien process to my parents. I would be like, "Oh I am going to see Melissa for lunch today" and they'll ask, "Is she an old classmate?" And when I say that he is a friend off Facebook and they'll be like, "Do you know who she is? How can you be sure?" Duh.

No my parents don't understand how Facebook works. 

10. The terrible state of China and how it is in no way associated with me

China is a terrible country for many reasons - terrible human rights, a huge gulf between the rich and the poor and the terrible plight of those who are condemned to a lifetime of slaving away in the sweat shops of China. What about the terrible pollution? Or the lack of freedom of speech? And the Chinese people - oh the fucking PRCs whom I detest so much. What about the fact that the fucking evil Chinese government is directly for so many civilian deaths in Syria right now by propping up Assad's regime there and blocking a UN resolution to rid Syria of the dictator Assad? Or the way ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xiniang are oppressed? Make no mistake, the Chinese government is fucking evil and I do not want to be associated with the term 'Chinese'. I use the label 'Singaporean' (or 'South-East Asian') if people really want to know where in Asia I'm from, but I certainly do not want to be associated with China in any shape or form. No fucking way. I just speak the language very well, it ends there. I look at the way white Americans simply use the term "American" to describe themselves and they don't bother saying, "but my great-great-great grandparents were from France/Spain/Sweden etc originally". They're not bothering with that because it is so long ago even if they do have a European sounding surname. Surely the time has come for Singaporean-Chinese people can stop being 'Chinese' and just be Singaporean.

My point is that my parents don't like to talk about it - they have their blind spot there because they are under the impression that white people are incredibly racist and look down on China so they have to "big up" China to compensate for this. Whilst China may be an emerging economic super power, it is all too tempting to focus on the relatively wealth middle class (approximately 350 million of them) whilst ignoring the other 1 billion who still live in poverty. I remember walking around Shanghai late one night, it was near one in the morning and I observed how a construction site was still working away in full swing - with a foreman barking orders at a group of workers toiling away. I wondered from which poor corner of China they had come from, only to end up working through the night on a construction site in Pudong, Shanghai. My dad loves the idea about China being a world superpower, but what about the plight of people like those construction workers?

My parents still hesitate to criticize China. Why?!

"Yes they work hard now but in a few years time, they will all live in nice houses, be able to send their children to university and have a better future," my dad once claimed. Really? Get real dad. China is a place now where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If you're lucky to be born into a rich family in China, then life is probably going to be great. But for those workers toiling through the night on that construction site in Shanghai, my dad's analysis of their prospects couldn't be further from the truth - but that's not something my dad wishes to think about. He thinks that somehow, any criticism of China reflects badly on him as he identifies himself as Chinese - like WTF?

This is the bit I don't get. I never saw myself as Chinese at all. Singaporean, sure, that's where I was born, brought up and I served national service. But I am not Chinese, those PRCs from China - now they're Chinese. I saw a clear distinction between myself as a Singaporean born person who is several generations removed from China and someone who was genuinely Chinese from China. That distinction has allowed me to make very objective criticisms of China without feeling that any of that reflects on me. I would gladly condemn China's human rights records without a moment's hesitation - but my dad would take it very, very personally if he heard those words from my mouth.

 

Perhaps it is because my first language is English whilst my dad's first language is Chinese - this further fuels the fact that I do not self-identify as Chinese whilst my dad does. Given the tensions between PRCs and Singaporeans in recent years, this further increases my determination not to identify myself as Chinese - something which pisses my dad off no end but hey, there you go. I love my dad but I do not have to agree with him - and he knows that. From a young age, he knew I was nothing like him. I'd like to think that we can still have a mutually respectful relationship as father and son even if I don't see eye to eye with him on many issues and guess what? He's never demanded that I agree with him on these issues - it's not so much that he respects my opinion, rather he is resigned to the fact that he can't change my mind on these issues and that I am influenced by so many other things in life other than his opinions.

So there you go - those are ten things which are not so much a criticism of my parents per se, but rather they reflect the generation gap between my parents and I. I'm sure everyone will have their own list like that - if you were to compile such a list, what would be on your list? Is there something that means a lot to you but your parents just don't get at all? What issue epitomizes the generation gap in your family? Leave a comment, thanks. 

My dad just can't understand why I would prefer Korean pop to Mando-pop!

Oh and BTW, thanks to Sun Ho and Kong Hee, I have had the most successful month ever on my blog: 272,911 hits in July 2012. I really doubt I would be able to repeat that success in August, especially since I am going away for a holiday after the Olympics! Thanks to all my readers - I am glad you have enjoyed my analysis of the issues involved.