Just spoke to my parents today

Hi guys, I thought I'd do a little post to sort out my thoughts. I wish to begin by thanking all my kind readers who responded to my last plea for help. You see, I had landed myself a big role in German TV and I was so afraid that my parents would not even understand the magnitude of what I have achieved. It is hard enough for an actor to get a big part in the country he lives in - it is pretty freaking unreal to get a big part in another country where you're expected to speak another language. I speak some German but it is far from fluent and having to work in a German speaking environment recently was a challenge for me. I am now heading back to Germany in a week to film for one of Germany's biggest and most popular TV series Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei: it has a cult following amongst German-speaking audiences after 35 seasons and over 500 episodes. I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity to make my German debut.

So after much deliberating, I decided I couldn't put off Skyping my family any longer. I didn't want to even tell my parents about it as I was afraid they would simply not understand how important this is for me or even appreciate how difficult what I have achieved is. I know I am busy this coming Saturday and I may be flying on Sunday, so I decided to speak to my parents today. The whole thing felt really artificial. I had spoken at length with my sister about how I felt about the situation and the whole thing felt like a carefully choreographed press conference, one that my sister would do in her workplace. Her PR instincts kicked in and she went into this professional PR management mode.

Would my parents even have a clue what is exactly on my CV?

You see, my sister barely let my parents get a word in - she would speak on their behalf as if she didn't trust them to say the right words, like a PR manager helping some helpless pop star who has gotten into trouble. So she would say like, "of course we are very happy for you and we are so proud of you, isn't that right Mum?" My mother would then nod and say, "Yes." But I could see that whilst my sister's enthusiasm is genuine, my mother just looked bored and it was almost as if she had been instructed, "just sit there and agree with everything I say, don't say anything stupid, just let me do the talking." I don't know if my sister had been that explicit in instructing my parents like that, but it certainly came across that way. There was only one moment when my mother deviated from the script - she made a random comment about my hair which was, "from this angle, I can't really see that you are balding." And I'm like, hang on a second, we're talking about something that means so much to me and you're making a random comment about my hair? Like are you not hearing a word I am saying at all? (Or even if she was, she was clearly disinterested.)

I then felt that I had set myself up to fail - I knew my parents couldn't and wouldn't give a shit about what I had achieved regardless of how important this was to me. Perhaps my sister has coaxed them to agree with her that they were proud of me and happy for me - but come on, I am an actor: I can tell when someone is acting and I can spot bad acting a mile away. We all can. You know what it is like when someone says sorry without actually meaning it? It's like when we are in primary school and the teacher instructs us to say sorry to someone, we are not apologetic but feel duty bound under pressure to mouth the words, "I'm sorry." Yeah it was that bad - my parents may have claimed to have felt happy for me, but there was zero joy in their eyes and they sounded bored (rather than happy) when they said, "I am happy for you." That was awkward - I wished we didn't even try to talk about that topic in the first place.

The awkward conversation left me conflicted.

Did I want a lot? Was I unreasonable? I just wanted them to feel happy for me that's all, like really feel happy. I was incredibly happy when I got the good news and I have had so many good friends share in my joy - it just kinda sucks when you think that most normal parents would feel happy for their children if they managed to achieve something with their careers. But without my sister's carefully staged performance today, they probably wouldn't have said anything at all. Gosh, it felt so fake that I just wanted to tell my sister to take her iPad to her room so that I can just talk to her and not my parents as the whole thing felt so incredibly awkward.

I guess I was partly to blame as well for how badly wrong that conversation went. I had already in my head been very negative about the whole thing. I had assumed the worst and was dreading that conversation long before it happened - that was why I had put it off for a month. I guess I had grown up with the impression that my parents think I am very stupid and look down on me - regardless of the fact that I am vastly more educated than them (I am a triple scholar no less) and withholding their approval is just their way to spite me. My sister claims it's not deliberate, but my parents are simply not educated enough to understand the ways of the modern world - so how can they offer any kind of approval of something they can't even begin to understand? That they are not spiteful or malicious, just totally ignorant.

I was hopping for a bit of approval over Skype.

Then later I asked myself, why should my parents feel happy for me? They have not been involved in this process at all, from the time I first started acting all those years ago - they thought I was mad to give up a lucrative full time job in finance to pursue this mad dream, they thought I was overly qualified to do this, that all my formal education would be wasted if I followed my heart. All my work has been here in the UK and Europe and it's not like my parents have ever seen any of it in Singapore - they don't see me go to my auditions, they don't see me memorizing my scripts in my living room, they have never ever attended any of my performances and when I send my sister Youtube links of the work I have done, I know she would try to get them to watch but my dad would show no interest as it is not in Chinese and he can't understand anything when I am speaking English.

In short, you cannot celebrate the result without understanding what had been sacrificed to achieve that result. Since they have not been involved at all in the process, trying to get them to produce a genuine emotional reaction (of joy) to my good news would be unrealistic - and when I tried to force it, there was no joy when they told me they were happy for me: it was just a mixture of confusion underlined with boredom as they said those words. I tried to explain why what I did was so amazing but it was me describing a result of a process which they had no understanding of. It's like trying to explain to someone who has no understanding of art why a masterpiece by Henri Matisse like "Fruit and Coffee Pot" is so priceless - to someone who has no clue who Matisse is, it is just another painting of some fruit and a coffee pot.

Let's just blame the generation gap then.

That's when I have to remind myself that even if the person I am talking to is totally ignorant of Matisse's great works, it doesn't devalue Matisse in anyway at all. Matisse is one of the world's greatest painters even if some people in this world are ignorant of his achievements. Thus even if my parents have no appreciation of what I have managed to achieve in my career, it doesn't devalue what I have achieved at all - even though it would be nice if they could have some appreciation of what I have done, then perhaps they could genuinely feel happy for me, or even feel proud of me. But that is always going to be impossible if they have no freaking clue what the hell I do for a living and it's not like I don't try to tell them, but they just don't understand the modern world I inhabit because they're not very educated. 

I remember when I was a child, I had always envied other friends who had a closer relationship with their parents. I remember this journey I took in 1994: you see, my parents live in Ang Mo Kio and I was a student at VJC then, all the way in Marine Parade. My friend Bruno lived in Bishan and I managed to get a lift from him and his dad to Bishan (which was like 90% of the way home for me). He talked to his dad as if they were best friends, his dad knew exactly what Bruno was going through and showed genuine interest. I sat there quietly in the backseat, seething with jealousy at the kind of relationship Bruno had with his dad. I never ever experienced anything like that with my parents and now that I am 38, things are not going to change and I simply have to accept the way things are as there's no alternative.

What kind of relationship do you have with your parents?

Another former classmate (let's call him Teo) from Singapore wrote a moving eulogy for his father when he died - and if I may be honest, it was full of cliches but nonetheless, it came across as sincere and from the heart. I could tell that Teo genuinely loved and respected his father. I was once again filled with jealousy as I read that eulogy. Look, I am 38 and my dad is very old - I just don't know how I would react when the inevitable comes. Teo could write a moving eulogy - but what will I say? Because if I would be totally honest, I wouldn't have that much to say, "I wasn't close to my dad. I moved away from Singapore a long time ago and he has no idea what I did with my adult life.  My blog readers know more about me than my own father. I couldn't make him take any interest in what I did as he was far more interested in his grandson than me."

I am very sorry I even tried to have this conversation today. I should have never ever tried to have put my sister in that position to try to coach my parents into saying the right words to me - it's really meaningless to force someone to say something they don't mean and trying to get my parents to show me that they can feel happy for me only proved to me that they really couldn't be less interested in me. I don't know, call it ironic: I can get German casting directors more excited about me than my own parents. Go figure. I shall leave you with this thought: if my parents were going to totally disinterested and bo chup about me as an adult, then why did they go out of their way to make my life hell for me as a child my trying to control every aspect of my life then? Why take so much interest in your child's life only to then become totally disinterested once he becomes an adult? That's the part I can't understand.

Anyway, I needed to get all this off my chest. Phew. I find all these thoughts in my head a little bit less confusing once I have had the chance to write them down like that. As always, I wish to thank you for reading (and listening).