On leaving Singapore each time

Hello again people. You know, I always dread the last day of my trip to Singapore - I always get very nostalgic and there's a sense of "how did three weeks fly by so quickly". It usually starts with me buying too much at the NTUC supermarket at Ang Mo Kio, then I have to start packing and I wonder what I can take with me back to London. Of course, there is a sense of 依依不舍 - I had enjoyed catching up with old friends & family and also meeting some of my readers, but then one other activity recently confirmed to me why leaving was the most obvious thing to do all along.

Exploring the Kampong Ayer in Brunei

On this trip, I visited two other places apart from Singapore: Tanjung Pinang in Indonesia and Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei. Now one thing I always do (out of habit rather than anything else) in hotel rooms is that I would just channel surf, to see what channels are available, especially if there are any channels in English. I did just that in both places and found myself naturally taking mental notes as to which channels I could get hold of American and British programmes. Thankfully, AXN was available in both hotels and I was able to get my share of entertainment on TV. Sure there were plenty of local entertainment available, but I just wasn't interested - I sure as hell wasn't interested in any of the channels from China or Taiwan. Here's a short clip from a programme I watched on this trip: The Flash.

You see, so many people have talked about my decision to leave Singapore ever since my interview with the BBC led to so much controversy some time back. But there's a simple reason that's really obvious in hindsight: I'm just a jiat-kentang kid who adores Western culture and has little interest in Asian culture (though I make an exception for all things Korean).  Given my tastes in music, magazines, TV and films as a teenager, it was pretty obvious: the question was simply whether I would act on that instinct and move to the west or whether I would simply remain in Singapore. I chose the former after having studied in the UK - the lure of the West was just too strong to resist.

I would take this opportunity to tell you about an incident that left me feeling so disconnected from my parents. As discussed previously, I have a good for nothing uncle who has a habit of turning to my mother for money when he is broke. My mother does what her late mother expected of her and always gives in: I find my uncle's actions deplorable and this has been going on for years. So as it happens, I was at home in Singapore last week when the phone rang. Thinking that it might have been my sister trying to reach me, I picked up the phone and the man on the other side started talking to me as if he knew me. I had mistaken him to be one of my dad's friends but it turned out to be my uncle - that's right, my good for nothing uncle who had undoubtedly called up, looking for my mother to ask her for more money. There was a part of me that wanted to scold him: oh I could have let rip a Mandarin and Hokkien tirade of angry words. But I paused and stopped myself: what good would that do? He wouldn't change his ways and most of all, my mother wouldn't change her ways. It would cause a lot of unpleasantness and I was afraid I may give him even more reason to demand more money from my parents. So I bit my lip - I was civil, I wouldn't go as far as to say that I was polite, but I wasn't rude with him. I merely told him that my parents had gone out and I had no idea when they would be back. My uncle asked me how I was, how long I was back in Singapore for etc - I gave very short replies but wasn't impolite, then I found an excuse to terminate the call (without being rude or abrupt to my uncle in the process).

Later that evening, I told my parents about the phone call and explained how I came very close to scolding my uncle, but had stopped myself for my mother's sake. My father got angry with me, oh he shouted at me. He said that my uncle was family, he was my elder and I should show some respect - and if I wasn't going to show any respect, that I should at least show some compassion. I said that I had neither respect or compassion for my uncle, that if he died because I didn't give him money, I would fly first class to Singapore, drinking champagne and eating caviar all the way, just to piss and shit on his grave. It was a blur what happened next: my father went on and on about Chinese values and I went on and on about how I didn't care about his Chinese values - it got quite personal. Basically, I told my dad that he could take his Chinese values and stuff it as I don't give a toss about being Chinese. I am a grown man, a well educated and intelligent grown man at 39 and I don't need some set of values prescribed to me to tell me how to judge people in life: I judge people by my own standards and do whatever I want. Oh it usually upsets my dad when I push this button and I reached for it: I told him that Angmoh values were superior to Chinese values, that Angmoh everything from culture to society was better than the Chinese equivalent. Like it wasn't even a cogent argument (duh even I know that), but I knew it would wind my father up if I said it and so I went for it.

I know what you guys are thinking, that I am such a horrible person, right? That I flew halfway around the world, back to Singapore only to upset my own father? You are probably right, I am a rather horrible person. But you know what the irony is? I did give him what he wanted: I wasn't rude at all to my uncle, I just wanted my parents to accept that I did it on MY terms, not theirs. My terms were that I hated my uncle but out of respect for my mother's wishes, I wasn't rude to him - it was as simple as that. A simple recognition of the issue from my point of view would suffice. Could my father have at least acknowledged that I had done that much out of consideration for my mother's position? No, he had to try to tell me what to think, as if I was a 3 year old kid without a mind of my own and I simply wasn't going to stand for that. No way. So if I couldn't get him to try to see my point of view, then I was going to make it explicitly clear to him that I didn't accept his point of view. (So now you can see why I always end up arguing with my parents.)

My father and I are equally stubborn. 

Perhaps that's where my dad and I are similar in that we are just so freaking stubborn. Did he know that his gay son who has spent half his life in Europe wouldn't exactly have a set of traditional Chinese values? Of course he did, but he spoke his mind anyway. Did think that I could change my dad's mindset on Asian family values? Of course not, but since he spoke his mind, I wasn't going to let him have the last word. And that's why my father and I argue and thankfully, my mother actually stepped in and played the part of the peacemaker this time. She simply accepted that I had acted out of consideration for her in not being rude with my uncle, but she also told my dad to just accept that I was entitled to my own opinion on the matter as a grown man. Wow. She actually managed to stop my dad and I from quarreling without actually taking sides. I was impressed with her, I really was.

It just takes incidents like that to remind me that for all the nostalgia I can experience when I have a bowl of warm Mee Rebus in Singapore, I am still a fish out of water when it comes to your culture. I always was, always have been and that moving out of Singapore actually enabled me to find people with similar cultural values as myself. Heck, if anything, that quarrel showed me that even if I can inherit my dad's stubborn nature, there was certainly nothing he could do or say to make me inherit his culture (which I had made explicitly clear to him that I had rejected). You know what the saddest part is? Most of my Asian friends just dismissed the whole incident as, "Oh yeah he's an Asian dad, of course he is always going to think he can tell you what to think when it comes to your values because you are his son lah." But if my father would just take a moment and get to know me as an adult: he may find that I am not such a horrible person, that I am actually quite an intelligent adult who can be extremely interesting to talk to. But no, I could sense that he wasn't that interest - oh well, his loss. Tragic as it may seem, I can't force my dad to engage me as an adult. Well, I'm back in my flat in London now, a good eight time zones away from my parents now - I had hoped that as an adult, such arguments would be a thing of the past, but I guess not. Sigh. What can I do?

I love my dad, he just drives me mad sometimes. I just needed to get that off my chest. Many thanks for reading.

In Brunei on this trip