More good advice for AD: part 2

Hi guys, one thing I do really appreciate about my blog is the way I am able to harness a whole community of people to rally around when somebody needs help. This is my second long response to an 18 year old guy AD in Singapore (you can read part one here). So, allow me to cut and paste his response so you know what I am responding to.

Armstrong Dicksmasher2 January 2016 at 12:16

Thank you so much, Limpei for writing so much information that I really needed! I ABSOLUTELY did not mean in the slightest to get a single cent out of you. The only reason I mentioned I was tight on cash was because I thought that cash would be one of the biggest obstacles in my hopes of migrating. I have actually less than $400 in my bank right now so that makes me worry about even being able to afford rent and food. Yes I admit I was being rash and impulsive, and partly suicidal.  My thought process was that I'll skip NS and with whatever cash I have I'll survive a few days without giving a damn about anything else, and after I travel around seeing the mountains and landscape that Singapore never had I'll starve to death in peace. Now that I look back it's..I know in the back of my mind there are better ways to go through which is what led me to write the first comment.

http://limpehft.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/part-3-working-hours-in-east-vs-west.html I forgot to mention your article of comparing working hours is also what really enraged me about Singapore, further driving me to get out of here ASAP. Thanks so much Chin Lam Toh! You understood me the first time.. To be honest, there have been many days that I wanted to kill myself since the O level period when I was 17, but I keep going on, taking a bath or sleeping makes me feel better and calms my nerves enough to rethink it. Taking the MRT to school everyday in the morning and looking at everyone around me in their wrinkly sullen looks of "another day in the grind" definitely doesn't help my depression and cynical view of Singaporeans.. Di Talasi's comment about working like a drone in Singapore for 10-15 years was what I had in mind about what every other common Singaporean would try to/tell me to do, it takes far too long for me.

I actually met one good friend from poly who initially planned to skip NS like me and become blacklisted. If that were the case he will not have a Singapore diploma as well. But he talked to his parents and they agreed to pay for his uni in US with condition that he finishes NS. Both plans did not include a diploma. Considering that he has relatives (ancestry) and connections in US to get that much desired citizenship, while I don't, that's not an option. I could try to convince my parents to pay for overseas study. After reading the entire article and all of the comments, I decided that one likely route I have is take a step back and change my poly course into something like radiology to allow me overseas, or maybe go into NS first.

Thanks so so much everybody! Especially LIFT. You definitely did not waste your time in writing this. Thank you again for providing insight into the choices I have that I could not possibly have figured out on my own scrambled mind. This route that I am planning now that can be achieved in 6-8 years is at least acceptable, if I could work for weeks of trips overseas in that 6 years its even more bearable. I have a religious father listening to a loud online sermon outside my room right now who has no chance of providing me such advice. Burying his sad life into religion in hopes of getting into heaven, a better afterlife, instead of taking practical steps to improve his current one. This is what makes religion so insidious and disgusting in my opinion. I'm sorry if I am blaming my parents, is it wrong that I hate so much that I am born into such low circumstances and connections. I shall take my future in to my own hands with the information that I have been so generously provided here.

I decided to write a longer post like that here because there are so many points I need to cover and this way I won't have a word limit. Firstly, in terms of migrating to another country - there's one thing you need to understand (clearly you've not done any homework). Singapore is an exception because the PAP throws the door wide open for anyone and everyone to come - most other countries are extremely selective in terms of whom they let in. So if you are a doctor or a nurse (or really, any kind of skilled medical professional employed in a hospital) - then boom, you go to the very front of the queue and they roll out the red carpet for you. If you are an 18 year old kid without any skills or further education, then no country in the world would take you. In short, every country in the world would tell you to fuck off in so many words. Well, "fuck off" is a bit harsh, but they will probably tell you to come back in a couple of years when you have a lot more skills to offer, when you have had some further education and training that will prove to them that you will be able to do a job of a skilled professional.

At this point you may say, "but I am only 18, I am still young, please give me a chance; if you let me in, I can spend a few years studying and become a useful member of your society." And the response will be, "perhaps, but you could also become a criminal and end up in jail; or just a useless person incapable of doing anything useful. No, we're not prepared to take that chance with you - but feel free to come back and try again when you have proven yourself as a doctor or something equally useful and impressive, at which point we will reconsider your application." Harsh but true. No country in the world would take a chance with an 18 year old kid without any formal education beyond his secondary education - you don't seem to realize that at this current moment, every single country in the world would tell you in so many words to fuck off if you tried to emigrate there. Oh perhaps some desperately poor African countries wouldn't care if you arrived and tried to make a life there, but I doubt that's where you wanna end up.

Are you a doctor or a similarly highly skilled professional? No?

How does emigration work then? Well here's the most usual route that Singaporeans take: you apply for a job that comes with a work permit. You stay with that job for a period of time until you can apply for permanent residency (different countries use different terms to describe that: in the US it is called a green card, in Singapore that's permanent resident status, in the UK it's called permanent leave to remain). How long you have to reside in the country before you can apply for this varies country to country - in the UK for example, the period is 5 years. After you get that status, then you can apply to naturalize as a citizen in due course. Now that's emigration in a nutshell and I am really simplifying the process - but note that it all starts with that job which comes with the work permit. These are given out to highly skilled professionals - like doctors - not to 18 year old kids who have no skills to speak of.

As for your suicide mission of see the mountains and die - that sounds so pathetic, I'm not going to feel sorry for you because if there's one thing I detest it is people who feel sorry for themselves. If you have been exploring my blog, you will see that I do travel a lot and I particularly love seeing mountains in winter. Perhaps it is this fascination with snow that I have, since I saw none of that growing up in Ang Mo Kio. In fact, I am off to the Sierra Nevada mountains in Spain next week - I had such a brilliant time there last year that I decided to go again. As someone who has traveled all over the world, let me tell you one thing: the more you see the world, the more you want to see the world. If you saw something pretty amazing, say you stood on top of the mountain on a clear day and you could see for hundreds of miles all around you - one's natural reaction is, "wow the world is so beautiful, I want to see more of it", not "okay, now that I've seen this I can die." In fact, as I am turning 40 this year, I am treating myself to an epic trip this summer somewhere amazing (I will tell you where I'll be going quite soon) to see more of this wonderful planet we live in.

The fact is, I don't think want to kill yourself. I recognize that you are frustrated with your current circumstances: you hate the course you are doing at poly, your parents offer little help or understanding and you still have to complete two years of NS. Killing yourself may mean not having to deal with any of these problems before you - but I think you would rather sort your life out for a simple reason: you don't need to kill yourself to resolve these current problems. Okay you have enrolled in the wrong course - let's fix that, let's find another course that suits you, one that will lead to a useful skilled profession that will enable you to emigrate to any country that you want. Once you find something that you truly passionate about, then studying and training will not be a chore at all - of course, all this may seem very vague right now because you have yet to start working but trust me, once you find the right job, with the right people, your future career could be extremely interesting and fulfilling. But that's up to you to find out for yourself what you really want to do with your life. You're still young but you need to make sure you embark on the right career path at this stage by getting the right education. It's okay to make some mistakes along the way (such as enrolling in a course that's so not right for you), but be prepared to fix those mistakes.

You don't have a good relationship with your parents: guess what? Me too. I was never ever close to mine and fought with them most of my teenage years. Now you could spend the rest of your life being angry and resentful, or you could simply start functioning as an adult and be a lot more emotionally independent. More to the point, all this anger and resentment isn't going to change your parents: they will probably just turn around and accuse you of being ungrateful for everything they have done for you. You need to choose to be pragmatic and focus on the things that will improve your life, you need to turn away from the things that will just make you feel upset (such as brooding over your father's relationship with religion). My mother is very religious as well - but I leave her to do what she wants and I don't interfere (because I don't see the point in trying to tell her how to live her life). I speak to my parents about twice a month these days, but that's via Skype and usually it's me speaking to my sister and they drift in and out of the conversation - we've grown apart and I just accept that I can't force them to be interested in my life anymore. You know that my mother has absolutely no idea what job I do for a living? My regular readers know me better than my mother. I could be angry - like what kind of mother would not even care, but what is the point of getting angry?

My mother doesn't really know what I do for a living.

Another important part of developing your network of friends as an adult is that you will soon find some friends who will understand you very well - much better than your parents ever will. Should that surprise you? Not actually, when you consider how big the generation gap is, your peers are bound to understand you a lot better than your parents ever will. Once you have forged some friendships with people who share the same passions are you do, maybe work in the same industry as you do, then you will soon realize how important these relationships are to you because these friends totally understand you. And when you need someone to talk to, you will automatically turn to these friends rather than your parents because they will understand your situation in a way your parents never will. This just means that you will drift further apart from your parents as you become an adult - some people are lucky enough to be close to their parents because the generation gap isn't that large in their cases, but for those of us who are not close to our parents, well, we just turn to our friends instead. Such is life, so don't be upset by the poor quality of your relationship with your parents, just accept things for what they are and move on with your life.

I am going to make a more general point about taking control of your life - clearly you know what you don't want and what you don't like, but you have not told us about what you do want out of life. You seem to be pretty convinced that if you end up working in Singapore, you would be "working like a drone". Now that's not necessarily true - yes there are some people with very low self-esteem and they end up allowing themselves to be exploited, treated like shit (as in this story, follow the link). Well AD, just because you leave Singapore doesn't mean that you will end up working for someone who will treat you with respect; by the same token, there are plenty of people in Singapore who know how to stand up for themselves and wouldn't put up with crap at work. This boils down to you as an individual, being willing and able to stand up for yourself in the workplace. It is about taking control of your life and knowing how to deal with unpleasant people if you should come across them in the workplace. By that token, that's all part of the bigger package of 'soft skills' I talk about a lot on my blog and you will need that kind of soft skills wherever you may work.

Do you have the soft skills to deal with difficult people?

As for your friend who claims to have this grand plan to escape to the US, if I may be so blunt, how little you know about the emigration process is astounding - I doubt your friend is any more knowledgeable than you. I have a feeling it is the blind leading the blind - the both of you probably know no more than a bunch of misleading half-truths and he thinks he can get American citizenship easily (yeah right). Am I condescending in assuming that he knows nothing? Probably - and I'm going to be even more specific: he is totally unaware of how little he knows and how inaccurate his information is, he is under the impression that he has it all figured out when he doesn't. That's the worst kind of fool - the fool who isn't even aware that he is a fool. Does he have a parent who has American citizenship? No? Does he have a living grandparent with American citizenship? Even if the answer is yes, without the consent and cooperation of the parent who is the direct descendant of this American grandparent, he is not going to get American citizenship. Other relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins, even siblings) don't figure in this equation at all.

And as for the 'connections' your friend has in America, excuse me whilst I 笑出门牙 - for my readers who don't speak Chinese, that's the equivalent of ROFL. Listen, this is why I am convinced your friend is either a total idiot who has filled himself with delusions of grandeur - or he has been feeding you bullshit lies and you have been so fucking stupid and gullible that you actually believe his bullshit. Given how little you know about how emigration works, I am not surprised that you are actually dumb and gullible to believe his utter bullshit. Like seriously, you write in perfectly good English but sometimes you do come across like a total stupid idiot. America is not some corrupt country where influential politicians or millionaires get to bend the rules and confer citizenship to their friends and extended family - all migrants who want a work permit and a green card are subject to the same rules. The only kind of favours he may get is if he has rich relatives who run their own companies - they would then be in a position to hire him and sponsor his work permit: but he still needs to be qualified in a job that would warrant the work permit of a skilled professional. Okay, his parents are rich enough to pay for him to hopefully go to an American university where he could gain the right skills to make that happen - but otherwise, he's still following the same rules and going through the same process as so many millions of other migrants hoping to make a new life in America. Having money just makes the process a little bit easier for him, that's all; but no, get real please, he doesn't get to bend the rules that apply to everyone else.

What does your friend know about acquiring American citizenship?

This is why you should take what he says with a pinch of salt (make that a big sackful of salt). I know he is your good friend, but don't believe everything he says. For example, your plans to run away from Singapore and 'skip NS' - no, very stupid idea. This is why I say the two of you are the blind leading the blind - you want good ideas, you come to someone older and more intelligent like me, you don't go talk to your best friend who is clearly a rich kid with more money than brains. You may think, "oooh I'll be blacklisted, I can't ever return to Singapore, well I don't want to anyway." It is not so simple. Just because you are a wanted criminal in Singapore (yes, refusing to serve NS is a crime in Singapore - how does 3 years in military jail sound to you?) doesn't mean that you will be automatically conferred the citizenship of another country. No, you will simply be a Singaporean in exile, unable to return to Singapore but the other country you are in doesn't care that you will be arrested the moment you return to Singapore.

Let me paint you a picture. You come to London on a tourist visa - that is valid for 6 months. But as a tourist, you cannot work in the UK, no employer can legally employ someone like you who doesn't have the right to work in the UK. But you decide you don't want to return to Singapore because you don't want to serve NS and you become an exile who cannot set foot in Singapore anymore. Let's say your best friend gives you loads of money so money is not an issue (remember you can't work): you move from country to country, getting tourist visa after tourist visa but wait, there's a problem: your passport is only valid for ten years and it will eventually expire. As a tourist who has no right to work, there's just no way you can convert your status from a Singaporean tourist to that of a citizen of another country. Most countries will welcome you as a tourist but will turn you away as you are a kid with no skills to offer as an immigrant. Eventually, you will be a Singaporean illegal immigrant stuck in a country, without a valid passport. The moment you have any contact with the authorities, you will be flagged up as an illegal immigrant: they will deport you back to Singapore (because you are still a Singaporean citizen) and a very long jail sentence awaits you in Singapore.

Did you even think about how you would acquire another citizenship?

So that's how fucking stupid your idiotic plan is: do you still wanna skip NS with your incredibly stupid best friend? Hey, at least his family has a lot of money, so he can afford to be a fucking clueless idiot. You and I don't have that luxury, people like you and I have got to be a lot more intelligent and come up with much cleverer plans to get through life, to get what we want in life. And you've already told me that your family is poor: just to study in the UK for 3 years, even the cheapest degree is going to cost you at least £80,000. That rises to well over £100,000 (or S$208,500) for some more popular courses in the top universities. If your family is as poor as you said, can you persuade your parents to find that S$200,000 to fund your studies in the UK? Even if they are happy to support you, do you thin they can find that amount of money for you? And if you're thinking of the US, that's even more expensive. Are you a straight A student who can apply for a scholarship?  Otherwise where are you going to find that money?

Besides, I hope you realize you're still barking up the wrong tree. Just because you have studied at a university in the country doesn't mean that you will be granted the right to work there after graduation. Again, a lot of that depends on your degree: say you studied medicine and became a very good doctor. Guess what? There will be loopholes in the system allow you to stay and work in the country because you're a doctor and doctors are always in demand. But if you did some useless business degree from a second rate university languishing at the wrong end of the league table, then guess what? The moment your student visa runs out, you will be kicked out of the country. In fact, a nurse who trained in the Philippines will have no trouble getting a job & work permit in the UK because we do need nurses in our hospitals - so you see, it doesn't really matter where you studied or did your training, ultimately, it is whether or not you have a useful skill that is in demand and you can be employed in a job that can get you that elusive work permit.

Do you understand which course you need to take at university?

OK, that's it from me for now. I know I have been harsh in this piece but I do need to talk some sense into you. You have been guilty of living in ignorance and allowing yourself to fall into a "the blind leading the blind" situation with this good friend of yours. You have a lot of homework to do in terms of deciding what course you wish to switch to. Once again, I invite my readers (especially Choaniki) to offer AD more kind advice. Many thanks for reading everyone.