Q&A: Poly, NS and the messy reality of life

Hello everyone. Okay, my first post of the year is my response to this comment that was left for me in the early hours of new year's day 2016. A bit bizarre but rather predictable nonetheless, so here it is for you to read before I will reply:

AD doesn't want to serve NS - what are his options?

Armstrong Dicksmasher1 January 2016 at 04:28

Hello Limpeh, I have spent the past few days reading so many of your posts, especially those about Singapore's parenting , tuition, education system, horrible mentality, and all of that and it spoke right to me , those are things that i have absolutely been thinking for countless years in the same way and I finally found somebody who expressed it succinctly through words. I am 18 years old , 1 semester through Year 1 of a computer engineering course in poly and i absolutely hate it. I am about to drop out due to both the meaningless curriculum (which is filled with non-computer engineering modules) and my classmates which are just obnoxious beyond reason, as I have thought long about it and I strongly feel it would help my sanity and mental health. I absolutely dread going to school each day and I can't take any more of it.

So right now I am planning to escape overseas and escape National Service before they grab me by my two legs (or two years of my life), I have zero faith in Singapore's both way of life and government, and I'm hoping to hear your wisdom or advice of what to do in my situation. However I am in a state of panic and shock as I have never thought so hard about being independent and doing all these things that I am about to do. All the career advice, all the life lessons that my parents have given me are bullshit and i have believed them for so long. I don't want to end up like my parents! they are unhappy and poor people. I could just stay in the course but don't show up for lessons to prevent Mindef from bugging me , and work for flight tickets and a few months of rent. However I have no idea if I should start working, or continue studying once I get there. (I am really tight on cash, I come from a poor family) Please help!

My first response was this, "if you think I am going to give you any money, you are barking up the wrong tree." But let me respond to some of the points Armstrong Dicksmasher (AD) has made in his post: okay, so he hates his course at poly at the moment and who is he blaming? The poly? His parents? The MOE? His obnoxious classmates? His teachers? Oh I know, how about blaming yourself for having chosen the wrong course? It happens. AD didn't tell me how he ended up studying in this computer engineering course at poly (it sounds like a viable option to me) - but unless someone forced him against his will to do this course, then he really needs to start taking responsibility for that bad decision. Okay, it is not the right course for you - you need to switch to something else you are interested in. I am going to have to tell you to stop playing the victim and start being an adult: take control of the situation.

Believe me, loads of people end up making bad decisions in life: apart from starting the wrong course at poly or university, sometimes you start a job and then realize it is just wrong for you. Sometimes you even get into a relationship with someone and then have second thoughts when things don't quite work out the way you intended. Such is the messy reality of life - learn to cope with it. If you had unrealistic expectations about how good your education at the poly was going to be, then you only have yourself to blame for having these unrealistic expectations which were based on some idealized image of Singapore, rather than reality. You need to speak to your parents about the situation - they may not have been as understanding as you had hoped they would be, but since they are paying your school fees, you owe it to them to at least explain the situation to them and involve them in this decision, since dropping out of this course will mean a financial loss for them. The money they used to pay your fees at the poly didn't fall from the sky like rain - it is their hard earned money. You need to recognize that, reach an understanding with your parents and hope that they will fund whatever you wish to study next. Your education isn't free, don't forget that.

Education is not free - far from it. Someone has gotta pay.

As for your difficult relationship with your parents - yeah I've been there, my parents didn't give me good advice either and I just accepted that they tried their best to give me what advice they could but it was my responsibility as an adult to do my own homework to figure out what path I should take in my adult life. The only reason why you are disappointed with your parents is because your expectations of them are so high - unrealistically high in fact. Not everyone has parents who are in a position to give any kind of useful career advice but the one thing you need to recognize is that whilst your parents may be guilty of giving you some bad advice along the way, they had never set out to deliberately mislead or deceive you. There is absolutely no malice on their part when they have offered you bad advice - let me be the voice of reason AD. Do not be cross with your parents: save your anger for people who do set out maliciously to hurt you and believe you me, there will be people out there who will gladly stab you in the back (or the front, in your face). Save your hatred for those people, spare your parents, please. They are not the enemy.

Without at least a poly diploma, you cannot realistically expect to get a decent job. With only O levels (or A levels), you have no more than general secondary education. Now I have to be careful what I say here as I know I have always argued that there are career options which do not really require a specific degree (or a degree at all), but allow me to be totally honest here: you need some kind of talent and luck in order to make it without a degree. Let's take someone like David Beckham for example - multimillionaire superstar football icon. Beckham has no more than GCSEs (the equivalent of O levels) as his highest qualifications; but he is stunningly talented as a footballer. With his good looks and a media savvy team behind him, he has managed to keep himself in the spotlight long after his football career is over. The moral of the story? You need raw talent - some people like Beckham don't need to go to university to make the most of their raw talent, others use their time at university to refine that raw talent into a skill that will launch their careers. Now I don't know what talent(s) you may or may not have, but this is really not the time for you to quit formal education yet. You are only sabotaging your chances of getting a good career by trying to escape NS at this stage.

Beckham has the skills to become a megastar.

As for NS, well I hate to be the one to break this to you: but you have to do it for a simple reason. No country in the world would grant you asylum just because you don't want to serve NS. It's that simple. Even if you disappeared to somewhere like China or Malaysia, guess what? You don't have the right papers to live and work there legitimately and you can't even get a job there without the right papers, even if you are willing to work for very little money. Countries like Germany may be accepting a lot of Syrian refugees at the moment, but these are people fleeing a brutal civil war - if you turned up at Germany and tried to claim asylum as a Singaporean, you will be turned away and returned to Singapore. I don't know how to express this any more clearly to you: no country in the world will take you as a Singaporean. I refer you to the case of the Singaporean transgender woman who tried to seek asylum in the UK because she didn't want to have to serve NS reservist in Singapore - guess what? Her case was rejected and she was repatriated to Singapore. AD, you don't have a legitimate claim for asylum.

I don't even know why you are talking about money issues because that is a moot point - the amount of money you can currently earn in Singapore is going to be insignificant anyway because you are not qualified to take on any kind of skilled employment. So even if you do ditch your course and work for a few months to buy a plane ticket - did you think about what you will do once you land in another country? Say you run off to Thailand (hey, plenty of cheap tickets available with the budget airlines), guess what? You think you can just settle down to a quiet life there in Thailand? Well for starters, to work there, you need to have a valid visa, a work permit and to be employed in an occupation that does not violate the Alien Employment Act. Are there Singaporeans who work in Thailand? Of course there are, but these tend to be highly qualified professionals who are able to bypass the Thai Alien Employment Act and there are a long list of professions which are reserved for Thais only. In short, you clearly have not done any research on just how hard it is to try to get a work permit outside Singapore. If you are really serious about leaving Singapore, then you will need to do a lot of homework and find out exactly what you need to find a good job abroad.

Are you aware of the rules to work abroad?

You know what your problem is? You are so focused on what you want - rather than what lies before you. This is evident from your attitude towards your education and your NS liabilities. You want to leave Singapore, avoid NS and seek greener pastures abroad because in your words, "I have zero faith in Singapore's both way of life and government". The fact that you don't like Singapore doesn't mean that other countries are going to welcome you with open arms - it doesn't work like that. You really need to consider your options in terms of what is open to you and choose from the realistic options. Becoming a fugitive like Amos Yee simply isn't going to help you in the long run, no. You want me to be realistic? Find a course that will lead to a work permit abroad (something like radiography or nursing would do nicely), finish your NS and then in about 5 or 6 years, you would be in a position to start looking for work abroad. That is not what you want to hear, but that's your best case scenario and I have no doubt my many readers will agree with me. (Go on readers, please leave AD a comment and let him know your thoughts.)

Will you listen to reason? I don't know - so let me leave you by telling you what will happen if you don't listen to me. Say you ditch your course, work a few months then buy an air ticket to the UK. You land in London on a tourist visa and realize, oh shit this is a very expensive country, nothing is cheap. You then also realize that whilst you're on a tourist visa, you have no right to work here and you can't find any paid employment. You overstay your tourist visa and become an illegal immigrant here, you somehow manage to stay under the radar for a year until you get really cold and sick during the winter months. You are so hungry that you faint in a street whilst looking for food in dusbins: some kind people find you lying unconscious and take you to a hospital, but when the hospital staff run background checks on you, they realize that you are an illegal immigrant and they turn you over to the authorities instead (not because they are bastards but they are obliged by law to do so). You are arrested as an illegal immigrant and repatriated back to Singapore - upon landing at Changi airport, you are arrested for overstaying your exit permit and deliberately not serving your NS obligations. You land up in jail for a very, very long time in Singapore and at the end of that jail term, you still have to do NS. By the time you have finished NS, you are in your 30s, a completely broken man with no money, no skills, no hope of getting a decent job and condemned to spend the rest of your days living with your parents in Singapore. And that's me trying to be optimistic and paint you a best case scenario. That's how badly wrong things will go if you insist on following through with your plan. It is your life to mess up, don't say I didn't warn you.

On the issue of you having to serve NS, you should hope for the best but expect the worst. I would be lying if I said otherwise, but more to the point - you don't really have any alternative to escape NS. You missed the boat. The only viable option was if your parents had emigrated abroad years ago and if you had renounced your Singaporean citizenship before you turned 16. You're now 18 and still Singaporean - you've missed the boat by two years, it was a boat you would have never gotten on anyway as your parents had no intention of emigrating just to spare you the burden of NS. Such is the hand fate has dealt you - you are stuck with it and it sucks. It sucks bad and there's nothing I can say or do to change that fact apart from asking you to get past the denial (you're clearly in denial as you have yet to accept the fact that you are going to have to do NS no matter how much you may hate it) and just get on with life. There is no alternative as running away is just not a viable option that will work out for you at this stage in your life.

Now before my readers accuse me of being way too negative about your time in NS, let me say something in all fairness: I don't have a crystal ball to predict what your NS experience will be like. If you get nice people in the unit your are sent to, then you may find it pretty okay (and dare I say, you may even have some fun along the way) - but if you have the misfortune to be put in a unit with obnoxious idiots, then it will be hell on earth. I had a mixed bag of the two - I have encountered both nice and nasty people along the way during my time in NS and I did make the best of a bad situation during my time in NS. Was it fun? Hell no, I was counting the weeks and days before I was a civilian again - but the fact is I managed to keep my head down, keep my mouth shut and emerge from NS in one piece after 2 years 4 months (yes, back in my day, NS was longer). Really, it is not the end of the world if you have to serve NS.

NS: been there, done that. 

I am hoping that you will respond by saying that you weren't really thinking things through when you posted your original comment. I hope I am not wasting my time by trying to talk some sense into you. We all need to let off some steam once in a while, but good grief, please tell me you are not serious about fleeing abroad to avoid NS because that is just not going to work out. You wanna move abroad and leave Singapore, let's talk about the issue sensibly. At this point, I am going to invite my other readers to try to talk some sense into you AD. Thanks for reading everyone.