0:06 Unpacking a Dream: My Uncle, Father, and Dabomu
Hello everyone and welcome back to check in with Alex.
Sorry I've been so incredibly busy.
Work has taken off and it's kind of good because if you are self-employed, then if you don't work, you don't earn.
So I've been busy making hay walls at the sunshine.
0:22
So let's get right back into today's podcast.
So I recently had a weird dream, and it was one of those conversations that never happened in real life and could never happen in real life, but somehow it manifested itself in my dream.
0:41
Now I have this dear aunt, I suppose you, I'll call her my aunt in English.
It's it's a lot easier in English where everyone's just aunt to your uncle.
But you know, in Chinese families, we have these rather specific terms about your father's sister or your mother's brother.
1:02
And it's, it's quite complicated.
But this lady, I call her Dabomu, and that literally translates to big aunt.
And she is in fact the ex-wife of my father's older brother.
1:17
But she maintained a close relationship with the whole extended family after the divorce.
Yes, they got divorced and she was married to my uncle for quite a while and they had two kids together.
So she was the mother of my 2 cousins and she's passed away several years ago.
1:39
OK, but being in that position meant that she got to know both my father and his brother, my uncle, rather well.
That's something which I never ever got to do since my uncle has passed away as well many years ago.
1:59
And I've been always quite fascinated by my uncle because he was so radically different from my father and my father never had a particularly good or close relationship with my uncle.
2:16
He was seen as the bad boy of the family, despite the fact that he made a lot of money like he was one of those crazy rich Asians.
He started quite a few businesses and made a lot of money, lost a fortune or three, but each time he would bounce back and make even more money the next time.
2:37
So obviously I know I have this uncle but my parents didn't like the idea of me getting to know him because they thought he would be a bad influence on me and my siblings.
Anyway, so both Bob Wamu and my uncle have since passed away.
2:57
So this conversation that I had in my dreams would have never been possible.
But somehow in that dream, I was with Dabomu.
We were sitting in the house in Johor Bahru.
3:12
She had this huge garden.
I always wondered if she could have done more with that garden.
But you know what, how this is like in Malaysia, they're huge.
So we were sitting in her garden and I asked Dab Wamu why my father and my uncle were so different despite being brothers.
3:34
And they weren't just brothers, they were of quite similar age and if I do recall correctly, my uncle was only a few years older than my father.
Yet somehow they were like chalk and cheese.
3:50
My father became a crazy rich Asian, super successful businessman and ran a huge business empire.
Whilst my father opted for a rather working class job.
He only had one job his entire life.
He was a primary school teacher and that's what he did until the day he retired.
4:09
My uncle got through wives, quite a few marriages, mistresses, and more lovers than we care to count, whereas my father was trapped in a loveless, vapid marriage but never ever strayed.
4:28
And in fact, my father's still alive and still married to my mother today.
Happily married.
I would never use that term.
But nonetheless, they're of a different generation where different things are important to them, and being married in relationship like that was important for them.
4:47
It's still very important for them, I'm sure.
It would be quite hard to believe that these two men were even related in the 1st place, but there you go.
So in my dream, sitting in Tapwa MU's huge beautiful garden in Jehobaru in Malaysia, I got to ask her this question.
5:10
So why is my father nothing at all like my far more exciting and interesting uncle?
And of course, this is just an imaginary conversation that took place in my dreams, and I'm invoking poetic licence here to make my point.
5:30
I've always been fascinated by the fact that my father was not only nothing like his older brother, but they never got along.
Despite the fact that I had minimal contact with my late uncle, I actually turned out a lot more like my uncle and I do not resemble my father at all.
5:52
And it is interesting that the fact that I am still by blood related to my uncle that suggests that some of those traits might have been buried quite deep in my DNA that runs in the family.
But somehow this is more a question of nurture versus nature.
6:14
After all, my father did go out of his way to convince me and my siblings that my uncle was a bad person, that he'll be a bad influence on us because he had been unfaithful to his wife to Tapwamu.
And of course, Tapwamu was seen as the victim.
6:33
She was this righteous woman, a loving mother, a Good Wife and yet my uncle somehow chose to betray her by having numerous affairs with younger women.
So with that in mind, let me jump right in and tell you about this conversation that happened in my dream.
6:53
And let me get this out of the way.
OK?
Being Singaporeans and Malaysians, we speak in the multitude of languages, obviously English, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Malay, and for the sake of simplicity, for storytelling purposes, I'm going to keep this just in English so that you can understand because I'm not here to try to show off the linguistic diversity of that part of the world, but rather just to explore this theme with you.
7:23
So in my dream, there we were sitting in her garden.
I asked that Bormu why my father was so different.
They're brothers, but nothing alike.
She takes this long look at me and without breaking eye contact she looked as if she was about to answer my question.
7:44
But she then asks me, remind me, you're not an only child right?
You have siblings too, two sisters.
And I said yes, I do have two sisters older than me.
And she then goes on and asks me how similar are you to your two sisters?
8:01
I paused for a moment and thought, well, well, I'm nothing like my two sisters, but I believe that's mostly because I've spent most of my adult life outside Singapore.
I chose to leave Singapore the moment I could, the moment the opportunity presented itself, and as a result, I'm a product of the environment which has shaped me as an adult.
8:26
She then looked at me as if I had answered my own question, but I wasn't satisfied.
I then pointed out to her that both my father and my uncle left their hometown in Malaysia, this little town called Kotatingi.
8:45
Look it up.
And they both left at about the age of 12 to go study in Singapore.
So that was actually fairly unusual for most people from small towns in Malaysia.
So it's not like my uncle was sent abroad for studies whilst my father was somehow deprived of that precious opportunity.
9:09
No, actually the both of them went through that same experience, yet still they turned out totally different.
Dabomu then said to me, do you think you're going to find a simple answer to your question?
9:26
Because you do realise that complex questions do not have simple answers.
She then asked me to think about my two sisters back in Singapore and just how different they were despite being sisters.
9:42
They share the same parents, the same upbringing, and somehow that just never translated into them having similar characters.
And that's totally true.
My two sisters are like Chuck and Cheese, kind of like my father and his brother being like Chuck and Cheese.
10:01
I guess I've just always accepted the way my two sisters have always been different and that's just the way it is.
And part of the reason why I'm asking these questions is because I never got to know my uncle whilst he was still alive.
My father made sure of that.
10:18
He thought he'll be a very bad influence on me.
So I never got close to my uncle.
So I took this opportunity.
I asked Bab Wamu please auntie, tell me about my uncle.
10:34
I never got to know him, and honestly, most of the things my father said about him were really quite.
Most of the things were very scathing.
They were all criticisms.
I don't think my father ever had anything good to say about his brother and it's fair to say that there was certainly some bad blood between my father and my uncle.
10:58
So I would hardly consider my father to be a reliable character witness when it comes to teaching me about my late uncle.
11:10The Uncle's Secret: Social Skills and Risk-Taking
That one who said well, whatever you do, don't put your uncle on a pedestal.
Unlike your father, your uncle was a risk taker.
He just got lucky because Singapore back in the 1960s and 1970s was a totally different place.
11:29
Nobody was going to tell your uncle to just get a job where he had to keep his head down, be polite to the boss, and do as he was told.
No, your uncle was always going to be the boss man himself.
It was a role he assumed nobody gave him the permission to do so or tried to encourage him to pursue a certain career.
11:51
People like him never waited for others to tell him what he ought to do.
He made money, he lost money, he made more money, and he wasn't afraid to try new things, embrace new technology, and he loved attention.
12:07
You know that your father and your brother, sorry, your father and his brother barely got any attention from their parents.
12:23
That was just the way it was for that generation.
Things have changed of course with time, but you've got to understand the social context of that time now.
Just because they didn't get any love or even attention from their parents doesn't mean they didn't want it or crave it.
12:45
Some people, like your father, simply tried to normalise that whole situation by accepting that he didn't deserve any kind of affection or even attention from his own parents.
And that was just the norm for Chinese families.
13:01
It was our culture.
But your uncle was different.
He was so different.
He didn't get any attention from his parents either.
But did you know he was extremely popular at school?
13:16
He had loads of friends and he was so well liked.
He had a neck.
He knew how to get along with everyone.
How he did that I can't even try to begin to explain.
He was charming, he knew how to talk to people, his teachers liked him, his peers liked him, he didn't even have to try to find a girlfriend, the girls were chatting him up and asking him out.
13:45
And when he was younger of course he was good looking when he got his first job or his Co workers liked him, his boss adored him.
He just had a way with people.
He knew how to look into your eyes and give you his undivided attention.
14:01
When you were talking to him, he knew how to make you feel like you were the most important person in the world, even if you were just discussing what you had for lunch.
You know, that was a subject they never taught us at school, but that's the primary reason why your uncle was so incredibly successful.
14:27
It wasn't just his business acumen, although to be fair, he was a great businessman.
But it was the way he managed to charm people into giving him what he wanted every single time and in the context of business that served him extremely well.
14:51
Your uncle could sell anything to anyone.
He wasn't natural.
So I then told Dabomu that I also started my career in sales and just like my uncle, I did really quite well.
15:12
And she listened to that and she said she wasn't surprised.
And she actually pointed out to me that, you know, your uncle did try to get your father a better job so many times.
Why are you happy working in the primary school?
15:29
How much money do you earn as a primary school teacher?
I'll get you a better job.
He tried, OK?
Believe you me, he tried.
And despite your uncle's best intentions, it was never, ever going to work out for your father because your father just didn't have the right kind of social skills in order to be great at sales.
15:54
Stop 1 moon side and just said, let's face it, you know, your father actually picked the right career path by going into teaching because he would have been terrible at most other things and he would have been especially terrible at sales.
16:09
It was just his character.
That was something they were never going to try to shape in school.
You know, in school, it's part of the education.
They teach you subjects like English, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, history, but they never tried to shape your character or teach you how to make friends.
16:33 Embracing Risk: Lessons from a Gymnastics Prodigy
She then put her hand on my shoulder and said, you know, I'm going to ask you for a favour.
Please don't be so harsh on your father and by the same token, don't idolise your uncle.
Your father did the best he could.
16:49
I saw so many other men in his position end up with so much less in life.
And As for your uncle, well, a lot of what he achieved was down to being in the right place at the right time.
There was a lot of good luck involved.
17:08
But I then pointed out to Dabomu that if you don't even dare to try but then you can't get lucky with your attempts.
After all, in just this month, I started working on a brand new project in an industry I have absolutely no experience in.
17:29
But I was invited to solve a problem for a client as this client somehow believes that I'm smart and resourceful enough to find a solution where others have failed before.
Now, I could have just said no, I'm sorry, I don't have experience with this at all.
17:44
Or I could say, yeah, let me give it a go and I'll try my best.
Call it beginner's luck, but I've managed to call him a few favours and now we have a solution for my client and he is happy with what I've managed to cobble together.
18:01
I'm simplifying things a lot.
It was really difficult.
I'll spare you the technical details, but the bottom line is that I wasn't afraid to give it a go, and if I haven't even allowed myself to try, I would have never succeeded.
18:17
By that token, I think I share that trait with my uncle.
Tabuamu smiled and told me that my uncle would have been so proud of me.
She then said.
I have a question for you then.
18:33
Where do you think you got that trait from?
Because it certainly wasn't from your father, and I wasn't close enough to see my uncle in action to see him pull off something like that.
Now, to answer her question, I told her about a gymnastics lesson I had in 1989.
18:54
When my friend Mark turned up with his mother.
He was late, as usual.
His mother apologised to the gymnastics coach and asked for a favour.
Could Mark's younger brother just sit and watch the boys train?
She'd had an appointment and she couldn't bring Matthew along.
19:10
That's the younger brother and so she was hoping to just leave the younger brother Matthew at the gymnastics class and pick them both up after the class.
The coach was just say yes as I remember her leaving in a hurry.
So on that day we were learning how to do a back handspring.
19:32
It was a skill that we had been working on for a few weeks already and it's not begin a skill.
I suppose Matthew just got bored sitting in the corner and he came round to see what his brother was doing, was wandering around the gym.
We mostly just ignored him, and then the next thing I knew someone yelled out.
19:49
Hey Mark, look, your brother's doing it.
Sure enough, little Matthew was doing a backhand spring.
And just to make it clear, nobody tried to give Matthew any instructions or tried to teach him how to do it.
This kid was just doing a monkey see, monkey do kind of copycat routine and nobody stopped him.
20:08
Nobody said to him, no no no, this is too difficult for you, you need to start with the basics.
Nobody tries to do this on their first gymnastics lesson.
Mind you.
If Matthew had been a part of a far more formal gymnastics lesson, then he would have never been allowed to even try to do this skill on his first lesson.
20:32
Now there were a whole bunch of boys in the gym when this happened, and we all witnessed what Matthew did, but not everyone reacted in the same way.
I remember one of the boys getting upset.
He was saying that Matthew was misbehaving, that he was being naughty, this was so dangerous and Matthew could have hurt himself.
20:50
That this should have never been allowed to happen in the gym.
That Mark's mother shouldn't use the gymnastics coach as a free babysitter if she was too busy to arrange her own childcare.
Whereas I stood back and thought, well, if we had subjected Matthew to all of these rules, then we wouldn't have found out just how brilliant this kid was when it came to gymnastics.
21:17
Perhaps you are all just jealous that this young kid could walk into the gym and teach himself how to do a rather advanced skill like a back handspring and just 10-15 minutes.
Perhaps whilst you all have been struggling with this skill for the last two months, you wanted Matthew to struggle like you.
21:37
That's why you are flatly refusing to acknowledge his success in that moment.
I think life can try to teach you valuable lessons along the way, but are you willing to learn?
21:54
The way I see it, we should all adopt that innocent, childlike naivety that Matthew had.
He wasn't one of those arrogant gymnasts who thought that he was so talented that he could learn any skill faster than everyone else.
22:09
No, he simply had no idea that he was trying, attempting a skill that was considered quite advanced, quite difficult.
But since he was bored, he thought he had nothing to lose by trying.
Dabomu who looked at me and pointed out to me that young Matthew was at least given the opportunity to try.
22:30
Nobody stopped him.
Some people like my father never ever got that chance at all.
So is it fair to judge someone like my father that harshly?
I said to her.
22:43Perfect 10: How Society Limits Ambition
Well, since we are talking about gymnastics from all the way back, then allow me to talk about another concept from gymnastics, the perfect 10.
Back in the day, gymnastics routines were scored out of 10.
23:02
A perfect routine will get you a 10 and gymnasts were given the list of requirements before the competition.
Fulfil all that difficulty and you would potentially be able to score 10 if you do not have any deductions.
23:20
So a gymnast who may not have all the difficulty requirements requirements may compete A simpler routine with only 8.5 star value.
So the maximum score that they could get with that routine would be an 8.5.
23:36
However, if you artificially put a ceiling like that in the scoring system, then you had a situation whereby some of the top gymnasts were not even doing everything they were potentially capable of because they were doing simply enough to create a routine to put together a routine that would be scored out of 10.
24:02
This created a level playing field somewhat artificially by refusing to reward those gymnasts who were capable of so much more.
Thankfully, things changed when the Perfect 10 scoring system was abolished in 2006 and replaced with an open-ended scoring system.
24:26
So with this system, there was no limit on how much difficulty gymnasts can choose to perform in their routine and this rule change allowed a whole new generation of gymnasts to take the sport to brand new heights in terms of difficulty, originality and innovation.
24:47
This would have never happened under the the old rules and it was evident that this change in the scoring system had such a massive impact on the development of the sport.
25:04
You need a system that rewards people who are willing to take risks and outperform the rest of the competition because under their own rules.
You often had a case in the finals where everyone had exactly the same amount of difficulty, just enough to score out of a perfect ten, and then it was down to execution.
25:28
And the winner was the gymnast who made the fewest mistakes rather than the one who had the guts to do something far more difficult than everyone else.
This is a change for the better, of course, and quite frankly I wish they had made this change so many years ago.
25:49
They waited way too long for this to happen.
But hey, at least in 2006 they got round to it finally.
So by the same token, people of my father's generation had the same mindset of those competing under the old perfect 10 gymnastics scoring system.
26:09
This might shock you but I remember back in the day the girls in my class were told things like don't study too hard, what's the point?
You need to get married and become a mother.
One day you should be preparing for motherhood rather than a career.
26:25
You may get a degree, but it's not going to serve you in the long run.
Now that it was far more important for these women to learn how to put on makeup, to look pretty in order to attract a good husband, that they needed to learn how to cook and so to fulfil their roles as wives and mothers rather than to pursue any kind of higher education or career.
26:53
And if these women did work, then it was limited.
Do something part time so it will not compromise on their primary roles and responsibilities as wives and mothers.
And even for the men, there was this perfect 10 mentality.
27:13
I remember this conversation I had with my parents when we were talking about teachers in Singapore.
I pointed out to my parents that teaching was often seen as a last resort for people of my generation, with most of them opting to go into medicine, law, finance, perhaps running their own businesses, engineering, and if absolutely nothing else works out, then there's always teaching as a last resort.
27:40
My parents then said this thing which explained their mindset from that era.
They say that whilst teaching was never going to make you exceptionally rich, it was enough.
That's the keyword enough.
27:56
The pay was enough for you to start a family, enough for you to support that family, enough for you to eventually afford your own modest home.
And for most people in out there, being able to achieve all of those goals meant it was enough.
28:13
It was enough because it fulfilled all their needs.
What more could you possibly want?
You can see why I compared this to the perfect Ted scoring system.
As long as your routine contained enough difficulty to score a perfect Ted, it made no sense trying to do something extra.
28:39
And we have a Chinese saying that describes this really well.
I look it up.
If you, if you speak Chinese, great.
I'm sure you ring a bell.
But it's a saying that basically translates to if you have enough, if you've done enough, there's absolutely no point, no reward in doing anything extra to go beyond what is actually enough.
29:12
Some people, like my parents, would arbitrarily set a standard at their head, this benchmark that they declared to be enough.
I I argued that perhaps if you're not that highly educated, as if I may be blunt, if you're not that intelligent, if you're kind of stupid, then setting the bar pretty low like this would probably be a logical thing to do.
29:40
But what about those of us who are a lot more ambitious to achieve a lot more in life than what if our aims would be?
Our ambitions would be to excel and be the best at what we do, rather than simply do enough to get by in life.
29:59
My parents shook their heads and said to me, why are you so greedy?
Why are you so vain and materialistic?
Why can't you be grateful for what you already have?
Why can't you appreciate how lucky you are to have all the things in life that you already have?
30:16
Why do you need all these other material things and achievements?
Why isn't what you already have enough for you to lead a perfectly good life?
What I had presented as ambition to achieve more with my life, my parents interpreted as greed and vanity.
30:40
And that's why I don't see eye to eye with them on so many issues.
And somehow, magically, in this conversation with Dabomu, she didn't take my parents side.
She nodded as if she understood me perfectly and clearly, to the point where she almost hinted that she agreed with me, or at least that she understood exactly why I am the way I am.
31:12
I explained to Dabomu that there is a big difference whether you go through life with this perfect 10 mindset to do just enough or if you decide that the difficulty level in your life should be open-ended.
31:28
Tab Wamu said that every generation will be different from the one before.
She urged me, please don't judge your parents as flawed people for the way they behaved in this aspect.
31:44
They were simply products of a certain time in history that shaped their mindsets to think a certain way.
I suppose I'm vastly different from my parents in this aspect because I was lucky enough to have accessed so many opportunities that they never did.
32:03 Why Assume Siblings Must Be Alike? A Dream's Conclusion
But this still somehow brings me back to the original question.
But why is my father so different from my uncle?
Why am I like my uncle and nothing like my father?
Nobody told my uncle that making his first million was enough or that having one wife was enough.
32:24
No, he was the kind of guy who chased his next million, and after having one wife, he wanted a string of mistresses and levers and the next lever and more attention and more love, Tabuomo said.
32:41
You're looking for some kind of answer that doesn't exist.
I think you're hoping for some kind of convenient explanation when there isn't one.
Your father was simply a typical man of his generation who believed that what he had in life was more than enough.
33:01
Whilst your uncle had a rebellious streak in him, he wasn't the kind of person who would follow rules.
Your father simply did what everyone else did and followed what was the norm for his society.
33:17
That doesn't make him a bad person, it simply means that he's just like the vast majority of his peers.
He was average, he wasn't special.
And for most people in the world, actually, that's enough for them.
33:39
There's nothing inherently wrong with the word enough.
Think about the number of people in the world who are hungry, who don't have enough, whose lives are insecure, and for someone to have enough to be grateful for having enough, is that such a bad thing?
34:06
But As for your uncle, he took a lot of chances.
He gambled, he took risks in the world of business, whilst nobody taught him how to do any of that.
It was just his instinct to do so.
He wouldn't have it any other way.
34:23
Your father sought solace and took comfort in being grateful for having enough in life, enough food to eat a decent roof over his head, for being financially stable enough to bring up a family, to make sure that his children were educated and could go to university.
34:43
And whilst for your uncle, he would only be happy if he could score yet another win, in the world of business or romance, people like your uncle are often admired for succeeding where others haven't even dared to try.
35:03
But As for why your uncle and your father are just so different, who knows?
Perhaps we have to go back to why you have decided to ask this question in the 1st place.
35:20
Why do we even assume that siblings must be alike, even identical or very similar when it comes to their characters?
Why can't we just accept that siblings can be totally different, like choc and cheese?
35:40
So remember what we said at the beginning of this conversation about how different you are from your own two sisters?
I looked back at Dabomu and I concluded that she's right.
35:56
There's just no basis to make any kind of assumptions about siblings being similar.
So at the very end of this discussion, we ended up with the conclusion that my question, the original question that I asked about why my father and my uncle are so different.
36:21
Well, I've made some assumptions that were essentially flawed.
I made an assumption about siblings being likely to share certain personality traits.
36:37
And of course, the only conclusion I am left with after that conversation with Tabuamu in her beautiful garden is that my assumption is flawed.
36:55
Where does that leave me?
The dream kind of ended there.
I got up, I walked around the garden.
I looked at she had this swing, this very old fashioned swing in the garden.
37:12
She was still sitting on the swing.
But I got up and walked around and we didn't say anything anymore.
She just sat there gently swaying on the swing and I just walked around the garden and the dream faded out with me walking around the garden that way.
37:36
Where does that leave us, my friends?
Do you have any siblings?
Are you similar to them?
Am I so ridiculous and unreasonable in hoping to get some answers about why my father and my uncle are so incredibly different?
37:58
About why I've turned out so much more like my uncle than my own father?
I suppose having had that dream, having written the draft for this podcast and having recorded this, it just leaves me with a fascination about my uncle, my late uncle who's passed away since.
38:22
I wish I've had the chance to get to know him and learn more about him.
But anyway, thank you so much for listening and I'll catch you in the next podcast.
Hello everyone and welcome back to check in with Alex.
Sorry I've been so incredibly busy.
Work has taken off and it's kind of good because if you are self-employed, then if you don't work, you don't earn.
So I've been busy making hay walls at the sunshine.
0:22
So let's get right back into today's podcast.
So I recently had a weird dream, and it was one of those conversations that never happened in real life and could never happen in real life, but somehow it manifested itself in my dream.
0:41
Now I have this dear aunt, I suppose you, I'll call her my aunt in English.
It's it's a lot easier in English where everyone's just aunt to your uncle.
But you know, in Chinese families, we have these rather specific terms about your father's sister or your mother's brother.
1:02
And it's, it's quite complicated.
But this lady, I call her Dabomu, and that literally translates to big aunt.
And she is in fact the ex-wife of my father's older brother.
1:17
But she maintained a close relationship with the whole extended family after the divorce.
Yes, they got divorced and she was married to my uncle for quite a while and they had two kids together.
So she was the mother of my 2 cousins and she's passed away several years ago.
1:39
OK, but being in that position meant that she got to know both my father and his brother, my uncle, rather well.
That's something which I never ever got to do since my uncle has passed away as well many years ago.
1:59
And I've been always quite fascinated by my uncle because he was so radically different from my father and my father never had a particularly good or close relationship with my uncle.
2:16
He was seen as the bad boy of the family, despite the fact that he made a lot of money like he was one of those crazy rich Asians.
He started quite a few businesses and made a lot of money, lost a fortune or three, but each time he would bounce back and make even more money the next time.
2:37
So obviously I know I have this uncle but my parents didn't like the idea of me getting to know him because they thought he would be a bad influence on me and my siblings.
Anyway, so both Bob Wamu and my uncle have since passed away.
2:57
So this conversation that I had in my dreams would have never been possible.
But somehow in that dream, I was with Dabomu.
We were sitting in the house in Johor Bahru.
3:12
She had this huge garden.
I always wondered if she could have done more with that garden.
But you know what, how this is like in Malaysia, they're huge.
So we were sitting in her garden and I asked Dab Wamu why my father and my uncle were so different despite being brothers.
3:34
And they weren't just brothers, they were of quite similar age and if I do recall correctly, my uncle was only a few years older than my father.
Yet somehow they were like chalk and cheese.
3:50
My father became a crazy rich Asian, super successful businessman and ran a huge business empire.
Whilst my father opted for a rather working class job.
He only had one job his entire life.
He was a primary school teacher and that's what he did until the day he retired.
4:09
My uncle got through wives, quite a few marriages, mistresses, and more lovers than we care to count, whereas my father was trapped in a loveless, vapid marriage but never ever strayed.
4:28
And in fact, my father's still alive and still married to my mother today.
Happily married.
I would never use that term.
But nonetheless, they're of a different generation where different things are important to them, and being married in relationship like that was important for them.
4:47
It's still very important for them, I'm sure.
It would be quite hard to believe that these two men were even related in the 1st place, but there you go.
So in my dream, sitting in Tapwa MU's huge beautiful garden in Jehobaru in Malaysia, I got to ask her this question.
5:10
So why is my father nothing at all like my far more exciting and interesting uncle?
And of course, this is just an imaginary conversation that took place in my dreams, and I'm invoking poetic licence here to make my point.
5:30
I've always been fascinated by the fact that my father was not only nothing like his older brother, but they never got along.
Despite the fact that I had minimal contact with my late uncle, I actually turned out a lot more like my uncle and I do not resemble my father at all.
5:52
And it is interesting that the fact that I am still by blood related to my uncle that suggests that some of those traits might have been buried quite deep in my DNA that runs in the family.
But somehow this is more a question of nurture versus nature.
6:14
After all, my father did go out of his way to convince me and my siblings that my uncle was a bad person, that he'll be a bad influence on us because he had been unfaithful to his wife to Tapwamu.
And of course, Tapwamu was seen as the victim.
6:33
She was this righteous woman, a loving mother, a Good Wife and yet my uncle somehow chose to betray her by having numerous affairs with younger women.
So with that in mind, let me jump right in and tell you about this conversation that happened in my dream.
6:53
And let me get this out of the way.
OK?
Being Singaporeans and Malaysians, we speak in the multitude of languages, obviously English, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Malay, and for the sake of simplicity, for storytelling purposes, I'm going to keep this just in English so that you can understand because I'm not here to try to show off the linguistic diversity of that part of the world, but rather just to explore this theme with you.
7:23
So in my dream, there we were sitting in her garden.
I asked that Bormu why my father was so different.
They're brothers, but nothing alike.
She takes this long look at me and without breaking eye contact she looked as if she was about to answer my question.
7:44
But she then asks me, remind me, you're not an only child right?
You have siblings too, two sisters.
And I said yes, I do have two sisters older than me.
And she then goes on and asks me how similar are you to your two sisters?
8:01
I paused for a moment and thought, well, well, I'm nothing like my two sisters, but I believe that's mostly because I've spent most of my adult life outside Singapore.
I chose to leave Singapore the moment I could, the moment the opportunity presented itself, and as a result, I'm a product of the environment which has shaped me as an adult.
8:26
She then looked at me as if I had answered my own question, but I wasn't satisfied.
I then pointed out to her that both my father and my uncle left their hometown in Malaysia, this little town called Kotatingi.
8:45
Look it up.
And they both left at about the age of 12 to go study in Singapore.
So that was actually fairly unusual for most people from small towns in Malaysia.
So it's not like my uncle was sent abroad for studies whilst my father was somehow deprived of that precious opportunity.
9:09
No, actually the both of them went through that same experience, yet still they turned out totally different.
Dabomu then said to me, do you think you're going to find a simple answer to your question?
9:26
Because you do realise that complex questions do not have simple answers.
She then asked me to think about my two sisters back in Singapore and just how different they were despite being sisters.
9:42
They share the same parents, the same upbringing, and somehow that just never translated into them having similar characters.
And that's totally true.
My two sisters are like Chuck and Cheese, kind of like my father and his brother being like Chuck and Cheese.
10:01
I guess I've just always accepted the way my two sisters have always been different and that's just the way it is.
And part of the reason why I'm asking these questions is because I never got to know my uncle whilst he was still alive.
My father made sure of that.
10:18
He thought he'll be a very bad influence on me.
So I never got close to my uncle.
So I took this opportunity.
I asked Bab Wamu please auntie, tell me about my uncle.
10:34
I never got to know him, and honestly, most of the things my father said about him were really quite.
Most of the things were very scathing.
They were all criticisms.
I don't think my father ever had anything good to say about his brother and it's fair to say that there was certainly some bad blood between my father and my uncle.
10:58
So I would hardly consider my father to be a reliable character witness when it comes to teaching me about my late uncle.
11:10The Uncle's Secret: Social Skills and Risk-Taking
That one who said well, whatever you do, don't put your uncle on a pedestal.
Unlike your father, your uncle was a risk taker.
He just got lucky because Singapore back in the 1960s and 1970s was a totally different place.
11:29
Nobody was going to tell your uncle to just get a job where he had to keep his head down, be polite to the boss, and do as he was told.
No, your uncle was always going to be the boss man himself.
It was a role he assumed nobody gave him the permission to do so or tried to encourage him to pursue a certain career.
11:51
People like him never waited for others to tell him what he ought to do.
He made money, he lost money, he made more money, and he wasn't afraid to try new things, embrace new technology, and he loved attention.
12:07
You know that your father and your brother, sorry, your father and his brother barely got any attention from their parents.
12:23
That was just the way it was for that generation.
Things have changed of course with time, but you've got to understand the social context of that time now.
Just because they didn't get any love or even attention from their parents doesn't mean they didn't want it or crave it.
12:45
Some people, like your father, simply tried to normalise that whole situation by accepting that he didn't deserve any kind of affection or even attention from his own parents.
And that was just the norm for Chinese families.
13:01
It was our culture.
But your uncle was different.
He was so different.
He didn't get any attention from his parents either.
But did you know he was extremely popular at school?
13:16
He had loads of friends and he was so well liked.
He had a neck.
He knew how to get along with everyone.
How he did that I can't even try to begin to explain.
He was charming, he knew how to talk to people, his teachers liked him, his peers liked him, he didn't even have to try to find a girlfriend, the girls were chatting him up and asking him out.
13:45
And when he was younger of course he was good looking when he got his first job or his Co workers liked him, his boss adored him.
He just had a way with people.
He knew how to look into your eyes and give you his undivided attention.
14:01
When you were talking to him, he knew how to make you feel like you were the most important person in the world, even if you were just discussing what you had for lunch.
You know, that was a subject they never taught us at school, but that's the primary reason why your uncle was so incredibly successful.
14:27
It wasn't just his business acumen, although to be fair, he was a great businessman.
But it was the way he managed to charm people into giving him what he wanted every single time and in the context of business that served him extremely well.
14:51
Your uncle could sell anything to anyone.
He wasn't natural.
So I then told Dabomu that I also started my career in sales and just like my uncle, I did really quite well.
15:12
And she listened to that and she said she wasn't surprised.
And she actually pointed out to me that, you know, your uncle did try to get your father a better job so many times.
Why are you happy working in the primary school?
15:29
How much money do you earn as a primary school teacher?
I'll get you a better job.
He tried, OK?
Believe you me, he tried.
And despite your uncle's best intentions, it was never, ever going to work out for your father because your father just didn't have the right kind of social skills in order to be great at sales.
15:54
Stop 1 moon side and just said, let's face it, you know, your father actually picked the right career path by going into teaching because he would have been terrible at most other things and he would have been especially terrible at sales.
16:09
It was just his character.
That was something they were never going to try to shape in school.
You know, in school, it's part of the education.
They teach you subjects like English, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, history, but they never tried to shape your character or teach you how to make friends.
16:33 Embracing Risk: Lessons from a Gymnastics Prodigy
She then put her hand on my shoulder and said, you know, I'm going to ask you for a favour.
Please don't be so harsh on your father and by the same token, don't idolise your uncle.
Your father did the best he could.
16:49
I saw so many other men in his position end up with so much less in life.
And As for your uncle, well, a lot of what he achieved was down to being in the right place at the right time.
There was a lot of good luck involved.
17:08
But I then pointed out to Dabomu that if you don't even dare to try but then you can't get lucky with your attempts.
After all, in just this month, I started working on a brand new project in an industry I have absolutely no experience in.
17:29
But I was invited to solve a problem for a client as this client somehow believes that I'm smart and resourceful enough to find a solution where others have failed before.
Now, I could have just said no, I'm sorry, I don't have experience with this at all.
17:44
Or I could say, yeah, let me give it a go and I'll try my best.
Call it beginner's luck, but I've managed to call him a few favours and now we have a solution for my client and he is happy with what I've managed to cobble together.
18:01
I'm simplifying things a lot.
It was really difficult.
I'll spare you the technical details, but the bottom line is that I wasn't afraid to give it a go, and if I haven't even allowed myself to try, I would have never succeeded.
18:17
By that token, I think I share that trait with my uncle.
Tabuamu smiled and told me that my uncle would have been so proud of me.
She then said.
I have a question for you then.
18:33
Where do you think you got that trait from?
Because it certainly wasn't from your father, and I wasn't close enough to see my uncle in action to see him pull off something like that.
Now, to answer her question, I told her about a gymnastics lesson I had in 1989.
18:54
When my friend Mark turned up with his mother.
He was late, as usual.
His mother apologised to the gymnastics coach and asked for a favour.
Could Mark's younger brother just sit and watch the boys train?
She'd had an appointment and she couldn't bring Matthew along.
19:10
That's the younger brother and so she was hoping to just leave the younger brother Matthew at the gymnastics class and pick them both up after the class.
The coach was just say yes as I remember her leaving in a hurry.
So on that day we were learning how to do a back handspring.
19:32
It was a skill that we had been working on for a few weeks already and it's not begin a skill.
I suppose Matthew just got bored sitting in the corner and he came round to see what his brother was doing, was wandering around the gym.
We mostly just ignored him, and then the next thing I knew someone yelled out.
19:49
Hey Mark, look, your brother's doing it.
Sure enough, little Matthew was doing a backhand spring.
And just to make it clear, nobody tried to give Matthew any instructions or tried to teach him how to do it.
This kid was just doing a monkey see, monkey do kind of copycat routine and nobody stopped him.
20:08
Nobody said to him, no no no, this is too difficult for you, you need to start with the basics.
Nobody tries to do this on their first gymnastics lesson.
Mind you.
If Matthew had been a part of a far more formal gymnastics lesson, then he would have never been allowed to even try to do this skill on his first lesson.
20:32
Now there were a whole bunch of boys in the gym when this happened, and we all witnessed what Matthew did, but not everyone reacted in the same way.
I remember one of the boys getting upset.
He was saying that Matthew was misbehaving, that he was being naughty, this was so dangerous and Matthew could have hurt himself.
20:50
That this should have never been allowed to happen in the gym.
That Mark's mother shouldn't use the gymnastics coach as a free babysitter if she was too busy to arrange her own childcare.
Whereas I stood back and thought, well, if we had subjected Matthew to all of these rules, then we wouldn't have found out just how brilliant this kid was when it came to gymnastics.
21:17
Perhaps you are all just jealous that this young kid could walk into the gym and teach himself how to do a rather advanced skill like a back handspring and just 10-15 minutes.
Perhaps whilst you all have been struggling with this skill for the last two months, you wanted Matthew to struggle like you.
21:37
That's why you are flatly refusing to acknowledge his success in that moment.
I think life can try to teach you valuable lessons along the way, but are you willing to learn?
21:54
The way I see it, we should all adopt that innocent, childlike naivety that Matthew had.
He wasn't one of those arrogant gymnasts who thought that he was so talented that he could learn any skill faster than everyone else.
22:09
No, he simply had no idea that he was trying, attempting a skill that was considered quite advanced, quite difficult.
But since he was bored, he thought he had nothing to lose by trying.
Dabomu who looked at me and pointed out to me that young Matthew was at least given the opportunity to try.
22:30
Nobody stopped him.
Some people like my father never ever got that chance at all.
So is it fair to judge someone like my father that harshly?
I said to her.
22:43Perfect 10: How Society Limits Ambition
Well, since we are talking about gymnastics from all the way back, then allow me to talk about another concept from gymnastics, the perfect 10.
Back in the day, gymnastics routines were scored out of 10.
23:02
A perfect routine will get you a 10 and gymnasts were given the list of requirements before the competition.
Fulfil all that difficulty and you would potentially be able to score 10 if you do not have any deductions.
23:20
So a gymnast who may not have all the difficulty requirements requirements may compete A simpler routine with only 8.5 star value.
So the maximum score that they could get with that routine would be an 8.5.
23:36
However, if you artificially put a ceiling like that in the scoring system, then you had a situation whereby some of the top gymnasts were not even doing everything they were potentially capable of because they were doing simply enough to create a routine to put together a routine that would be scored out of 10.
24:02
This created a level playing field somewhat artificially by refusing to reward those gymnasts who were capable of so much more.
Thankfully, things changed when the Perfect 10 scoring system was abolished in 2006 and replaced with an open-ended scoring system.
24:26
So with this system, there was no limit on how much difficulty gymnasts can choose to perform in their routine and this rule change allowed a whole new generation of gymnasts to take the sport to brand new heights in terms of difficulty, originality and innovation.
24:47
This would have never happened under the the old rules and it was evident that this change in the scoring system had such a massive impact on the development of the sport.
25:04
You need a system that rewards people who are willing to take risks and outperform the rest of the competition because under their own rules.
You often had a case in the finals where everyone had exactly the same amount of difficulty, just enough to score out of a perfect ten, and then it was down to execution.
25:28
And the winner was the gymnast who made the fewest mistakes rather than the one who had the guts to do something far more difficult than everyone else.
This is a change for the better, of course, and quite frankly I wish they had made this change so many years ago.
25:49
They waited way too long for this to happen.
But hey, at least in 2006 they got round to it finally.
So by the same token, people of my father's generation had the same mindset of those competing under the old perfect 10 gymnastics scoring system.
26:09
This might shock you but I remember back in the day the girls in my class were told things like don't study too hard, what's the point?
You need to get married and become a mother.
One day you should be preparing for motherhood rather than a career.
26:25
You may get a degree, but it's not going to serve you in the long run.
Now that it was far more important for these women to learn how to put on makeup, to look pretty in order to attract a good husband, that they needed to learn how to cook and so to fulfil their roles as wives and mothers rather than to pursue any kind of higher education or career.
26:53
And if these women did work, then it was limited.
Do something part time so it will not compromise on their primary roles and responsibilities as wives and mothers.
And even for the men, there was this perfect 10 mentality.
27:13
I remember this conversation I had with my parents when we were talking about teachers in Singapore.
I pointed out to my parents that teaching was often seen as a last resort for people of my generation, with most of them opting to go into medicine, law, finance, perhaps running their own businesses, engineering, and if absolutely nothing else works out, then there's always teaching as a last resort.
27:40
My parents then said this thing which explained their mindset from that era.
They say that whilst teaching was never going to make you exceptionally rich, it was enough.
That's the keyword enough.
27:56
The pay was enough for you to start a family, enough for you to support that family, enough for you to eventually afford your own modest home.
And for most people in out there, being able to achieve all of those goals meant it was enough.
28:13
It was enough because it fulfilled all their needs.
What more could you possibly want?
You can see why I compared this to the perfect Ted scoring system.
As long as your routine contained enough difficulty to score a perfect Ted, it made no sense trying to do something extra.
28:39
And we have a Chinese saying that describes this really well.
I look it up.
If you, if you speak Chinese, great.
I'm sure you ring a bell.
But it's a saying that basically translates to if you have enough, if you've done enough, there's absolutely no point, no reward in doing anything extra to go beyond what is actually enough.
29:12
Some people, like my parents, would arbitrarily set a standard at their head, this benchmark that they declared to be enough.
I I argued that perhaps if you're not that highly educated, as if I may be blunt, if you're not that intelligent, if you're kind of stupid, then setting the bar pretty low like this would probably be a logical thing to do.
29:40
But what about those of us who are a lot more ambitious to achieve a lot more in life than what if our aims would be?
Our ambitions would be to excel and be the best at what we do, rather than simply do enough to get by in life.
29:59
My parents shook their heads and said to me, why are you so greedy?
Why are you so vain and materialistic?
Why can't you be grateful for what you already have?
Why can't you appreciate how lucky you are to have all the things in life that you already have?
30:16
Why do you need all these other material things and achievements?
Why isn't what you already have enough for you to lead a perfectly good life?
What I had presented as ambition to achieve more with my life, my parents interpreted as greed and vanity.
30:40
And that's why I don't see eye to eye with them on so many issues.
And somehow, magically, in this conversation with Dabomu, she didn't take my parents side.
She nodded as if she understood me perfectly and clearly, to the point where she almost hinted that she agreed with me, or at least that she understood exactly why I am the way I am.
31:12
I explained to Dabomu that there is a big difference whether you go through life with this perfect 10 mindset to do just enough or if you decide that the difficulty level in your life should be open-ended.
31:28
Tab Wamu said that every generation will be different from the one before.
She urged me, please don't judge your parents as flawed people for the way they behaved in this aspect.
31:44
They were simply products of a certain time in history that shaped their mindsets to think a certain way.
I suppose I'm vastly different from my parents in this aspect because I was lucky enough to have accessed so many opportunities that they never did.
32:03 Why Assume Siblings Must Be Alike? A Dream's Conclusion
But this still somehow brings me back to the original question.
But why is my father so different from my uncle?
Why am I like my uncle and nothing like my father?
Nobody told my uncle that making his first million was enough or that having one wife was enough.
32:24
No, he was the kind of guy who chased his next million, and after having one wife, he wanted a string of mistresses and levers and the next lever and more attention and more love, Tabuomo said.
32:41
You're looking for some kind of answer that doesn't exist.
I think you're hoping for some kind of convenient explanation when there isn't one.
Your father was simply a typical man of his generation who believed that what he had in life was more than enough.
33:01
Whilst your uncle had a rebellious streak in him, he wasn't the kind of person who would follow rules.
Your father simply did what everyone else did and followed what was the norm for his society.
33:17
That doesn't make him a bad person, it simply means that he's just like the vast majority of his peers.
He was average, he wasn't special.
And for most people in the world, actually, that's enough for them.
33:39
There's nothing inherently wrong with the word enough.
Think about the number of people in the world who are hungry, who don't have enough, whose lives are insecure, and for someone to have enough to be grateful for having enough, is that such a bad thing?
34:06
But As for your uncle, he took a lot of chances.
He gambled, he took risks in the world of business, whilst nobody taught him how to do any of that.
It was just his instinct to do so.
He wouldn't have it any other way.
34:23
Your father sought solace and took comfort in being grateful for having enough in life, enough food to eat a decent roof over his head, for being financially stable enough to bring up a family, to make sure that his children were educated and could go to university.
34:43
And whilst for your uncle, he would only be happy if he could score yet another win, in the world of business or romance, people like your uncle are often admired for succeeding where others haven't even dared to try.
35:03
But As for why your uncle and your father are just so different, who knows?
Perhaps we have to go back to why you have decided to ask this question in the 1st place.
35:20
Why do we even assume that siblings must be alike, even identical or very similar when it comes to their characters?
Why can't we just accept that siblings can be totally different, like choc and cheese?
35:40
So remember what we said at the beginning of this conversation about how different you are from your own two sisters?
I looked back at Dabomu and I concluded that she's right.
35:56
There's just no basis to make any kind of assumptions about siblings being similar.
So at the very end of this discussion, we ended up with the conclusion that my question, the original question that I asked about why my father and my uncle are so different.
36:21
Well, I've made some assumptions that were essentially flawed.
I made an assumption about siblings being likely to share certain personality traits.
36:37
And of course, the only conclusion I am left with after that conversation with Tabuamu in her beautiful garden is that my assumption is flawed.
36:55
Where does that leave me?
The dream kind of ended there.
I got up, I walked around the garden.
I looked at she had this swing, this very old fashioned swing in the garden.
37:12
She was still sitting on the swing.
But I got up and walked around and we didn't say anything anymore.
She just sat there gently swaying on the swing and I just walked around the garden and the dream faded out with me walking around the garden that way.
37:36
Where does that leave us, my friends?
Do you have any siblings?
Are you similar to them?
Am I so ridiculous and unreasonable in hoping to get some answers about why my father and my uncle are so incredibly different?
37:58
About why I've turned out so much more like my uncle than my own father?
I suppose having had that dream, having written the draft for this podcast and having recorded this, it just leaves me with a fascination about my uncle, my late uncle who's passed away since.
38:22
I wish I've had the chance to get to know him and learn more about him.
But anyway, thank you so much for listening and I'll catch you in the next podcast.
Hey @LIFT great to hear from you again. I’m posting this from Seoul btw. I’m just very curious about one thing about your father. I know how your mother and him speak different languages. By how did your father manage to court her and get her to marry him? Was it a case of no choice on your mother’s part?
ReplyDeleteGood question and there's a very Singaporean answer to this: rojak-rojak mix. My mum primarily speaks Hokkien, English and a bit of Mandarin and Malay. My dad speaks Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese, Malay and most importantly, Hokkien. For my mother, Hokkien is her first language and mother tongue. For my dad, he has managed to master Hokkien to a very high standard - that's actually not that uncommon for people of his generation to master Hokkien even if it was not the language he spoke at home as a child, it was a useful lingua franca in Singapore and parts of Malaysia. My mum does speak some Mandarin but rather poorly given that it was not taught to her in school properly. So the conversations were a mix of Hokkien + Mandarin + Malay at home, for my mum there would be a bit more Hokkien vocab whilst for my dad there would be more Mandarin but it wasn't a precise formula, like my mother would drop in the odd English word if she didn't know how to express it in Hokkien or Mandarin and I'd wonder if my dad actually understood what she said. So it was not like they didn't understand each other - far from it, they had at least 3 languages in common: Mandarin, Hokkien and Malay but it was a question of them not speaking the same first language, but they created their own patois, their own pidgin language at home which resembled a form of Singdarin to communicate which each other and guess what? This was actually fairly common for people of that generation to use more than one language to bridge the divide. This has mostly disappeared from Singapore today with people defaulting to English (or Mandarin, in a purer form) but I watch clips on social media from places like Penang and this kind of mixing is a lot more prevalent in parts of Malaysia today where even Malay people drop in Hokkien loan words when speaking in Malay amongst themselves. Part 2 coming up below.
DeleteDid she have a choice in the matter? Allow me to lay out the context, she had a choice, she chose to say yes. My father had an older brother who was always the favourite son, his big brother was great at school, had loads of friends, was a popular kid who was well-liked by all and also managed to make a lot of money, like my uncle was the golden boy and my father just paled in comparison. Boy it must suck to have been in that position, where nothing you do is ever going to be as good as your big brother. Anyway, so my uncle got married and my grandparents were delighted - big Chinese wedding, huge celebrations, you get the idea. My father thought, hey I want some of that. So his new mission after attending that wedding was to find a wife ASAP. So back in those days, my father lived on the same street as my mother and they had some mutual friends but they also ran into each other like at the local shops given they were practically neighbours - like they lived close enough to each other. My mother came from a desperately poor family and the situation was pretty dire, her father had 7 children then promptly died, leaving my grandmother to bring up 7 children as a single mother widow. Life was so hard. Like who would wanna marry a widow with 7 children to take on the burden of bringing up 7 young children? They lived in desperate, abject poverty and my mother lost one sister to illness, like her sister died at the age of about 8 and that was considered normal in those days. So when my father asked her out to talk about marriage, they didn't have much in common, there was no romance or chemistry to speak of, but my mother was so desperate to get out of that shockingly poor family that anyone (including my father) would be "richer" and so yeah, she thought it was a good deal and mind you, she was socially inept and shy, she didn't know when any other man might want to ask her out again so she thought, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, I don't think I'm likely to get a better offer so I shall say yes. So it was a choice, it was a calculated choice on her part but you can't judge her by our modern standards, but context is everything.
DeleteWell it is very interesting to know considering modern dating is so different and with a huge long checklist (like a job interview). I probably don't fit the majority of what modern women are looking for in a partner especially since I don't have a stable career and soon will be homeless (selling my HDB flat).
DeleteTraditional dating is a whole different ballgame! Very eye opening to know.
Well modern dating is so different between our generation are better educated, they have access to so much more information and have tools like dating apps to help streamline that search process. There were matchmakers back in the day but they are nothing compared to what a modern dating app can achieve in terms of sorting through vast amounts of data to find you exactly what you're looking for. Finding a good match in those days was a lot harder of course and thus by that token, people had much lower expectations of what they would accept in a spouse - don't just them by modern standards, that's just the historical context we are dealing with here. I hope you're having a great time in Korea.
DeleteSorry typo: don't JUDGE them by modern standards.
DeleteI’m having a blast in Seoul. Just did a pub crawl in Hongdae. Also did most of the must see like Naksan park city wall (from KDH). Also did the DMZ tour, Namsan Seoul Tower observatory (another KDH spot), shopping in Myeongdong, visited Gyeongbokgung Palace, Bukchon Hanok village, Gwangjang market and soon will be visiting Lotte World Tower. Do you have any suggestions for places to visit? Not able to ski since it is not winter. But any recommendations are welcome!
DeleteSorry I had been slow in replying, I have been away at the Cannes Film Festival. I am glad to hear that you had a brilliant time in Seoul.
Delete