Part 1: Making sense of the past (1960s - 1976)

Hi guys, I got some news over the weekend from my family that my father has been admitted to hospital, it looks like my father needs a heart bypass surgery and it is pretty serious - at least it wasn't Covid-19 because he would be considered very vulnerable given his age and health condition, but since Singapore is practically Covid-free already so at least we don't have to worry about that. I wondered if I had to go to Singapore if he was very ill and if I would be able to get a special dispensation from the Singapore High Commission in London to enter Singapore (since non-citizens and non-residents are still barred from entering in the fight against Covid-19). He is being transferred from Tan Tock Seng Hospital to National University Hospital and so we're keeping our fingers crossed that this imminent surgery would be successful. 

I watched an interview on Youtube recently about the Vietnamese immigrant who fled Vietnam because of the war when he was 6 - his family settled in the UK eventually and his father didn't really want to talk about the war or Vietnam as it was too painful for him to discuss it. Some years ago, that man's father's died and that man regretted not having spoken to his father about Vietnam, so the man went to Vietnam as a tourist and took all these tours with an English-speaking guide to learn about the Vietnam war. I remember this part in the video when he said that if he had learnt all these things about the Vietnam war back then, he would have had so many questions for his father but he never got to ask those questions and now he regrets it. I did wonder, what if my father was really dying? What would I do then? If I had a few days left to speak to my father, what would I say to him? I know what I would do when placed in such a situation: I would not speak my mind, I would do what was expected of me. You see, I have built a very successful career in sales as I am very good at working out what people want to hear and when I tell them exactly what they want to hear, they think I am so empathetic (well no, I'm actually really manipulative, but that's two sides of the same coin) and that's how I win their trust as a client. Thus I know that my family would expect me to say nice things to my father if he had days left to live, so that his mind would be at east and he could pass away peacefully in the knowledge that he has made peace with his son. I wouldn't allow myself to tell him what I really want to say - that's why I'm going to tell you instead what I would've said to him, so that is what my blog is for. It is my outlet so I don't have to bottle up my feelings and it is very therapeutic. 

But before I tell you what I could never say to my father, allow me to tell you about my father so this will all make a lot more sense to you. My father was born during WW2 in a small village in Johor state in what was then British Malaya. When he was old enough, he followed in the footsteps of his older brother to attend secondary school in Singapore because there wasn't a secondary school in his hometown. As his older brother settled down in Singapore, my father followed suit - deciding to train as a teacher and that was when he met my mother who was also training to be a teacher at that time. They married in 1967 but my father's parents always objected to the marriage. They really wanted my father to return to his hometown in Johor after he had completed his studies but were convinced that this Singaporean woman had seduced him because she was from a desperately poor family. Well my mother's family was indeed extremely poor and that was one of the many reasons my father's family hated her - my mother was ostracized by most of my father's family. She was Hokkien, he was Hakka and most of all, my mother couldn't speak Hakka which was the language used by my father's family. My mother hated my father's family, every single one last of them and wanted nothing to do with them. My eldest sister was born one year later 1968 and at the time, they lived in a small HDB flat in Tanglin Halt. Please don't be misled by the use of the word 'Tanglin': now this was nowhere near the exclusive Tanglin club or the Tanglin mall, it was actually right next to Queenstown, one of the oldest HDB estates in Singapore as my parents were very poor then.

The difficult relationship my mother had with my father's family was the source for many, many arguments - in the late 1960s, my father's younger sister wanted to attend university, she was bright enough and had earned herself a place at university. So my father wanted to help support his sister as she attended university, but since my mother had an axe to grind with my father's family, she said no way, you can't do that - your family comes first. You need to take care of me and your daughter first, not your younger sister. If she wants to go to university, let her find the money herself. The problem was that my grandparents were extremely old fashioned and didn't believe that girls needed that much of an education, so my father decided to make sure his sister was going to graduate even if he had to pay her fees. My mother was simply overruled and she never forgave my father for that - ironically, my auntie was the only person in my father's family who was nice to my mother, but because my mother was hell bent on seeking revenge for the truly horrific way she had been treated by my father's family, she thought denying my auntie her degree was the perfect revenge. Well my father didn't allow my mother to get her way and my mother still resents my father for it till today. When my father turned 80, my auntie wanted to take my father out for dinner (she is still grateful to my father today for what he did), my mother didn't allow my father to even go for that dinner and she screamed at him then threatened to kill herself. My sister described rushing home from the office in the middle of the day, convinced my mother had tried to kill herself over that. When my father goes to see his sister, he would have to do so secretly - too afraid to let my mother know as she would be furious. 

Why am I telling you all this? Well, this is important: my father's marriage to my mother had always been miserable. It was miserable back in the 1960s and today in 2020, it is still miserable and they have fought all these years. I am genuinely surprised they have not divorced each other - in the West, I've seen so many couples call it quits amicably, "this isn't working out, let's just stay friends and get a divorce". But no, my parents decided that because they already had children, it was thus too late to hit the 'reset' button and they were supposed to stay married no matter what - even if they hated each other and argued all the time. Part of the reason why my father was determined to stay married to my mother was because his older brother got a divorce and that was seen as something quite shameful by his traditional family - my uncle was one of those crazy rich Asians, oh he was such an influential millionaire businessman that he was conferred the title of Datuk which was a pretty big deal in Malaysia. Imagine having an older brother who was so incredibly rich whilst you were just a humble primary school teacher, oh my father was jealous and he didn't hide it well - even as a child, I could tell. But when my uncle had a divorce, my father positively celebrated because in his mind, his marriage was still intact whilst my uncle's marriage had fallen apart; that was how competitive they were as siblings. My father always lost to his older brother when it came to making money but here was one area in his life that he managed to outperform his older brother. Thus this was a vital reason why my father would never divorce my mother no matter what. 

Now if I may explain one little detail on the timeline: I know some of you would have read the paragraph above and thought, why didn't your uncle help pay for your auntie's university tuition fees then? The answer is simple: my uncle didn't become crazy rich until the late 1970s - my auntie went to university in the late 1960s and at that time, both my father and my uncle were equally poor when my auntie went to university. Here's the thing though, I don't think my father ever thought about what it meant to be a father: he simply followed everything his older brother did. When they were very young, my uncle would take my father out to play with the other boys in the neighbourhood - my father would simply follow his older brother around obediently and from what I understand, my uncle was a good older brother. So when my uncle went to study at the Chinese High School in Singapore, that's exactly what my father wanted to do. When my uncle declared he would stay on in Singapore, my father followed suit and when my uncle married a woman from Singapore, sure enough my father followed suit. My uncle had a son and a daughter from his first marriage, I still remember their names but it has been about 30 years since I have last met them. Thus my father became a father because that's exactly what his older brother did - unfortunately, my uncle didn't tell my father anything about fatherhood or gave him any lessons about how to be a father. Back in those days, it was just the done thing - when men got to a certain age, you were supposed to get married and start a family - nobody told you why you had to have children but everybody just did it.

Thus it was under those circumstances that my father found himself the father of three children, two girls and a boy. And then I am sure there was a moment when he thought, okay, now I have children, now what am I supposed to do? Is this supposed to make me happy? Why am I not happy? Why am I fighting with my wife everyday and trying to hard to hide it from my colleagues and children? I don't think he was happy, this is because I am 44 now and many of my friends do have children - I can see the way they have taken on their roles as parents with great interest and pride because they really wanted to become parents whereas for my father, he just kind of fell into it without questioning why he was doing it and to make matters a lot worse, he married a woman he simply could not get along with - oh dear. I think it is a complete fallacy that a man would look at his new born baby and instantly have a desire to be the best father in the world. It is undeniably difficult to be a good father and by the time I came along in 1976, the context was that he had been under pressure to produce a male offspring after his first two children were female - if that sounds totally old fashioned and sexist, then yes, of course it is but this was the 1970s, the world was a very different place back then. There was this sense of relief that my father had finally produced a son, it was such a big thing for his family but then was a son somehow going to make him happier than his two daughters? After the celebrations were over, he soon realized that he had the daunting task of having to raise three children on a humble primary school teacher's salary. The pay for teachers in Singapore back then was quite respectable, but most people only had one or two children - not three!

You see, my parents had been under so much pressure to have a son by their families I think they would have gone on to have a fourth, even a fifth child until they got a son. But since I turned out to be a boy, there was a sense of relief - phew, we now have a son and our family is complete. But what happens once you fulfill that 'expectation' or 'duty' to have a son? Is young boy supposed to somehow bring incredible joy to your life just by virtue of his genitalia? No, that doesn't happen of course. This does remind me of a friend (yes, time for an analogy) from Singapore let's call him "Tan" (not his real name) - he was a very hardworking student and he was told by his parents and teachers: work hard and you will get good job and have a bright future. So he did exactly that: he was a straight A student who went to NUS, then when Tan graduated and entered the working world, he struggled to find a decent job. You see, the mistake he made was that he was so focused on getting those straight As that he sacrificed a lot of things along the way - he didn't make time for friends (thus sacrificing his social skills), he didn't have any interests or hobbies (thus not really giving him a clear direction of where he wanted to take his career) and he certainly didn't work part time or have any internships (so he had no real work experience). Tan had this totally unrealistic expectation of potential employers being so impressed with his results that they would be giving him generous job offers - that certainly didn't happen, instead their reaction was more like, "you're great at studying hard and passing exams, we are not hiring you to be a student in our company, we're hiring you to do a job that has nothing to do with passing exams. Whilst your results are impressive, we're going to hire someone else who has the right qualities to do this job well." Tan after years of searching and being unemployed, he finally gave up and settled for a job that he was vastly overqualified for - he is still earning peanuts today for a graduate.

Is Tan bitter? Oh boy, he is extremely bitter and for good reason too - he has been misled, he had been given inaccurate advice that sacrificing everything to get those straight As would guarantee him a good job. He delivered on the goods when it came to his results and his reward never arrived - instead, it was quite the opposite, Tan saw many graduates with poorer results and even non-graduates earning a lot more than him today. This sense of injustice was eating Tan up from the inside and he felt extremely resentful towards his teachers and parents for having given him bad advice, he resented the education system for not having prepared him adequately for the working world and of course, he resented the employers who refused to give him a job in spite of his brilliant results as well. In short, Tan was angry with everybody and that dented his self-confidence as an adult - as I write this in 2020, he is in his mid-40s, single, living with his parents (unable to move out as he is too poor) and still earning peanuts. The similarity I see with my father's case is this: he was told by society, you must have a son, once you have a son everything will be perfect because you have fulfilled your duty to produce a male heir. So when I finally came along in 1976, he had the same mindset as Tan when he graduated: I've done exactly what was expected of me, now where's my reward? Well, there was none because both Tan and my father were given misleading information - they had both fulfilled society's expectations: get a degree, have a son. But ticking those boxes was not going to magically make both men so happy, because they both had such unrealistic expectations. 

So in my father's case, he had all these other issues in his life: he couldn't get along with his wife. His family hated his wife. He was trying to bring up a family with three children on a humble primary school teacher's salary. My mother had other health issues at the time as well. And all those problems were supposed to miraculously just go away because there was some kind of supernatural light shining out of me that was going to fix everything that was wrong in my father's life? Hell no, I was a newborn baby, all I could do was keep him up all night crying and shit myself a lot because that's what newborn babies do. If you're expecting a baby to somehow fix the problems in your life, then no, you're seriously barking up the wrong tree - a baby is a huge commitment and a lot of hard work, the baby is likely to make the problems in your life even worse and give you a lot more problems. Thus like Tan, my father felt cheated or at least misled - after all, he had finally delivered what society had expected of him, he did get a pat on the back from his friends and family when I was born but none of his problems went away and he still wasn't happy. The newborn baby added to the stress he experienced in the family (imagine having a crying baby at 3 am when you have to go to work the next morning), gave him another reason to argue and fight with my mother and made the family's financial situation even more dire. Ironically, I was his third child - so he has gone through the same process with my two older sisters, so why did he think that having a male baby was going to be any less stressful and difficult than a female baby? Seriously? So, what was he expecting? 

As this post is going to get extremely long, I have decided to make this the end of part 1 and continue in part 2. I think this is a good place to end part 1 because I was a newborn baby at this stage, completely innocent and blameless. Really, only newborn babies can claim to be totally innocent and yet even as a newborn baby, I was thrust into this shit storm that was brewing in my father's life - he had all these problems already and somehow I was meant to be the son that would either solve his problems (and like how?) or at least be such a source of joy that he would either be so distracted and forget his problems or can turn around and say, "having this son has made it all worthwhile". How about a dose of reality here please. I think it is very important for me to spend an entire post laying out the context for you here as I used to look at things from my own point of view, I would ask myself questions like why doesn't my father care about me, why doesn't my father take an interest in what I do like my friends' fathers? It used to lead me to think that I had been misbehaving or that I had been morally deficient in some way, that I had let down my parents but of course, the whole point of me filling you in with the context of my father's life prior to my arrival is simple: it's not about me, it's not my fault, there was a lot of crap happening in my father's life for so many years before I was born and I was thrust into that shit storm, totally unaware of my father's issues and problems. Writing this is very cathartic for me as I am now making sense of what happened as a well-educated, mature adult - this is quite different from when I had to do this as a confused, bewildered young child in a lot of pain. So part 1 will end here with me as a newborn baby, part 2 will follow shortly. I am most thankful to my dearest regular readers for joining me in this process as I try to make sense of the past.