Hello again guys, I wanna do a little short post today to thank two people who had been incredibly kind to me in the period 1996 to 1997. It would be wrong for me to forget the kindness of strangers or in this case, two people who barely knew me going out of their way to be kind to me and I wish to share this story on my blog. Many of my regular readers will know that I have blogged extensively about my time spent serving national service (NS) and one of the key themes that I remember from that period was a sense of isolation - I felt like nobody in my family understood what I was actually going through. After all, my father got lucky - he was deemed too old to do national service given that he was already 29 years old when NS was first implemented in Singapore. Obviously, my two sisters and my mother didn't have to serve NS as only men were liable to serve so I was the first person in my family to serve NS. Admittedly, I wasn't well prepared for it, I knew I had to serve NS when I turned 18, but as a teenager, I was only thinking about what I was doing the next day or the next week; planning ahead simply wasn't my forte as I focused on the present. Hence when the time came to enlist finally arrived, I found myself thrust into a very unfamiliar environment and struggled to cope. Given that I am autistic, it was also a massive challenge for me to quickly develop the right kind of social skills to cope with this harsh environment - naturally, I turned to my immediate family for help but actually, I got very little support from them when I needed it most.
My parents had such blind faith in the PAP and the Singaporean government - they believed that 'the system' was perfect and if I struggled to cope, then that was a personal failure on my part: it meant that I was weak, lazy, selfish, ill-disciplined and morally flawed. I then turned to my two sisters but was shocked at how unsympathetic they were. My calculated guess as to why they reacted like that was because the guys they encountered at university and work were never going to run to their female friends to share stories of the struggles they encountered in NS - on one hand, some of these guys wanted to portray this macho, strongman image of the rugged, brave, heroic soldier who thrived in such circumstances and this would of course, impress the ladies they were trying to ask out on a date. On the other hand, there's also a sense of "what's the point in telling women about this when they have no idea what goes on in NS? If I am after empathy, I should be talking to another man who has gone through the same process and thus would understand the context." So I think it was a combination of those two factors that led to my two sisters having this fantasy vision of NS, of boys playing with guns and having a rather extreme form of a holiday camp where there was a lot of fun but macho activities. Hence when I presented my version of the NS experience to my sisters, it was completely different from the kind of stories they were fed by their male Singaporean friends over the years and that's why they didn't react with as much sympathy or understanding. However help came from a very unlikely source at that point and thus I am sharing this story with you because I don't want to forget their kindness. I believe there are some important lessons to be learned from this episode.
In 1996 whilst I was still serving NS, I represented Singapore at the Pacific-Alliance Gymnastics Championships which took place at Kebangsan University, just outside Kuala Lumpur. Given that it was rare that such a major gymnastics competition took place just on our doorstep, Singapore sent a small contingent to take part. I even made two finals on pommel horse and vault, finishing 8th in both events. I loved taking part in such competitions as they were a chance to meet gymnasts from other countries - sometimes you would encounter a language barrier but the one team that the Singaporean gymnasts got along really well with were the team from Hong Kong as they spoke English really well and we were about the same age. After the competition, I exchanged details with loads of gymnasts and said we would keep in touch - remember this was 1996, there was no Facebook then, most of us didn't even have an email address in those days and so keeping in touch meant writing a letter, putting it in an envelop, going to the post office to buy a stamp and posting it. It was quite a tedious process compared to how we use social media these days but two of the female gymnasts from Hong Kong were great at keeping in touch. They promptly replied to my letters and we corresponded mostly in English. That was when I started telling them about the problems I encountered in the army, I don't know why or how I started but they responded with great empathy and kindness. I even told them the story above about why my sisters not sympathetic were fed stories about macho men being strong and brave by all their male Singaporean friends.
Sometimes it can be a lot easier to tell your problems to someone who doesn't know you well. These two gymnasts from Hong Kong knew little about Singapore, which was a good thing. They had no concept about what NS was and so I started with a clean slate, I was able to give them my story without them having any preconceptions. Contrast this to telling my sister about NS, her judgment is clouded by the fact that she knows me very well and she has been hearing all these stories about NS from her friends over the years so before I get to finish my story, she has often jumped to her own conclusions instead of hearing me out. But to be fair to my sister, people who know me well often make that same mistake: I recently tried to tell a friend at my gymnastics club about something that happened at work and he made a couple of assumptions based on what he knew about me - perhaps he was desperate to prove to me that, "hey Alex, I know you so well, we've been friends for a while and I know so much about you so I am going to demonstrate how close we are by using that knowledge to make some calculated guesses about your story." That really annoyed me because I would have preferred it if my friend had simply listened to me. But with the two gymnasts from Hong Kong, we avoided that problem because they didn't know me well enough to have information about me to make any assumptions at all, so instead they just listened to me and asked many questions about what I was going through. They seemed interested, I felt like the genuinely cared and the conversation flowed - letter after letter, most of which were painstakingly handwritten and quite long as well. There were things that I only told them and I never told any of my friends and family in Singapore.
So these letters went back and forth for about a year from May 1996 to April 1997 - it seems really odd that in that period, I felt that these two gymnasts from Hong Kong whom I only spent a few days with at the competition in Malaysia seemed to understand me so much more than my own family. Sure they were very kind and nice people whom I felt I had a genuine connection with, but I think this kind of communication worked because it is very different telling a stranger (or at least someone who barely knows you) about your problems. The stranger doesn't have any preconceived notions about you, they don't know enough about your situation to rush to judgment, so they do two things: they listen and they ask plenty of questions to try to gain a better understanding of what you're dealing with. They were also good at responding to the fact that I was clearly very stressed out and unhappy with what I was dealing with - if I told my parents that there was someone difficult in my unit who was a nightmare to deal with, my parents would say things like, "what do you expect me to do - I can't go to the army and beat him up for you! You have to learn to deal with people like that yourself." Since I expected them to say things like that, I never told them anything. But my friends from Hong Kong had a different tact: one told me to find the time to go to the seaside, find a peaceful place and just listen to the waves crash onto the shores as she found that sound very soothing and calming. Then once I felt relaxed and calm, I should talk to the sea as if I was talking to her. She told me I could say anything and the sea will simply listen - the sea would never judge me and I would feel better after that. Guess what? I did it and yes it worked. Those trips to East Coast Park were so therapeutic.
I'm afraid our correspondence came to an end around 1998 - I left Singapore for my further education in Europe in May 1997 and I was having so much fun in France. I did send a few postcards every now and then from Paris and London, but gosh - I feel so guilty for saying this. Life as a student at university was good, I was no longer a miserable soldier stuck in Singapore - I was having such a wonderful time instead at university so the letters became shorter and shorter. Pretty soon it was just whatever I could write on the back of a postcard rather than a super long 12 page letter. Eventually the communication stopped altogether in 1998 and I suppose we had all just moved on with our lives. Looking back, I now feel so guilty now having been the kind of friend who used my two friends in Hong Kong when I was sad and miserable but when life became much better once I had left Singapore, I promptly neglected and forgot about them. I really shouldn't forget their kindness - they were under no obligation to listen to be and be there for me the way they did, but the two of them really did so much to help me to through the most difficult times I had to suffer in NS. Having experienced such kindness from these two gymnasts from Hong Kong, I feel the best way to repay them is to always keep a forum open on my blog through the comments section where anyone can leave a comment anonymously and chat to me about any kind of problem they have because I know from experience why it can sometimes be so much easier to talk to a complete stranger about your problems rather than approach a friend or a family member who knows you very well. I want to be that kind, understanding stranger who is happy to just listen and ask questions without passing judgement - this is my way of repaying those two incredibly kind gymnasts from Hong Kong I met back in 1996.
One logical question you may ask me is why I chose to open up to two people I hardly knew rather than try to pick someone closer to me. I had this friend in the army, let's call him Tony (not his real name). We were close and hung out a lot but Tony had his own fair share of problems in the army. I wasn't convinced that I would get sympathy from Tony because if I told him about my problems then he might have turned around and said something like, "you think that was bad? Wait till I tell you what happened to me last week, it was even worse!" Admittedly, I suppose I was being selfish - I didn't want to end up listening to his problems when I wanted to talk about mine, so that's why we never talked that much about our problems when we chatted. Whereas with my two friends from Hong Kong, they were keen to chat to me, to continue talking to me through the letters no matter where that conversation took us. We had just come back from an amazing experience in Kuala Lumpur, we had just been at an international competition representing our countries, being treated like VIPs by the Malaysian hosts and none of us wanted that experience to end. Thus in continuing to chat to the friends we made at the competition, we continued to relive that wonderful experience even after we returned to our humdrum lives. Of course, they could have chosen not reply to my letters the moment I started telling them about my problems in the army, they were not obliged to be spend that much time and effort corresponding with me but they did for the simple reason that they were such kind people. They were there, they had compassion and they were happy to listen.
There is another reason why I found it a lot easier to open up to these two friends from Hong Kong - I was unlikely to meet them again and sure enough, that never happened. By the time I finally returned to Hong Kong in 2018 a good 22 years had passed since I last met them and I didn't think they would even remember me, hence I made no effort to contact them. We may feel uncomfortable talking to our friends and family members about our problems if we feel that confessing to such problems may invite their judgment, that it may then affect our long term relationship with them. So for example, whilst I am on very friendly terms with my work colleagues, I am rather guarded when it comes to what I do tell them because I don't want anything to affect our working relationship. It's not that I don't trust them or that I question their social skills when it comes to handling such a situation, it's just that if things go badly wrong, like if they react badly to me talking to them about my problems, I still have to face them at work all the time and so that's just a risk I don't think is ever worth taking under such circumstances. Whereas when you're talking to a stranger with whom you don't have a preexisting relationship, you have far less to lose even if that relationship doesn't work out. This is why people often find it easier to call up a helpline like the Samaritans (now that's a great charity worth supporting!) to talk about their problems so it's not like they don't have any friends or family members to turn to in such a situation, but it is much easier to discuss your problems rather openly and honestly with a complete stranger who knows absolutely nothing about your problems.
Some people do come to seek advice from me on my blog as someone who has a lot more worldly experience, I am after all 45 years old and I have given a lot of advice to young people who have come to me via my blog over the years. In some instances, they really needed my insight to solve the complex problems they were facing but actually, in many other cases, they simply needed a listening ear - they wanted to talk to someone who was a complete stranger who knew nothing about their situation at all. I do know what it is like to feel desperate for someone to listen to your side of the story when people around you are simply making assumptions about you because they think they know you so well. Part of the reason why my two friends from Hong Kong were such good 'listeners' was because we communicate via letters, that's right - good old 'snail mail' so there was no interruption. I could simply sit down and write my side of the story down, they would only respond after the letter arrived in Hong Kong some days later. By the same token, a reader who wants to leave a long comment on my blog is effectively doing the same thing - there's no risk of me rushing in, interrupting them, annoying them by jumping to the wrong conclusions. There's something very civilized about this very old fashioned way of communication where each party gets to have their say in full before the other side can respond. The format of my blog does facilitate this kind of communication and if I can help people who find themselves in need of a listening ear, then I'm honoured to be of assistance. In so doing, I think I'm repaying that debt of kindness shown to me back in 1996 by my two friends from Hong Kong - I'd like to think that they'll be very happy to know I'm doing this today.
I will end on that note - what do you think? Have you ever been in a position where you found it quite hard to open up to your friends and family about something that has been bothering you? Why might we find it a lot easier to open up to a stranger when discussing our problems? Or have you ever been on the other side of the equation and provided a listening ear to a troubled person whom you didn't know well at all? Does this simply boil down to social skills and learning how to be a better listener? Let's spread the goodwill: please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
Nothing wrong with being a little selfish and finding someone to confide in who can make the time to listen to your problems. That's what therapists are for haha, but online or in-person anonymity also works too. But it does cause problems if one thinks a long term friendship can be formed from confiding trauma alone. Long term friendships are usually made from sharing good times with each other, not bad times because nobody wants to stay unhappy forever. Which reminds me, I did have a penpal in high school who I would discuss the stress of studying for A levels, and stresses in our respective families. But when we both left for college we slowly stopped corresponding because I got into a program I wanted to do, whilst my penpal was forced to go to medical school by her parents which she absolutely hated. I was having the time of my life in uni while she was miserable, so it was hard to continue the friendship since it was built on shared misery rather than shared happiness, and I was no longer miserable. My penpal did contact me years later when she graduated and started working as a doctor(during Covid!), but it seems nothing had really changed for her and I wasn't looking for a short term friendship to just listen to her problems since she still had nothing positive to share with me. That is probably selfish of me too, but I'm just not in the market for misery right now. You only live once.
ReplyDeleteBtw I'm glad to hear you had the time of your life after starting uni post a grueling NS. I know NS sucks (my guy friends didn't spare any details for me), but its nice they did let you go to some gymnastics competitions.
Hi Amanda, I was and am very grateful to my two friends from Hong Kong who were there for me when I needed someone to listen. That's why I wish to return the favour and pass the goodwill on in engaging with my readers in a similar manner. As for going to that gymnastics competition - I wasn't going on a nice holiday in Malaysia with my friends, I was working my butt off to bring glory to the country by representing my country at a major international competition. I was the first male gymnast from Singapore to have made a final in an international competition that was not confined to SE Asia - the standard of gymnastics back in the 1990s in Singapore was a lot lower then and modesty aside, if people like me weren't taking part in competitions way back then, the younger generation of gymnasts would have thought, "what's the point in training when no Singaporean has ever made a final in any international competition before?" Whilst I didn't win a medal, I set an important precedent in making not one but two finals at that competition. So whilst I was relieved that I did get to go to that competition (there was every chance that they could have said no you can't go), come on - I was busting my ass out there bringing glory to Singapore. I wasn't exactly just lying on a nice beach drinking cocktails.
DeleteLol I forget that when athletes visit a tournament overseas it's not like they just show up and perform, they have to train before the tournament too. Oh really Sg wasn't that good back then? I suppose since they rapidly developed in the past 20-30 years. Nowadays I just take it for granted Sg does send athletes to major international tournaments. Great to know you were a trailblazer Alex!
DeleteBtw Alex sometimes I think you were very Western in thinking even as a teen in Sg pursuing gymnastics. In Singapore I kept hearing from the locals that Joseph Schooling is a huge exception in mindset because most people in Sg don't want to put effort to be athletes because it's too risky a career path. But in the West people really revere athletes and think they can always return a normal job even if they don't make the cut.
The amount of blood, sweat and tears I invested in my gymnastics in my childhood Amanda, oh it doesn't just happen because you have talent. There was an insane amount of hard work that went into it and I had to fight tooth and nail to convince the gymnastics association to send me to the events. The justification was always, it's a waste of money because we'll never make a final, we'll never win any medals so why even bother competing? But I was like we need to start somewhere, I'm unlikely to win a medal but I could make a final and that would be a good start.
DeleteWow and I thought Sg always sends athletes to competitions as a show of soft-power nowadays. It's not a waste of money to go, like you said you gotta start somewhere. And the best way to improve is to go up against people better than you to learn from them. Btw Alex one thing I admire about you is that you have the moxie to take risks. No risk no (high) rewards.
DeleteBtw I get what you mean by blood, sweat, and tears. I go to the gym to lift weights 5x a week just to maintain progress in gymnastics(I can't even do a pull-up so can't do bars yet).
DeleteOh you'll be amazed at the poor attitude they have - if they knew that finishing 8th out of 8th in a final (which is what happened in KL for me, in both finals I made) was the best case scenario, then the people in charge would say "how embarrassing, it's better not to attend at all than to have such a poor result!" For them it was about losing face by not being the best. I could have gone for a lot more competitions but I didn't get everything I wanted.
DeleteBars is not about brute strength, gymnastics is very much about following a formula. Allow me to appeal to the scientist in you: let's take something like Boyle's law : P_{1}V_{1}=P_{2}V_{2} it may look complex but someone else has already done the hard work, you just follow the formula and as long as you use the formula correctly, you can't go wrong. I also compare it to downloading a recipe off the internet and following the instructions to make a new dish. Take something complex like Kueh Lapis - I have no idea how it is made, but I can go download a recipe and follow it step by step by step and sure enough, I can make my own kueh lapis simply by following a recipe step by step.
Same thing applies in gymnastics - your coach will have a 'recipe' for you to follow for all skills, all you have to do is follow the recipe step by step and you'll end up with the right product at the end of the process, kinda like me making my own kueh lapis for the first time. It has nothing to do with brute strength, more about communicating the formulas and you're a scientist, you're good with formulas, you'll learn fast.
BTW, I have censored my latest post. I talked about stuff from work and I realized, too risky - I have stripped away all the details from the story which involved a client of the company, but if someone wanted to sabotage me, they could take that story, go to my employers and then claim, "see? Alex doesn't respect the privacy of his clients, he is talking all about it on his blog." Whilst it's a fascinating episode, I decided to censor it because it's not a risk worth taking just to get more hits on my blog.
Ugh I feel like Sg has that "save face" mindset about a lot of things, not just sports. Like in academia the scientists are encouraged to work on "hot topics" that are already popular instead of working on a totally brand new field nobody cares about yet. But if you want to be the first you have to endure ridicule in the beginning while the new theorem/invention still needs refinement.
DeleteYeah I have been trying to listen to my coach on the bars, but I really have no deltoid muscles to pull myself up the bar. Maybe if I was a toddler when I started I could, because kids have a higher strength to weight ratio than adults. In time I suppose. Even trying to lift myself up a bit on the bars would train the muscles I need.
Oh yeah totally, I am surprised how you get away with talking a lot about work on this blog without your boss being upset about it, considering it's a high paying job too. At least there's other things you can talk about freely, like languages, gymnastics, travel, etc.
The Singaporean mindset has been very much associated with the working class mindset I'm afraid - when your resources are tight, when you're a poor country, you only focus on your winners and you ignore the gymnast who may make a final at an international competition and finish 8th, even if nobody has ever achieved that before. But of course, Singapore is no longer poor - there are budgets, but the mindset has little to do with money, poverty or budgets but it has a lot more to do with having old people in charge who are fossils, dinosaurs from another era. Things are much, much better today, I'm happy to report.
DeleteI don't know what kind of skills your coach is trying to teach you on bars, but I love teaching my gymnasts the upstart (aka the kip) on bars because no amount of brute strength can save you if you don't follow the formula step by step as that's a swing skill (which involves no strength at all). Yes gymnastics will make you stronger but it goes a lot beyond just your strength, it's a highly technical and complex sport but not necessarily difficult. A bit like how making kueh lapis is probably a tedious 50 step process when you bake each layer one by one but if you simply follow the instructions, it isn't that hard really - the question is then, are you a good student who can memorize instructions?
Yeah I observed something that a client did - fascinating and disgusting by equal measure, I wrote about it and then decided, no that's ammunition for a hater to use against me. Maybe I'll share it with you in private instead Amanda.
Hmm, that is true we don't see a lot of young politicians in Singapore. But it's a dictatorship, it's not like France where you can have new parties form overnight(Macron's party), or a new member of Parliament who is only 23 years old. I will say for adopting technologies (that other people made) Sg is very progressive. They love digitizing forms and documents.
DeleteOh I just realized I was the only new person in a class of 10 adults on the bars day. That was just one particular day where I was the only person who had been there for less than a year. In other classes we did have other noobs so the coaches didn't forget to give me noob exercises.
Oh gosh if it is that disgusting then it really shouldn't be published on a blog. Like if this was someone unrelated to work like meeting a racist hotel staff while on holiday then go talk about it as much as you like, but not a client. You can message me privately on insta, but I might not reply immediately because I'm working on a project due tomorrow. I can't wait for school to be over...
Well let me speak in very, very general terms: someone I met through work behaved badly, but at least that wasn't directed at me personally. I chose to look the other way but it is a story and a half. Let's leave it at that, I don't wanna give my haters ammunition to use against me. You'll be amazed how many people still hate me because of my blog. Recently, this one person left me a whole string of hateful messages because s/he was shooting the messenger regarding what I said about university degrees. So yeah, I've got to be careful what I say and thus there's that self-censorship going on here.
DeleteOh well, at least there were no lasting consequences for you besides a slightly bad day. The internet can be a toxic place. The older I get the more I realize I don't need people to agree with me all the time that I have to waste my breath justifying my own opinion to anyone who happens to voice the opposite. But I suppose since you do write a little aggressive about university, people feel like you're attacking them personally when they read your blog.
DeleteHey Alex, I was thinking about the view of university degrees by social class. Since I grew up around rich people, nobody was impressed if you had a university degree, even if it was a PhD. Education was just taken for granted and treated like a hobby similar to whether someone likes tennis and plays it regularly to get good at it. I can see why, because in a lot of high paying occupations like upper management, business, or working in finance, many people don't have a masters/PhD, and some never even went to university like young Dave or my father. But among the working and middle classes, degrees are seen as the gateway to social mobility, and hence are seen as valuable and impressive. The irony is that once one does climb the social ladder to the upper class using a degree, like you have, they realize how pointless degrees really are since many successful people don't need/use their degree to make money.
DeleteSo I guess its sort of a mark of privilege that me and you can shit on university degrees. Who are the people sending you hatemail about universities? Are they working/middle class and use the social mobility argument? Another thing I notice is that a person who worked a white collar job can make a career change to another highly skilled white collar job without society demanding them to get a new bachelors' degree. I switched from quantum physics to robotics by studying on my own, and no employer questioned my credentials. But had I worked at McDonalds before going to robotics, I think employers would demand a new bachelors degree instead of believing the side projects listed on my resume. Anyway, the point I want to make is that classism exists in hiring, which makes a degree much more valuable for the working/middle classes as it reduces the effects of classism for them.
Your analysis is spot on. I will reply more on this later and you're super insightful Amanda. I've got to magically appear in my office for my first meeting of the day in 50 minutes now!
DeleteOK sorry for the late reply, it's midnight here and I actually survived a crazy long day in the office today but no complaints - I had been feeling ill for a week and this is the first day I felt anything close to normal so I was just grateful to be able to do normal things like work. I will write a full blog post addressing your point but allow me to offer you a response to what you have written. I agree with everything you said of course.
DeleteThe fact is not all degrees are equal - that's why in the UK we have league tables, out of 130 universities, the top 2 are Oxford & Cambridge and then the top 10 is considered very good and respectable and beyond really the top 40 or 50, it then becomes a race to the bottom. The top universities get the very best students and so it's not that the teaching at Oxford & Cambridge are somehow that fantastic, but simply that even if you put all the brightest students from all over the world together in the same place for a few years, they'll end up doing amazing stuff anyway because they're amongst the top 0.00001% in their cohort. Whereas for those at the bottom of the league tables, well it's a lost cause. Even the best teachers in the world can't fix someone who is in the bottom 20% of their cohort (and still somehow wants a degree).
But allow me to highlight another problem that you may not be aware of (given you're from a rich family and I'm from a piss poor family - different perspective): working class kids like me from piss poor families have clueless, uneducated, working class parents who know absolutely nothing about universities or degrees. My father for example, was totally ignorant of what degrees meant - he kinda knew it was good, he wanted his kids to get a degree, but he thought (and I am not joking there) the best university in the world was NUS in Singapore. Then I mentioned Oxford and Cambridge to him and he looked at me as if he had never heard of those before, that's how utterly ignorant he was. He then said that all his friends with bright kids sent their children to NUS and it is only those who kids are not bright enough for NUS who were forced to study abroad. I had to explain it to him like he was a mentally retarded kid, "there are many, many other universities in the world outside Singapore. Some are very good, some are very bad and some of the very good ones like Oxford and Cambridge are a lot better than NUS." Welcome to my world, do you have any idea what it was like as a young child realizing, "holy fuck I am a 10 year old kid but I'm already smarter than my parents? This is wrong because how the fuck are they going to help me with anything in life? I'm on my own!"
So we have a situation whereby working class kids are told my their ignorant parents that they should get a degree but are given little or no help/guidance as to how to get into a good course at a top university that will help boost them into the best paying jobs. In this case, these clueless kids are then easy prey for universities languishing at the bottom of the league table with their fancy advertising. You know in the UK, these crappy universities at the bottom of the league table advertise so aggressively, yet will Oxford or Cambridge ever advertise? No, never ever. Everyone who is well educated already knows about Oxford and Cambridge and as for the fucking retarded idiots like my father who has never heard of Oxford or Cambridge, then guess what? Idiots like that will never ever cross paths with a great university like that. You remember the case of that woman who went to that awful university and then sued it for being awful? https://limpehft.blogspot.com/2019/06/q-woman-who-sued-her-university-and-won.html?view=sidebar She chose to go to a university ranked 118th in the UK out of 130 universities, like hello? Why didn't you just go to the university ranked at the very very bottom of the league table then?
DeleteMy point is simple: many working class folks are completely ignorant and it's not like they have uncles, aunties, neighbours or family friends who are highly educated and can give good advice. The only really well educated person my father knew was our GP Dr Quek because, well he was a doctor. Did my father go see Dr Quek when he had trouble parenting his children? No, Dr Quek was a busy man, we only saw him when we got sick. No, my father was stupid - like he was beyond fucking stupid it was pathetic, like I stopped mocking him and started feeling sorry for him when I realized just how stupid he was. I was lucky enough to be able to seek help and advice from other sources but not everyone was as a) resource and b) lucky as me to be able to know where to find help and for those people whom I had asked for help to say, "yeah I'll help you."
So for these working class people with crap degrees, their parents think "my child is doing better than me, I'm not a graduate but my child is - so surely that's an improvement, right?" That logic falls apart when that child of your fails to find a decent job with that degree and ends up working in a dead end job, earning as little or less than their parents. This whole ticket to social mobility concept sure didn't work out for them but they only have themselves to blame because they didn't read the rules, they didn't get the right information about how it worked. Rich kids from privileged families have parents who are probably able to either give them that good advice (or procure it from a family friend) but I roll my eyes when I think about my father's friends, sorry but they're all just as fucking retarded as he is - I was never ever going to get any help from that lot. So these poor working class kids are not so much doomed to failure from the start, but holy fuck, I sure know what it is like to have the odds stacked against you. And no, life is not fair - these working class kids have it real tough, I know that, that's the kind of crap I had to grow up with.
So for them to get defensive when someone tells them, "no no no you've got a degree that's not going to help you", I'm not helping them. I can't undo the damage, I can't help them get a better degree, I can't improve their career prospects. That's the same as going up to a fat person and pointing out to them, "gosh you're really morbidly obese." Pointing out the obvious doesn't help solve the problem or improve the situation, so people often shoot the messenger for being insensitive or unkind even if the message is something that's so freaking obvious.
DeleteSomeone in the office said out aloud today, "I've put on so much weight this year none of my clothes fit me anymore!" You know what I did? I said nothing, I ignored that comment and pretended I didn't hear it. Cos even if I agreed with him and said, "oh yeah, you look really fat. I've been working here for 4 and a half months and I can see the different between how you looked in summer and now." No, I think that would be considered insensitive and unkind, so I said nothing.
But if pointing out some degrees are not going to serve you well in the working world will trigger their 'shoot the messenger' response, then I can also point out that the hate mail I get is often in broken English and Singlish. And it's not like, "Alex, I think you're quite unfair on working class students who are facing so many challenges through no fault of their own, we need to evaluate what they have gone through and give them more credit for what they have achieved." Nope, it's more like "fuck you, eat shit and die motherfucker". And the latest one realized I have a nephew, so it was more like "I hope you nephew fails all his exams and then gets his head chopped off my a classmate." (Referencing a 2021 beheading incident in a Singaporean school.) This person knew s/he couldn't win an argument with me in the conventional way using logic, so s/he preferred to just upset me by saying all the really horrible things s/he wanted to happen to my nephew (mostly resulting in his death) - it all just screamed Singapore HDB working class mindset through and though.
Don't get me wrong, it doesn't bother me. I just read all that hatred and I think, sigh, you realize I'm going to reach the conclusion that you're the kind of person who is so uneducated you don't know how to use logic and reasoning to persuade people to see your point of view - all you can do is resort to violence, threats and intimidation. That's just really sad. I wrote a piece last year about how it takes an awfully long time to win someone's respect (tell me about it, 4.5 months into the new job, I'm still on my very best behaviour and being so careful I even censor my own blog now) but it takes 2 seconds to intimate someone with the threat of violence. People with good social skills with know how to win people over and earn their trust & respect but these haters I deal with, sigh, not only are they uneducated and speak bad English (that's two separate issues there already), but they clearly have zero social skills. So that's three major problems, three big reasons why they're so fucked up. How do I even begin to engage people like that? The answer: you don't. You can't. You walk away.
DeleteOh wow I hope today wasn't too rough. Get well soon. I've also had a rough 3 days at work that I had to take a 5 hour nap in the middle of the day yesterday. Still not back to normal, thank god my boss accepts "sore from gymnastics training" as an excuse not to come in to the office.
DeleteAhh, so it seems the working class parents are suffering from equating correlation to causation. They assume that because rich and successful people have degrees, then one needs a degree to be rich and successful. As for Oxbridge and "high ranked universities", I was thinking that Oxbridge is more successful than the other universities mainly because they are better funded. One can be a genius scientist at a lower ranked league table university, but if they don't have enough funding to pay for the best equipment/materials/manpower, then they simply won't produce quality research better than an average scientist at Oxbridge who has millions more pounds more to spend.
But anyway, back to your point about working class parents. Jeezus that must have killed all your respect for authority when as a 10 year old you realized you were smarter than your parents. But also you're right that the millions of people working a dead end job after gaining a degree means that a degree is not a fool-proof ticket to social mobility. Also, let me share with you the story of this person, let's call him "Dylan", that I met at a meetup for people in their 20s a couple days ago.
As a group we were talking about how pointless GPA is, and Dylan mentioned his undergrad GPA was a C average, but he still has a job. Not just any job, he works as a software engineer in finance. Furthermore, he is in his mid-20s and just bought a house a few months ago that is only half an hour from downtown(where his office is). But later Dylan revealed that his father worked as a banker in New York city, where he grew up. Everything made sense now, there is no way a working class or even middle class kid could easily land a job in finance with that GPA. I don't think his banker father explicitly used his connections to get this guy a job, but he probably gave him all the advice he needed to write his resume, excel in the interview, and maybe even used his connections to get a good banking internship in New York before graduation such that the final GPA didn't matter. Those are the kinds of advice one doesn't learn in university that actually helps to land the job. A working/middle class kid wouldn't have the same advantage unless they were amazing at networking outside of school. I mean I myself feel like asking Dylan how to break into finance and whether his workplace is taking interns.
I am working from home today so I am taking it a bit easier. I still got a fever in the middle of the night which is frustrating, I would wake up in the middle of the night shivering, then I would take some medicine to break the fever and then I would wake up again drenched in sweat once the medicine has kicked in. Yucks. It is pretty disgusting. I threw my sweat drenched T-shirt on the toilet floor and when I picked it up this morning it was still wet. Yucky yucky. But fingers crossed, I'm so much better than earlier this week. But a 5-hour day time nap? LOL, I am lucky if I get a 30 mins nap at work and even then I think I'm pushing it!
DeleteWell the working class are often paid by the hour or day - think about the way wages for a shift at McDonald's or Starbucks is calculated, the people going in there are working for an hourly rate: the more hours they work, the more they get paid. Likewise, for a taxi driver: the more passengers you pick up, the more trips you drive, the more you get paid. There's a very straightforward correlation between work harder = earn more at that end of the food chain.
Whereas at my end of the food chain, it's more a question of work smarter, earn more. Now I have spent this morning training one of our sales agents who is a younger lady, I have been holding her hand and I like working with her. I think women are better in sales than men because they often avoid a lot of the terrible social skills faux pas that men make. Maybe that's me being presumptuous but she had been working so hard but often barking up the wrong tree by pitching the wrong kind of companies and not yielding the sales she needs to pay the bills - I didn't want her to think, finance is for men, I'll go sell luxury handbags to rich women instead. I want to help her focus on working smart and because in my industry, you need to work smart. Simply working your butt off doesn't yield more income the way a Starbucks worker can earn more by picking up more shifts.
The key thing though about Oxbridge is that they are dependent on the students being bright. Let's say you send a complete idiot like my father to Oxford university on scholarship. Would they cure his stupidity? No, the best doctors in the world haven't found a cure for stupidity yet. Whilst the funding is important to create an environment where you can let the best and the brightest prove themselves, let's put it this way: if I somehow manage to bribe everyone to get my nephew into an undergrad course in economics at Oxford, would they be able to turn him into an expert on the subject? Hell no, I would count the days before he got kicked out once they realize his ability in the subject and there wouldn't be enough money in the world to pay enough bribes to everyone to get him to graduate.
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DeleteRealizing that your parents are total idiots is a double edged sword - on one hand, I look at kids who get so much help from their parents and feel desperately jealous. On the other hand, there's a part of me that thought, "well I am so crazy lucky I didn't end up stupid like my parents." When I was younger, I was convinced that they had adopted me after they had two girls because they desperately needed a son and hence I was spared their DNA. But then again, neither of my sisters are stupid; sure they have their personal flaws but they're not stupid in the way my parents are so I guess your IQ is completely random. Thus I got lucky in that department and that's one thing I shouldn't take for granted. But stupid people are also woefully unaware of how stupid they are, that's another blessing for them but it does lead to the Dunning Kruger effect.
DeleteI'll spare you the whole story but my mother said something incredibly stupid on the Skype call a few weeks ago and my sister and I rolled our eyes when we both realized how stupid my mother was - I was like, okay do you want me to spell it out to you, "mum you're an uneducated idiot who says stupid shit like that to announce to the world how stupid you are, you may as well have the word IDIOT tattooed on your forehead." Or I could let it go, so I chose to let it go. But in so doing, my mum remained blissfully unaware that she's a complete retard moron idiot. Yes I know my mother's IQ is so low she should be classed as mentally retarded and she must have one of the lowest IQs in Singapore today I swear - she should be treated as mentally disabled. But telling her that wouldn't cure her stupidity, so we just let her get away with stupid shit all the time.
How can someone like that be my mother when my IQ is ridiculously high and hers is ridiculously low? It doesn't make any sense. It's like divine power looked at me and said, "holy fuck, this guy is gay, Asian, working class, autistic and his parents are complete morons; on top of that, he's gonna lose all his hair in his 30s, it's so unfair to have all the odds stacked against him - I'll give him some bonus powers in the IQ department to make up for all the other shit in his life."
But yes, do go talk to Dylan and get some good advice from him please!
Speaking of inheriting your parents' IQ, I have seen so many examples of very bright parents having hopelessly stupid kids - some of these range from low IQ dumb kids who flunk everything at school to totally "there are so many learning disabilities going on here and thus we have to manage your expectations about what kind of life your kid is going to have, okay?" So if high IQ parents can have very low IQ kids, why can't the reverse be true then? IQ is just part of the grand genetic lottery game that every human being has to play.
DeleteOh wow Alex that looks like a terrible illness. Do you have sick leave days left or is something very urgent at work you have to come in? Lol I don't get paid as much as you so another perk I have is unlimited naps provided I get things done.
DeleteSometimes I forget not everyone has smart parents. Because if you grow up wealthy then most likely your parents are successful and have some above average intelligence. Now I know why the phrase "what do your parents do?" is so offensive to anyone but the upper class.
Oh it's a stereotype women are more empathetic and better at sales. It's because in the past empathetic jobs were the only option for women, so there was nothing else to focus energy training. As a woman it does frustrate me when I see seemingly bright young women devote their lives to nonprofits making peanuts helping other people instead of making millions in the corporate world and helping themselves. But a lot of times women aren't told they're allowed to be selfish, unless they grew up wealthy. My dad would certainly have never approved of me working for a nonprofit making peanuts. He wants everyone in his family to be rich and powerful, including the girls. My sister struggled really hard with this because she isn't terribly bright and does conform more with society telling "girly" women they should sacrifice their happiness for others.
Hahaha it's like God when creating Alex the character thought "jeez why did I have to add in the baldness? He might as well have high IQ to figure out a way around it." IQ is certainly random, except when alcohol is involved. It is fortunate Sg doesn't suffer from high rates of alcoholism or drug use because fetal alcohol syndrome does cause learning disabilities, and drugs create hostile neighborhoods. But nevertheless, IQ is random, but even if one is a genius they won't get as far as someone who is merely above average but has access to more opportunities.
Btw Alex have you seen the 2005 movie "Match Point" by Woody Allen? It was set in London and has a mostly British cast (aside from Scarlett Johansson). Anyway, the main character narrates in the opening scene "I'd rather be lucky than good." That's because he was a working class boy who was spotted by some tennis coach and ended up going professional, before retiring early with barely any winnings. At the start of the movie he works as a tennis coach and somehow gets incredibly lucky in being taken to the opera by a wealthy client, where he meets the wealthy client's sister and ends up marrying her. His new father-in-law even gives him a job at an investment bank, and even hands him promotions to keep his daughter happy. Unfortunately the main character falls in love with a working class struggling actress, but he cannot divorce his wife or else his father in law will surely fire him and blacklist him from the industry, and he has to choose whether he would prefer a comfortable living, or love. Anyway I thought it was a great movie about class dynamics similar to the Talented Mr. Ripley. But like you said there are kids who are much less smarter than their parents, to the point of finding it difficult to support themselves without any kind of parental help. Likewise the opposite is true, where the children raise themselves and even look after their parents. Would you say your sisters raised you rather than your mother and father? It seems like you still have a good relationship with them into adulthood.
DeleteBtw Alex, since you mentioned being a nerd in high school and blossoming into classy smooth-talker in adulthood, how did you feel when you met the people you used to be again? When I went to that meetup on Tuesday, I was surprised how many nerds there were. Everyone was a guy(besides me), and either a computer science or engineering major. Aside from Dylan who worked in finance, none of them even wanted to initiate any conversation, but if I asked them about themselves they would talk, but not ask me anything back. Like I used to have crushes on the nerdy type of guys growing up, since I thought they were most likely to have things in common with myself. But after being forced to gain some social skills I kinda don't want to hang out with these people anymore because they don't follow the same rules of conversation I was forced to learn in adulthood. I sorta prefer hanging out with the less nerdy types I meet at my gymnastics class. So, how did your social life change after finishing NS and moving to London? I know it shocks you now when people have bad social skills, but how did it shock you back then just coming out of NS? It definitely shocks me I don't even want to be around the crowd I used to be, and prefer the more athlete types since I definitely wasn't an athlete growing up.
Oh Amanda, I'm in Europe not America. Our culture is very, very, very different when it comes to working hours/sick days. In America, you work as hard as the Asians whereas us Europeans, we're on the other extremes. Nobody counts my sick days and I can take as many as I want on the basis of trust. And I am seriously much better already, I am keen to get back to work and get stuff done after having been too sick to work previously. I also work far less hours a week - the thing is like, okay if there's urgent matters to attend to, I'll keep working till its done. But if I am working from home, then I'm actually taking it pretty easy. Like I can be chilling doing gymnastics, but as long as I come up with a good idea, that's still time well spent - ie. work smart, not work hard. If I can come up with good ideas whilst doing gymnastics, cooking or even sleeping, then that's productive time well spent. Of course, once I get a good idea, then I have to spend time carrying it out and so sometimes, that just needs to be productive time spent sitting down at the computer etc.
DeleteI truly believe that women are genuinely suited to sales jobs but men dominate the industry so they have managed to get away with poor social skills. Let me give you an example: my boss walked into a meeting with a client Mr Man, he looked at Mr Man and realized he was a) white b) British and first question he asked was, "did you watch the match last night?" Turns out Mr Man did and they spent a while bonding as they were talking about football. They managed to establish rapport over football because Mr Man had a similar background as my boss.
But what if the next client is Ms Wanita from Indonesia. If he asked her, did you watch the match last night? The response would be, are you talking about football? No because I am not interested in football. This is why I am put in a position to deal almost exclusively with international clients now because my British colleagues can get away with being lazy and bonding over football whereas I have to do far more innovative things with social skills and knowledge of foreign countries to establish rapport with clients from different parts of the world. I had to hide my horror recently when someone asked at a meeting if there is a big Muslim population in South Africa and I wanted to scream, "that's what Google is for! Quietly take out your phone, google it and don't expose your ignorance!!!" It's not just a geography fail - it's a social skills fail as well, double whammy.
Not only is my mother stupid, her behaviour is highly irrational and nothing short of crazy at times - she doesn't need any alcohol to make her act crazy, she does that already.
And yes my sisters definitely did a lot of parenting when I was young - I am the youngest child so they stepped in and took care of me whilst my parents couldn't be less interested in me. So of course, I have acknowledged this on my blog many times before, whilst they did make one big mistake (in not being sympathetic to me when I had a hard time in the army, only because all the boys chasing them at university told them big lies and tall tales about how fun army was to make them come across as macho, brave heroic soldiers worth dating), they did so many other things right. So it's kinda like me at my new job, yeah I had one big mistake so far but every day, I am delivering something amazing to my bosses and that's why I'm there. Now imagine if I did one big mistake everyday, that'll be a different story.
DeleteAs for meeting up with people I used to know, gosh, I've done little of that. Remember, I barely meet anyone from my schooldays in Singapore apart from a tiny number who have really made the effort to keep in touch with me over the years. Those people know me well and I have no problems with them - as for others I've not seen or chatted to in decades, I don't even bother. I do think that the transformation of my social skills was a slow but gradual process that started when I was like 17 and finished in my mid 30s - in fact it is still work in progress. I will give you an example - I had one difficult colleague when I first started this job and I took the very practical approach: this person is there whether I like them or not, so I am gonna get this person to like me (how I feel about them is irrelevant). This week, that person actually said out aloud to my clients, "you'll enjoy dealing with us because Alex is such a pleasure to work with, I can't ask for a more reliable, nicer colleague!" I still don't like this person much but job done, that person likes me. When did I become this cold and calculating? I think this is still work in progress.
Oh yeah America is terrible when it comes to worker's rights. We are the only developed country without government required sick leave, or even universal healthcare. Yeah I've taken the view that sometimes its more worth it to take care of my health instead of forcing myself to work, as the best ideas don't come when I'm tired/sick. It's good your employer doesn't monitor your sick days.
DeleteHmm, I suppose men dominate your type of sales because the clients are usually other rich men. My dad had this skill where he could chat up almost any stranger with any topic that he would find interesting to them, nevermind if he even liked the topic. I saw him use it so many times when he'd meet my friends' parents at school events, or even when we'd meet other tourists on vacation at the hotel we were staying at. I think women can develop the same skill, but they would have to work harder to have a larger knowledge bank if the clients they work with are very different from them.
I have no idea how your mother managed to hold down a job for most of her life, but then again its not like she was promoted much in her career.
Gosh you're right, I get varying stories from men about their NS depending on their intentions. Only if I was really close to the guy would they tell me it was absolute hell. It's nice to have some family you can depend on in adulthood. Also your sisters are pretty smart too! The kids in your family really hit the genetic lottery considering the gene pool it came from.
Oh I didn't mean talking to people who used to know you when you didn't have good social skills, but I suppose there is not much of a point. You were a different person then, and also there's so much other new people to meet. My specific question was if you met a total stranger now who is a SWOT, would you try to befriend them because that's how you used to be like? But I guess the answer I can glean from previous blogposts is no, since you mentioned meeting Ahmed, an awkward guy in banking, who you just couldn't stand. I used to hang out with the nerds, but after Tuesday I don't feel like it anymore, especially because being less of a SWOT has opened up other people to talk to with better social skills.
Lol there's nothing wrong with being a little Machiavellian. Put it this way, how would being honest help you/advance your position? You not liking a colleague is nothing you can control, the best you can do is be nice to them regardless. It's not like you're secretly sabotaging them, then that's what I call fake. Many philosophers like to debate what constitutes "guilt", and one school of thought argues even a guilty thought makes one guilty, but others argue that a thought is not a crime, only actions are.
Your father would have probably learnt how to feign interest with someone like my boss, so he would probably respond to that question, "ah I was stuck in a meeting last night and missed the match, tell me who was playing?" He would then allow me boss to retell every detail of the match and feign interest, even if he knew nothing about the teams playing but at least that especially some kind of rapport even though it is really superficial. With my boss I'm like, gay men don't do football, go talk to (insert name here) about football not me. But actually it still doesn't stop him from talking about football with me sometimes and I don't indulge him, I'll change the topic and talk about his kids instead.
DeleteMy mother worked as a primary school teacher till retirement, mostly dealing with primary one and two kids, ie. the youngest ones so she doesn't have to deal with anything more complex than "what is 5 + 7 = ?" She was a terrible teacher and a bully, if a child doesn't know the answer to that question, she would scream WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID and the class would be terrified of her. But now I look back and think, where do I begin with how messed up this whole situation is? My mother's IQ is so low she is borderline mentally retarded but she's not quite there yet and somehow she got through the system to become a primary school teacher (the rules were a LOT more relaxed in the 1950s when she got qualified - it was a different world then you have to remember). So we put an incredibly low IQ woman in charge of the education of young students in a school and she turns into a bully, a monster who enjoys the feeling of "I am smarter than you! I can work out what is 5 + 7 and you cannot!" And one has to take a step back and say hold on hold on this is so fucked up because you're comparing yourself to like a 6 year old child just to boost your ego? How wrong is that? How about comparing yourself to one of your peers (or your own son for that matter)? It was horrific that my mother was even allowed to work as a teacher given how messed up she was in her head but such was the Singaporean system for you - they weren't allowed to get rid of dead wood.
Yes we have established that my mother was a fucking monster when it came to being a teacher, but the question is then: where are the checks & balances to punish and deal with the fucking monsters in the system who are so terrible they shouldn't just be sacked but either jailed or (in my mother's case) put in a mental institution for their crazy long list of mental health issues? No, the system merely turned a blind eye to everything and older teachers were allowed to be utter failures in the classroom and guess what? The same shit is still happening today with my nephew and that's why education should be privatized: at least allow rich parents to send their kids to school who will uphold some standards when it comes to staff who perform very badly at their job. I can tell you that the current Singaporean system is horrifically poor at dealing with the dead wood in the system and I feel sorry for the working class Singaporeans who have no choice but to engage the system as they can't afford to go private.
DeleteAs for talking to SWOTs, oh you're gonna hate my answer: my answer is very calculative. It's always "what can I get out of this person?" If it is in a professional context (like at a business conference), I would work out if they would be a useful contact to make. If it is at the gym, I would try to work out if they might be fun training with (like if they happen to speak another language that I could use as a language partner). But the SWOT factor doesn't bother me per se, it is more an issue of 'what can you do for me? do you have something I want?' Yes it is very calculative.
Hey Alex, this may be a repeat post because there was something wrong with Blogger earlier, please ignore if it is the case.
DeleteOh my gosh you're right my Dad is amazing at feigning interest. It's all about the tone of voice, eye contact, and throw in a smile too. But he is generally just really knowledgeable about things because he is a huge history buff, and loves to read the news. Like with football I know he doesn't like football, but it is always in the news in Asia because a huge portion of the fanbase of British teams are there (lots of Arsenal/Man United fans in Sg too). But this ties into your point about being calculative. The upper class are very good at making business contacts to make their lives easier, its not just useful but essential really. You never know when you need a new client, contractor, or a new job. Hell you always need more of the first two, and the last one can help you negotiate raises/promotions faster. I mean you did mention you didn't even apply for your current job, and you were already connected with your current boss on LinkedIn before you quit your old job. I remember the time I told my Dad my new classmate was the son of a high ranking official at the Malaysian embassy, and he said "oh what's his name? Tell me more about him. I never know when I need to do business with the Malaysian embassy." Anyway, these are just the behaviors the upper class use to stay upper class. Likewise the total opposite, which is how your mother behaves, keeps her from climbing the social ladder. I doubt she would even survive 1 day working as an admin staff at your workplace, not polite enough.
I was thinking, if I tell a middle class or working class person I would like to speak to Dylan to help me get a job in finance, they would either think (a) it won't work, don't bother trying, or (b) "that's so calculative/manipulative/un-meritocratic! Apply for the job just like everyone else!". You even thought you were being calculating about the SWOT situation haha. I suppose its not easy for a working class/middle class person to network with a successful person who is most likely upper class, because a lot of upper class people are snobby. But me giving up this connection isn't going to make the overall system any fairer. And my peers who also work at the same university can also go out and network, they just don't bother to. It's probably because their parents tell them to focus on their grades instead of networking, whilst my Dad is networking left and right and scolds me for not doing that.
As for private schools, I heard the Sg government banned that because they wanted to maintain social mobility among the local population. The foreign population they don't mind allowing to attend private schools because it creates high paying jobs, and the expat children hardly stay long term into adulthood. So I knew very rich kids at my university in Sg who attended public school just like everyone else. But the end result is that there is a more level playing field for poor kids to get into NUS/NTU and not end up at SIM. What is the situation with the UK and private schools? I suppose its not nearly as bad as the US because Oxbridge is no more expensive than a university ranked last in the league table. In the US one can't just be bright, they have to be rich and most likely attended a private school to attend Harvard. Therefore we have a lot of class segregation at universities here compared to Sg or the UK.
It is not hard to feign interest in football. So let's imagine if someone mentioned an imaginary club that doesn't exist called "Amanda City United" aka ACU. I would ask question like, who is the manager at ACU? Where is their home ground? Who is their star player? Who is their current manager and how long has he been there? Do you think he is a good manager compared to their previous one? Why do you think people like ACU? What do you think of their football kit? Each time you give me an answer I would say, "that's interesting, tell me more." I don't do that with my boss because a) I am already employed, I passed the interview already. b) I have too much work to do for him than to waste time talking about football with him and he knows that. Thus I skip the bullshit with him and get on with real work.
DeleteAs for asking Dylan for a job, most people react poorly to that because of the simple reason that you're relying on your social skills to try to get an advantage and a foot in the door rather than your academic record (or work experience). As discussed, we know that most people have really terrible social skills so when they see someone like you Amanda who has excellent social skills using them to your advantage, they scream, "hey that's not fair! How dare you use your social skills to gain some kind of advantage when us SWOTS are totally useless in that department?" Your reaction should be to tell them that all is fair in love and war, that you shouldn't be expected to function like a SWOT with no social skills just because they have no social skills when you have heaps of charm oozing out of every pore in your body. They are simply jealous that you have a massive advantage.
I'm afraid nobody can solve the social mobility problem because of the nature of IQ, it's too random and it is still the biggest factor whether you like it or not. Teachers, schools, the government can't do much when given a kid with insufficient IQ to begin with. The situation in the UK is the same: my boss sends all his kids to bloody expensive private schools to buy them the best education money can get in the UK whilst the poor kids are going into terrible, poorly funded government schools where the teachers get stabbed in the classroom by their students. The rich get richer whilst the poor rot in poverty hell - but would you expect any less?
And in any case, even if you force rich kids in Singapore to attend government schools, guess what? The playing field is still far from level because the rich kids will have parents who will get them the best private tuition money can buy - they will through an insane amount of money to hire the best experts to make sure their children will get the kind of individual 1-on-1 attention they will never ever get in the classroom. Private tuition is such big business in Singapore, so if the government thinks that they have leveled the playing field, they are fucking joking. As I tutored my nephew through his A level economics, I did point out that his working class classmates who can't afford quality private tuition are totally doomed from the start as they are simply not getting the help they needed and the class sizes are just too massive for the teacher to help all the weaker students.
DeleteI think the hard part is not asking more questions, its reacting to the answers. There's so many layers to social skills, you can't just ask, you also have to react and ask more questions or provide responding statements. There's also mirroring, which is when one riffs a little on something the other just said or something specific to that other person to demonstrate you liked what they said and understood it. Like what you just did calling the hypothetical football club "Amanda City United" haha. I'm not great at this, riffing on personal things or even responding to when someone else says something personal is difficult for me. But I told myself if I don't go out and talk to people I'm likely gonna get worse at it due to lack of practice. Talking to people is almost like a sport similar to gymnastics or football.
DeleteDo you think its just a lack of social skills though? Though one could say that failing to understand that what decides whether you get a job is a human and not a computer algorithm is a sign of bad social skills itself. Specifically, I would describe it as a failure to see things from the other person's point of view. Instead of thinking "I should get the job because I'm qualified", one should ask "how does the recruiter view me compared to the 999 other resumes on their desk, purely based on my 1 page job application alone?" I will say that one doesn't move up in the world without good social skills, mostly because its really easy to be misunderstood. You can be a brilliant SWOT but one wrong word can change the entire meaning of a sentence turning it into gibberish and making you look stupid. But I do think there is a class element to it. Working and middle class people are not usually paid to be charming, unless you're a waiter/salesperson. But even when a working class waiter/salesperson is charming, they aren't paid much extra for it.
I don't think schools are meant to fix IQ, its more that if you are a bright working class person with high IQ, then this person deserves to have just as many opportunities as a rich person with high or low IQ. Yeah the UK seems similar to the US when it comes to public/private schooling. Sometimes I forget that even in developed countries there are areas with high crime. In Sg crime is at least less of an issue.
I was going to mention that private tuition is a form of "Private school Lite", but there simply aren't enough hours of a day for private tuition to be sizable compared to the hours spent at regular school. But it is still an advantage to have 1 on 1 teaching, though less of an advantage than private school. And it shows in NUS/NTU when it isn't all rich kids.
I think you can see the difference in the quality of service you get in a country like America where they earn their tips by being super nice to the customer and a country like the UK, where they get very little tips and the service sucks. Anyway, yeah schools can't fix a problem that's essentially determined by this big game we call the genetic lottery. Likewise, in an ideal world, all students would be taught 1-on-1 by a teacher who can give them individual attention and deliver bespoke lessons specifically catering for the individual student - but in the real world, we have a compromise where we make the best of a bad situation. So it's not like the students are learning nothing in a big class full of students, they're learning a bit, like 55% but to deal with the other 45% they are simply not able to grasp (and the teacher has no time to go through with the individual student), that's when private tuition plays a big part in being able to plug that gap and turn that 45% into nearly 0%, so the student can understand practically everything s/he needs to know to ace that part of the exam. You don't need a Rolls Royce to drive from A to B, sometimes a very modest Ford can do the same job and get you there - the journey wouldn't be as luxurious but you'll still get there in the end.
DeleteAnd if I may be blunt at the cost of being cruel, simply getting into NUS/NTU for an undegrad course isn't exactly setting the bar very high at all in this context.
DeleteLol I was sent to private tuition even though I wasn't doing badly in school. That was just my parents overkilling investing into education. But yeah when one has near unlimited resources giving the right education is easy. What is far more difficult for governments is to educate people on a shoestring budget.
DeleteI know NUS/NTU isn't a very high bar, but for a poor kid in Sg who doesn't have the money to go abroad, there is at least no university above NUS/NTU in Singapore. So let's just say in Sg there isn't a huge difference in educational resources at the university level for a poor student vs a rich student. In America there is a huge difference between a private university like Harvard with a 1:7 instructor to student ratio, compared to state universities with a ratio of 1:17. And that doesn't include other factors like facilities or financial aid.
A lot of rich kids get sent to private tuition even though they aren't doing poorly at school - it's like a rich housewife going for an expensive facial treatment at the exclusive health spa despite having excellent skin. Why? Because it's how rich people spend their money on themselves. The tuition you got wasn't because you needed it but because your parents could afford it. If your parents could spend their wealth in giving you an advantage, then why not? It only gets pointless if you're already getting straight As and you could have spent that time doing something else like learning a new sport or language that you would enjoy a lot more. Oh the decisions rich people make are so different from those that the poor have to make when they just don't have enough money for everything they need.
DeleteAnyway, the latest post is ready and will be uploaded tomorrow - it is mostly inspired by something you wrote in the comments sections to a big thank you to you Amanda!
I suppose when someone's life is so financially secure then they tend to put money towards things that make them happy rather than things that are supposed to produce a practical effect. Also, sometimes I think rich parents don't pick private school necessarily for the education quality per se, but because private schools tend to treat parents like VIP hotel guests compared to public schools. I guess they are just used to being treated like a paying customer in all aspects of life, and don't want a "take it or leave it" experience in a public school system.
DeleteCool, looking forward to it. I really hope nobody sends you more hatemail. I do think that university degrees can be useful, but in a highly situational way. They're not a golden lottery ticket to life.
Well I think it is wrong to treat rich people like a monolithic entity - the wealth may affect different people in different ways. In Asian families, they may decide to use that money to buy the very best education money can get for their kids. In the West, the attitude may be, "don't worry too much about school stuff, when you're old enough, daddy can use his connections to get you in the door with some prestigious company even if you don't have the academic qualifications and we can use nepotism to overcome any problems until you accumulate enough work experience in an area that you really enjoy." But of course, for poor people that option simply doesn't exist at all - they have little choice but to hope to do well in the public school system if they want a better life.
DeleteI'm still making final tweaks and editing it but akan datang, it will be published soon.
Your two Hong Kong friends have build up good values in you and you have already return their kindness by spreading them to alot of people in your blog. This can be shown in the comment session. Act of kindness is best acknowledge by spreading out to others. That is why I do enjoy reading your blog, your stories and the exchanges of views in the comment session. Keep up the good work. 💪
ReplyDeleteYes, I was very lucky to have met such kind people. Thank you for your support.
DeleteHelping others help ourselves. Don't you agree?
ReplyDeleteYes indeed, that's right.
DeleteHi, I read your blog periodically and find it very interesting and insightful. I think your perspective is definitely wider compared to a typical singaporean.
ReplyDeleteSince you are kind enough to offer a listening ear. I do have a complex issue that I would like to share.
I guess everyone has 99 problems and it’s hard to distill or describe what is wrong.
I am a 42 yo sole breadwinner of my family working a government job while my husband takes care of my autistic son.
While the job is shit, it pays a decent living which pays the bills and allows us to save and invest.
The root cause of my worries is having enough to secure my son’s future by way of a special needs trust funds.
I can’t tell the trajectory of his condition (between mild to moderate currently). He’s a bright 8 yo with unique and creative ideas (which don’t exactly fit in Singapore).
I can’t tell if the best thing to do is to take a risk overseas where he won’t be a weirdo for life or give him a trust so that he doesn’t need to work for a living.
My husband and I will also need to think of our retirement also we are ok with picking cardboard if needed.
My family is working class, and having gone through childhood truama, I have my insecurities about maintaining or improving my family’s lot in life. In many ways, I feel like a circus elephant chained to myself.
Time passes fast and in the blink my son will be an autistic adult, I would have passed my peak earning capabilities and I may not have a solution.
The best case scenario I can think of is to save as much as I can to build 2 pots. A pot in cpf for retirement, a pot in investments to give enough dividends for my son to live on.
Also on a side note, the special needs trust fund scheme in Singapore is a joke. It pays 0.5% interest.
Thanks for reading and apologies for the splintered train of thoughts.
Hello Mrs Me and welcome to my blog. You're amongst friends here, welcome. As an autistic person with Asperger syndrome, allow me to share the following points with you.
Delete1. I was the most awkward, autistic kid you could have possibly met back in the day. I had no social skills but then again, it doesn't mean I'm stupid per se. A lot of people equate autism with stupidity and they're wrong. My nephew (who is also autistic) certainly isn't stupid but his social skills are poor. The two issues are separate: you can get autistic people with high IQ and autistic people with low IQ. Now I've never met you nor your son, but if you're telling me that your son is bright with unique & creative ideas, then yeah he sounds just like me.
2. Thus bright autistic people can use their intelligence, their high IQ to figure out how to adapt to their surroundings and adapt to the world around them. I gain a lot of inspiration from watching the Paralympics - the classic example I give is when I see blind skiers who have little or no vision at all flying down the side of a mountain at crazy speeds. They use their other senses to compensate for the fact that they can't see and they adapt - contrast this to the able-bodied people who complain "this is too difficult! I don't want to do this!" Ironically, I'm working in a role today in investment banking that is 90% social skills because I'm client-facing. Look up blind skiers at the Paralympics and that's the equivalent of what an autistic person like me is doing in my job today.
3. The key thing you need to do is to support your son and realize that him learning to adapt to the world around him is like a blind person learning how to ski without actually seeing much or anything at all. It can be done, but it is bloody difficult and you should be supportive without underestimating the size of the challenge. I am not here to feel sorry for myself but sometimes I just wanna scream, "does anyone realize I'm like a disabled person who has adapted to the world around me and nobody has noticed just how hard it is for me to do what I do?" But no, I'm an adult and I don't need that validation, the fact that people at work don't realize how severely autistic I am means that I have adapted amazing well, just like the way you may be watching the Paralympics and not realize that the skier flying down the slope is actually totally blind.
4. I don't think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence actually. The only safety net is that if your son is totally disabled (like he can't even function at all), then yeah the welfare state here is a lot more generous than Singapore but I don't think your son is that disabled by the sounds of it. So whether your son is in Singapore or in a country like the UK, guess what? He still faces the very same challenges of having to adapt to the world around him.
5. Ironically, (this is going to be controversial and may offend some people) I think your son might be better off in Singapore for a simple reason: Singaporeans tend to have very poor social skills compared to their counterparts in the West. So if he is a socially awkward kid with decent grades at school, he would be just like me back in the day - it wouldn't seem like such an unusual situation. But in the West, the society here is different and we place a lot more emphasis on social skills in the West. A socially inept kid with poor social skills is far more likely to stand out and have a much harder time here than in Singapore.
Delete6. May I point out that I came from a working class family, I have autistic parents, my father doesn't even speak English and I'm autistic as well - yet I managed to help myself along the way (and experienced a lot of kindness from so many awesome, kind, lovely people along the way as well). The fact is, I know you love your son but he has to at some stage take care of himself and help himself - it is not entirely your responsibility to 'set him up for life'. He needs to do a lot of that for himself as he gets older. Somehow, with a lot of luck, I managed to attain social mobility in spite of my autism and my working class roots in Ang Mo Kio (you should see what my parents are like). Your son already has a massive advantage in having brilliant parents (unlike me, I had quite the opposite). Things are not as grim as you might think they are for your son you know.
7. I think you're assuming a worst case scenario whereby your son is incapable of supporting himself in the future. Is his autism really that severe that he would be incapable of holding down a job? When I look at my nephew, yeah his autism was really severe when he was like 6 year old but now he's 18, you can barely notice it and I give him credit for having learnt many ways to adapt to the world around him. I can't promise you that things will definitely improve with your son but I've seen my nephew improve and gosh, I've come such a long way myself with my own autism. I've struggled so much over the years and I'm now an autistic adult with pretty good social skills now. The autism never goes away but I can get really good at adapting to the world around me.
8. I don't wanna say things like "everything will be fine, he will grow up and learn to adapt", I don't have a crystal ball and I can't predict the future. But what I can say is that you're amongst friends here and I have all the empathy in the world for you. I understand what you're feeling and I sympathize. I want to offer you the same kindness and support that so many awesome people have given me over the years and I want you to know you're not alone. In case I haven't introduced myself properly, hi! I'm Alex, I'm 45 and I'm so autistic. Like woah, I'm from the most autistic family in Singapore and my autism is off the scale I swear. I've got Asperger syndrome and everyday is a struggle for me to adapt to the world around me but I've come and incredibly long way on this journey. Let me be a part of your journey so you know you're never alone, you'll always have my friendship and support to count on.
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