we all dress the same only our accents change
10 minutes reading Luke's blog about his backpacking trip to Russia and Mongolia and I am jealous beyond belief right now. I suppose I've never been a very good tourist. I've always been more interested in following a day in the life of say a street musician in Central Park than in taking a ferry to gawk at the Statue of Liberty. Right now Luke is having the trip of my dreams and I say "Good on you brother! You have no idea how much I wish I were there!!!" I'd give just about anything to spend 9 days travelling the steppes of Ulan Bator on horseback and fall asleep to the clacking of a real train, not one that tells you to stay clear of the damn yellow lines. For anyone else who might want to read it just click right here. Dude I know when you read this you'd have already become accustomed to both what goes into a horse and well, what comes out. Get back safe soon and we can go humping BT again. I suppose it ain't Olkhorn but hey we do what we can.
They say doing an internship opens your eyes to the corporate world and drives you to new heights. Odd then that the only thing it's invoked in me so far is a burgeoning fear that I might have to do this for the rest of my life. It doesn't help that this is Singapore. It's scary that when I tell people that I would love to take a year off to just disappear; to just leave everything familiar behind and throw myself into some place off the beaten track, I can't find a single person who would agree with me. A year off is a year less that you're getting paid/making it big/building up your credentials/chasing that dream. The other day I was telling Cai and Greg about my lunch with Sheryl and her colleagues who plopped us in their BMW and drove all the way from town (ERP? What's that?) to a golf club in Fort Road so we could have lunch "somewhere relaxing". You could all but see the drool spilling out their mouths and it sure as hell wasn't because they were thinking of Hock Lam beef noodles. I remember being extremely unsettled. This is the measure of success that just about every young Singaporean aspires to isn't it. Flashy cars, designer clothes, opulent residences, expensive dinners on a regular basis and the capacity to be extravagent as and when you like it. These are the qualities we worship now in our society and it bothers me no end; a circumstance that, I suppose, renders me quite simply, an alien in the very society I was born into.
I have a dream. It's one that starts my heart racing when I think about it and evokes the proverbial drool, but it doesn't involve much in the way of monetary reward and so I get chewed out incessantly by my father demanding to know how exactly I'm going to feed my family with a history degree. Well the answer is simple. I have no idea, but I'll do it somehow. Either that or I won't have a family. Sorry dad but don't worry, you can bank on Mel. She was always the one who knew what she was doing anyway.
They say doing an internship opens your eyes to the corporate world and drives you to new heights. Odd then that the only thing it's invoked in me so far is a burgeoning fear that I might have to do this for the rest of my life. It doesn't help that this is Singapore. It's scary that when I tell people that I would love to take a year off to just disappear; to just leave everything familiar behind and throw myself into some place off the beaten track, I can't find a single person who would agree with me. A year off is a year less that you're getting paid/making it big/building up your credentials/chasing that dream. The other day I was telling Cai and Greg about my lunch with Sheryl and her colleagues who plopped us in their BMW and drove all the way from town (ERP? What's that?) to a golf club in Fort Road so we could have lunch "somewhere relaxing". You could all but see the drool spilling out their mouths and it sure as hell wasn't because they were thinking of Hock Lam beef noodles. I remember being extremely unsettled. This is the measure of success that just about every young Singaporean aspires to isn't it. Flashy cars, designer clothes, opulent residences, expensive dinners on a regular basis and the capacity to be extravagent as and when you like it. These are the qualities we worship now in our society and it bothers me no end; a circumstance that, I suppose, renders me quite simply, an alien in the very society I was born into.
I have a dream. It's one that starts my heart racing when I think about it and evokes the proverbial drool, but it doesn't involve much in the way of monetary reward and so I get chewed out incessantly by my father demanding to know how exactly I'm going to feed my family with a history degree. Well the answer is simple. I have no idea, but I'll do it somehow. Either that or I won't have a family. Sorry dad but don't worry, you can bank on Mel. She was always the one who knew what she was doing anyway.
posted by isaac! at 8:37 PM
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