Looking forward

These couple of weeks have been odd. I keep feeling like I want to dig a hole in the ground and hide my head in it. Or get a piercing or tattoo, for the pain. Or maybe poke myself a little for the pain, but the idea's not as attractive as getting a piercing or tattoo. Structured pain, for a purpose, is more appealing to me than random, unstructured pain.

Come on, girl, get up and ride it out. You don't want to go back there. Tomorrow onwards, things will be different!

Tonight, I found the company I want to join for the next leg of my personal journey. I don't promise I'll stay but I know I want to go there for a while. On the agenda is also to explore other chances of going overseas as well. Not ruling out further studies but it's really not my first option. Nor my second.

Let's see how things turn out, shall we?

So who will you consider to be a Singaporean?

With the Olympics, there have been a lot of talk about foreign talent and immigrants, with words such as "imported", "not true blue" being used left, right, center, in offices, online, and even right at home in my living room, uttered by both strangers and people I knew. There seem to be 2 schools of thought. One says that we should accept foreign talent and immigrants because these are the people who built our society and that our ancestors were from foreign lands as well. The other school of thought views immigrants as, well... I guess as intruders. The first group of people calls the second group of people racists and are repelled by what they say. Well, the details you can probably read in the newspapers and find out from the Internet.

I try not to think too much about the issue of racism and don't consciously let these arguments disturb me. If you would like to, you may call me a bit of an air-head. If you'd asked me what was my stand on the issue, I would have told you, "I don't know." However, when you have your nose buried in Twitter and people on your twitter list are consistently talking about it, it does make you think. In my case, I am very easily swayed by others' words, and what this whole thing did was to throw part of my brain and heart into an internal analysis and debate of the whole issue (which I do quite often if ruffled enough), in a bid to find an answer that at least I am happy with.

In short, I was very disturbed by the whole issue. And apparently, hey, I have an opinion about the matter! Wow. Cognitively, I realized I was in the first camp of people. When Feng won a medal, I was happy. On hindsight though, I think I desperately wanted to be happy. Do you note the word "desperately"? At that point in time, I pushed that "desperately" thought aside. Then I realized that internally, I was viewing the athletes rather independently of the country they were from. To me, these people were competing as athletes and to be able to win means these are absolutely fantastic athletes. That was all. 

During Yue's match though, I felt a surge of feelings which did not surface during Feng's match. I'd describe it as patriotism. Oh shit, fuck, I hate that word. I can't believe I used it. I have never, EVER, used that word before. There's a connotation to it which gives me goosebumps. Do you know how it feels though? While watching Yue, I felt like a mother watching her child achieving something. Conversely, I felt proud as well while watching Feng, but it's a different feeling altogether. OK, so I was never a mother. Fine, substitute it with the scenario of an aunt watching her niece and nephews then.

I was disturbed by how I felt. I was experiencing cognitive dissonance. Nearer to National Day, I read a post by mrbrown and miyagi which got me thinking about what Singapore is. Today, Daphne wrote a sequence of tweets which pushed along my thoughts - 

Sometimes I feel that it's important people hold on to their heritage and culture, regardless of where they live now. You may be Singaporean Chinese, Malaysian Chinese, or naturalized citizens in UK, US, but of Chinese roots, hold on to those... It's your connection to your past. And I think in many countries people accept immigrants who have their own traditions in their own ethnic groups... But in Singapore, people frown on that. No matter where you are born, you have to mold yourself into exactly what people find acceptable here... Why can't we accept that everyone is different? My brother-in-law is a Brazilian-born UK citizen, but everyone accepts he'll always be Brazilian.

So in the bathroom today, while taking my bath, I decided to think it through carefully. I emerged 20 minutes later, victorious, with an answer. (In fact, I felt so victorious that I ate a piece of mint chocolate. =)) 

I considered that perhaps it is because our concept of what defines a Singaporean has changed. In the past, maybe we did not have a common identity. As we grew, we have somehow merged into one people and developed an identity (whatever it may be), grew our roots here, grew to love our country and as such want to protect our roots from outsiders because our roots are no longer overseas (as our ancestors' were), it is now here, in this country.

But then, I do not know what Singapore really was like in the past - maybe there was also racism of this sort in the past (not talking about skin colour here), maybe there was a majority group which viewed immigrants as intruders. If I don't know the past, then I can't say our concept of what defines Singaporean has changed. 

Instead of asking myself, "Has our concept of what defines a Singaporean changed, that is why people are pushing away immigrants?", the question became, "What is a Singaporean?" and "What do we envision Singapore to be?" 

What is a Singaporean?

What does a person have to do before we acknowledge that person to be a part of us? Is being locally born the only criteria? Imagine a locally-born person who is born, bred and schooled here but who runs away from the country the first chance he gets and falls in love with another country, do we consider that person a part of us still? What about an immigrant who loves our country so much that he gives up his citizenship in another country, contributes to the economy, raises his children here, sinks his roots here and ultimately dies in this country? Who will you consider a part of Singapore or a Singaporean? What does a new citizen have to do before we, as a country, emotionally acknowledge that person to be a part of us for sure?

What do we envision Singapore to be?

While considering the above, I realized it is also related to this question - what do we envision Singapore to be? Do we want to be like New York, to be a melting pot of culture? Or do we want to be made up of an indigenous group of locally-born people, reproducing among ourselves? This means you'd like immigrants to get out of the country, please. This means your friends who you may not realize are not locally-born should technically not be accepted here because the goal of the country is to be made up of indigenous people. 

Of course perhaps the reason there is so much resentment towards immigrants now is plainly because attitudes and beliefs need time to change and we as individuals were not given enough time to change these attitudes and beliefs. Immigrants just keep coming in, though frankly, it is not their fault they want to come to a better place to seek a better life for themselves, is it? Don't we do this on a daily basis - seek a better life for ourselves and our families? So why are we blaming them?

This "tolerance or assimilation" thing we keep talking about - in the end it really depends on what our goals as a country are, it depends on what the individual people believe in. Since I don't think the whole country can come together in a meeting room, not unlike a meeting in a large corporation, and decide what our goals as a country are, it usually ends up that the government makes the decision for us...

Or you, as an individual person could think about it and decide what you want for the country. After all, a country is made up of individuals. (OK, completely idealistic thought here, I know.)

For me, I concluded that as long as this person loves this country as I do, I will consider him/her to be a part of us. That makes me happy.

As to what I envision Singapore to be? I don't know, I haven't thought deeply enough about that. 

There are probably a lot of other issues I didn't touch here, but this is enough for today. *flips hair flippantly*

Didn't I already say that I'm sort of a airhead?

Decision

It's 10th August 2012, a school holiday. Isn't working in a school wonderful? The number of holidays are fantastic. But this post isn't about whether the holidays are fantastic or not. Well, OK, a little of it is.

For many months now, I've bounced back and forth between whether to stay or to leave my current job. I've always thought it was the money. I mean, come on, when you're paid $1800 a month to do a job which requires more skills than you were equipped with, waking up in the middle of the night to do lesson plans, and constantly feeling as if you aren't capable enough, I don't think you will feel like staying. 5 months ago, I was a total wreck. I was a wreck from the first day I stepped into the job as a trained personnel. In fact, I was a wreck for 1.5 years. Honestly, I don't remember if I showed it, but all I remember was being a wreck inside. I was giving 150% and still feeling complete inadequacy. And my load was considered light. LIGHT! I was moody from Monday to Friday afternoon, and then moody from Friday night to Sunday night. I went into the VP's office one day and was on the verge of a total breakdown. I seriously considered going to a psychologist or a psychiatrist because I knew I was going to go into depression if things went on the way it did. Yes, clinical depression. (I don't ever want to go through that again.) I'd scoff internally every time somebody said our job was not emotionally draining. I don't know, maybe it was just me, but what was inside felt real enough to me. And man, the salary was really bad. Even with my scrimping and saving tendencies, I was in the red every other month. At that time, I was ready to leave the moment my bond ended.

Well, if it was so bad, you may ask, why the "bouncing back and forth" now?

Well, several things happened:

1) I was sent a life saver in the form of a trainee. OK, TWO lifesavers! The school counsellor and the trainee. What luck! They probably didn't know but they completely saved me from having some sort of a mental breakdown. I had people to TALK to about what to do! Do you know how important that was? I will NEVER underestimate the power of having colleagues to talk to. My trainee was wonderful - she gave me lots of ideas, encouragement and was a sounding board for a lot of my ideas. Previously, I was really just talking to myself. She gave me so much confidence in myself.

2) I saw the results of the seeds that I was so desperately harvesting in my students. I was so happy to see improvement, so happy when FINALLY, something I did went right.

3) I had laid some foundations in place and it was proving itself sturdy, so I allowed myself to stop pushing myself so hard.

Basically, things fell into place. I started to have more time to enjoy the portions of work I really liked - teaching children with learning difficulties or who were learning disadvantaged (by the way, children who are learning disadvantaged are way easier to teach than those with learning difficulties, the latter of which teaching requires a lot more skill - I enjoy both, though). I started liking work more... and it has been so, for the last 5 months.

Remember the pay? By now, I have a gross salary of about $2100 (yes, I don't mind disclosing my pay). I was still disgruntled about it. It made me feel like I didn't have to work so hard simply because I'm not paid enough. I'd worked my ass off the last year and this year I felt like it was time for me to relax. Apparently, I'm not built for relaxation. As much as I enjoy relaxation, I thrive on work - a suitable amount of work. Being relaxed at work unsettles me and made me feel guilty. I honestly thought that if I was paid more, I would feel more motivated to work.

Couple of weeks ago, news came of an upcoming emplacement onto a scheme more suited to our qualifications. Hooray! I thought. This might be the thing to make me stay! Stay? I wondered. Do I want to stay? I'm starting to enjoy parts of work and I'm starting to see what I can do more. I'm comfortable here. I love the holidays, it's absolutely wonderful. I can't bear to leave some of the kids - afterall, I still have A LOT of things I want to do with them. The question became, do I really want to leave?

This week, my attached trainee leaves to be trained and suddenly I realize the same source of support I've had is also the same source for the reason why I've felt so... complacent. No, I should say that the trainee's attitude is my excuse for being complacent, and now that she's left, I no longer have an excuse to be complacent. I started working again and damn, do I enjoy (some parts of) work. Does this mean I want to stay?

Today, while preparing for tuition tomorrow (yes, if I can, I prepare way in advance because I do a lot of planning), I was reading a guide book on teaching maths to children with dyslexia and it was as if the book was speaking to me. I was suddenly very clear as to my decision - I have to leave this job. I have to leave it to do more of what I am currently doing because the current system does not allow me to do more.

I've always complained about the money, but now when the pay raise is within sight (approximately 4 - 5 months away), I suddenly realize it's not about the money. I do not work "just for the money." I didn't join to stay. I joined because I didn't know what to do then as a fresh graduate. As I had told my employers right from the start - this job is a springboard (it's a wonder they still hired me!), and it still is one. They've given me a lot here and I am so very grateful. Now that I have decided to "spring from the board" (what a horrible pun! - if it is one), I just have to decide the direction to leap towards.

And though I'm damn scared about it, I'm relieved as well. I wonder what will happen next.