Reason To Write

***

Rubik’s Cube with a solutions page…

I thought it would be a decent acquisition for myself, yet I had this nagging feeling that I had spent way too much on myself. Certainly not when your traveling companion was one who only bought things for others and rarely for herself. There is something about peer pressure at work here and it certainly unsettled me.

Coupled this with the uncertainty surrounding my future, or rather my gloomy foreboding future, it would certainly be a bad idea to place it in a cubicle which I might not occupy in time to come. Such uncertainty in my life and it drove me on some impulse buys.

***

I was having a chat with the counter lady who was not a little fascinated by the little country which I was told to call it home (no matter what) for the past 30 years of my life. It felt inherently natural for me to enlighten her on the difference in standards of living and lifestyle between the laid-back rural Australia and the helter-skelter life of a reluctant urbanite in Singapore. Rarely would I bring up issues which would inevitably lead to my political inclinations during such conversations, but later in the car, I was admonished by my traveling companion for “complaining too much” about the land which fed me or brought me up.

I was flabbergasted when she commented on how badly I was painting the picture of our country in the eyes of a foreigner who had never heard of being charged the equivalent of her three month’s bill for water usage in Singapore or that most of the urbanites had “pigeonholes” as their residences.

“You should never do that,” she mouthed out the words as I drove away from the berry farm.

***

I thought I had already forgotten about a certain aspect of life I once cherished during these years of being indoctrinated back into the bread-and-butter paper chase on this island. I once believed they all disappeared the moment I became the subject of examination and comparison for way too times by people who breathed as if their lives depended on their attainment of the five Cs. It was even in secondary school when I first picked up the phrase “when poverty comes in, love flies out of the window” from a teacher.

We were talking with the landlady the other day when she became more engrossed in the conversation amongst the three of us. Evidently, for someone who loved and craved for outdoor activities like hiking and tracking, it was a boon for her to have gotten acquainted with someone who was planning to scale Kinabalu. Her eyes brightened considerably as they exchanged ideas while I listened on, until the landlady mentioned something about the sacrifice she was prepared to make to fulfill her goal of conquering the heights somewhere in Sabah.

“… and I would be taking 6-months worth of unpaid leave to prepare…”

For a fifty-plus-year-old lady, it would be almost unthinkable for anyone here on this much smaller island to even consider taking a month off from work to pursue a particular goal in life without worrying about how someone would snatch the job away from her.

Yet, she could do it, albeit with more sacrifices she was prepared to make. Like my traveling companion, her eyes simply shone at the prospect of having got on to the top of the mountain six months down the road. 1 goal of her life fulfilled.

On thinking about this later that night, I could only smile wryly when I thought about her months of unpaid leave and how the powers-that-be were pushing me closer towards hell at work.

***

I had clearly forgotten about how everything seemed to be ok. It was ok if you were struggling in your career. There was much more to life than just worrying about earning your keep or paying your bills throughout most of your waking hours. It was ok if you were some non-descript office worker, so long as you knew what you wanted out of your life. It was ok if you were simply a cleaner (and a respected one, I might add) just to earn your keep while you were a volunteer at some social set-up.

Unless it was something that was anti-social or illegal, no one would scrutinize you and your seemingly lack of achievements like a hawk. No one’s more superior than another and so what if you have a doctorate?

Yet, after being transplanted from there to here, the same stifling feeling, which I first felt when I landed at Changi Airport almost five years ago, came over me again.

No car…

Career at the doldrums…

Credit cards with credit limit at a pittance…

No condo…

Four-digit cash balance in savings…

While everything I wanted out of my life had to be put on the backburner….

And for the life of me, I cannot understand why people were unable to accept the fact that I hated life here.

Is it because it was not one of those typical and conventional Singapore dreams, it must be wrong?

***

Often enough, I toyed around with the hypothetical situation one day if I were to declare to some friends about my general views on journalism. Sometimes, I would imagine how their faces would look as they started their little censure to put things into perspective and point me towards the heaps of accolades the local industry had garnered over the years.

Yet, according to what I studied in university or, to put it more directly, what my lecturer told us, journalism ethics played an important role in ensuring that things remain largely objective. After all, the endless pursuit of good journalism stems from the fact that all reporting have to be objective.

My traveling companion was a little amazed when she watched those campaign ads sprouting during prime time telly in WA. The expression on her face seemed to suggest that it was a novelty to her and it was confirmed later when she exclaimed innocently, “You mean they allow this here? I didn’t know!”

At that moment, my mind wandered back to the moment when we were sitting at the Lake Caves café earlier in the day. She was poring through the Australia Women’s Weekly, while I was scanning through The Weekend Australian, which devoted quite a few of its pages on the WA elections. I remembered how intrigued I was when I read the “Letters” section and the number of views, both for and against the opposition, published. They might not be the most balanced of views, but at the very least, differing opinions were given almost equal space between the columns.

Just so that people could decide what kind of government they deserve, I thought to myself.

***

Renee Olstad. Just because I heard her singing in his car the other day and he was gushing about this young female jazz prodigy, I went to hunt for her CD (any CD) in town this morning after my long overdue haircut.

The funny thing was how I managed to grab a copy of her CD and it turned out not to be the first CD I popped into my computer to have a listen.

Instead, stashed in an almost non-descript section at the CD shop, I caught sight of something I had been searching high and low for ages and for only $9.90, it was a steal, even if there was only one song on the CD which I was looking so desperately for. Needless to say, $9.90 was cheap for a CD which contained only one song I liked and I bought it.

Right now, Renee Olstad’s CD remained untouched in its original wrap in my black bag, while Don McLean’s American Pie was played more than 5 times already (all 8.36 minutes of it).

***

Pictures from the trip will follow.