A Singaporean In Australia

Someone asked me where do I want to visit the first thing I returned to Singapore. My answer was the blood centre. Before I left Singapore, I was a regular blood donor. I started when I was in the army in my early 20s. By the time I left Singapore, I might have donated 40+ times, I couldn't remember and didn't bothered to.

A lot of people dissuaded me from donating blood, including my own father who was a regular donor himself in his earlier years. The reasons varied from logical sounding medical reasons to strange spiritual theories. Believe me, just when you think you have hear it all, you'll be surprised. Over more than a decade, I didn't stop and did my donation faithfully and punctually. I ever stopped and wondered why I choose to do that. I never quite came out with an answer but perhaps today I finally could.

Other than winning a horde of silly sports trophies in primary schools that didn't count, I have never been outstanding in any area in any stage of my life. I was just an average, perhaps below average, Singaporean ploughing the fields day in day out like a good farmer's bull. Sometimes in life people sell you the idea of doing something out of your routine, to improve the lives of others. Such as voluntarism, donating part of your coffers, some even go to the extent of asking you to donate to God. At times cynics will probably stop to think if we have been made used of in the name of a good cause. The NKF debacle some years ago was an example, where we were sold the perception of helping needy patients while only a small fraction of your donation went directly to help them. Well even with blood, we will never know. It might be used for special transfusion to a certain Ah Gong, it might be sold as a profit in the black market, it might even be used in experiments that might bring forth the zombie apocalypse. 

When you donate part of yourself, be it time, money, sperm or blood, you have good faith it will end in good hands. Silly blind faith in humanity. That was why I chose to donate blood. Why particularly blood? The silly belief in the symbolic act of saving my countrymen with my own blood. I don't have to explain that I love my tribe. This was where I grew up and I am part of the brotherhood, it doesn't change this fact even though I am not physically in Singapore now.