A Singaporean In Australia

This is the third week running I've been working overtime every single day. The first week was 10 hours a day, the second we went a notch up and did 12 hours a day. After clearing the bulk, we are back to 10 hours a week. On a 12-hour shift, we were paid 1.5x for every extra hour of the 4 hours overtime that would translate to the worth of 14 normal hours, 2 hours short of being paid twice as much as what we have been bringing in on normal days. Fortunately we were compensated monetarily. I used the word compensated, not rewarded because that was what it was.

It was worth noting down how it felt. These weren't new to me. 12-hours were a common thing during my first job. I remembered we even stretched that to 14 hours before during the Christmas period. I even worked on 2-3 weekends before. The type of work I did back then was much physically demanding than the current one. Looking back, I wondered how and why I pulled through. It almost seemed like that wasn't me.

But it was and that could be anyone. During the first week, I realised I had forgotten how it felt to work beyond the normal 8 hours. The interesting thing was after the 3rd day of waking up around 4ish am, I found myself forgetting how it felt to work normal hours. By the start of the 3rd week, it almost felt strange at the thought of going back to the usual 7am - 3.30pm routine.

Human beings must be the most malleable material on earth. Or should I say, the human brain, the fleshy material that dictates between can or cannot, right or wrong, possible or impossible and it varies largely from person to person. The waves sent from the brain determines what we think, how we act and that makes who we are. That being said, the brain bases its work on whatever resources it had been fed. It can only work on whatever data that was provided to it. That is what we call the limit. That was why all 3 of us admitted to Ling that we thought she did the impossible. None of us believed it was possible to achieve what she did in the short 3 days. That is the box when we talk about thinking out of the box. To think out of the box is simply to let thoughts wander beyond the boundaries of where existing knowledge is confined. That applies to the thoughts of migration, and possibly anything else.

After the industrial revolution, the majority of the masses earn their living in a single income employment model. Most of us worked out that even if we work our asses off, the limit we can make is 24 hours. Since working long hours is not sustainable for our physical, mental and spiritual state, we look out to increase our hourly rate and hope one day we earn half as much in a year to what our Singapore Ministers in a month. Then somebody came out with the concept of passive income to help out seek the 25th hour. For a brain that was trained and conditioned for decades to think and act employee, it is very difficult to unlearn and relearn. Words that we use are very dangerous. When I said difficult, I am setting myself the limit. There must be something beyond even the 25th hour. There shouldn't be a limit.

We can only step out of the imaginary comfort zone if we allow our thoughts to go beyond limits often enough. Only if we do that, thoughts can be manifested into reality. Some folks will tell me that belongs to the spiritual realm rather than the mental state. Perhaps so. I should allow myself to explore freely in every realm so one day I may break myself out of the constriction to find that naggy voice within me that took me here, all the way from Singapore.

The voice is louder than before but it still remain distant. I must find it.