A Singaporean In Australia

A few years ago when I migrated out of Singapore, I left with a miasma of paranoidism. There was always an uncanny feeling lingering around me that someone was after my lunch. All my friends thought I was crazy. Gradually, so did I. So I decided that moving away from Singapore might be a good thing for me, in terms of searching for a cure for my insanity.

3 years on, I realised the crazy voice within my mind might not be paranoia. Somebody we knew might have been planning that all along and I was one of the first among my friends who fell victim for the diabolical scheme. Looking back, it was a traumatic experience to discover that our lunches were taken by somebody else. My friend Ah Chee started to debate about what happened with our own hypothesis. Soon, we began to blame each other for our problems.

I decided that there was a need for change and propose to seek for my lunch at a new place. However, Ah Chee was unwilling to move out of his comfort zone to join me. Time and again, he knocked me down for the idea. It affected me and I changed my mind about venturing elsewhere. After a longer while of being in denial, and of course, without our lunches, I finally loosened up. I stopped taking myself - and life in general - so seriously and decided I should move on to hunt for my lunch. I blindfolded myself and took a big leap into the darkness unknown.

I landed in a everlasting sand dune, with nothing in the horizon. Before I took my first step, I didn't forget to scratch deeply with my walking stick, "If You Continue to be Bo Chee, You Will Have No Lunch" on the sand I was standing on for Ah Chee to ponder. Just before I moved off as the advance party I wrote a last message on the sand, "If You Sibei Wu Chee, What Will You Do?" As I moved along my journey [link] with great fear, I began to find a few lunches here and there. I realised that lunches had not vanished but dwindled due to my complacency in my previous comfort zone. Along the many stops, I was plagued with worries and challenges. However my new mindset allowed me to brush away the fear of the unknown and see the world as an excited young kid again. I began to enjoy life while searching for my lunch. I even began to smile again.

I returned to Singapore a couple of years later and met Ah Chee. He was able to persuade himself to move from lunch bars to lunch bars to look for his new lunch but he was still unwilling to move beyond the realms to fight for our own kingdoms together. Disappointed, I left again and headed even further into the unknown, far beyond the thick fog. I was further inspired by more lunches that I discovered along the way and decided to leave more writings on the sand. These writings clarified my thinking as I reflected on my experiences, in hope to share with others who had lost their lunches.

Being permanently damaged in my mind, I continued to feel paranoid about someone eating my lunch and explore different ways and means to preserve and produce lunches to prevent my previous complacency from setting in. I am patiently sitting at the edge of the mist waiting for my friend Ah Chee to find his way through.