A Singaporean In Australia

Hi bro. I can do with more friends but I don't need to change the set of friends. They are part of me. Like the chinese say: I won't 'have today' if not for them.

I'm as flawed as they are.

I refer you to this post:

http://singaporeactually.com/2012/01/11/my-terrible-thoughts-about-friendship/

My remark on you needing a different set of friends was made in jest, but if your friends sound a bit like hers then perhaps you might want to reconsider...!

But yes, everyone is flawed. However, we don't need our 'friends' to project their flaws onto us.

The chinese also used to say if you can pick it up, you can put it down. ;)

Migration has never been my dream. I know a Singaporean via this blog. He told me he has been thinking about migration since he was 14.

No way, i told him. As true as an arrow he said.

Mine wasn't anything like that. I wanted to achieve my dream of a peaceful slow life having time to have a game of chess with my old friends after dinner.

Migration has not yet fulfill my dreams but it may in future, at least for the first half of it. the 2nd half of it, unfortunately have been shattered the moment i stepped out of singapore.

i'm happy for you that you kept achieving dream after dream. i've never achieve a single one in my life. hopefully in future.

Yeah, can tell from your postings that migration is not a dream.

Is that Singaporean relatively young? I started thinking about migration when I was 18, after an overseas internship stint.

I then spent more than 10 years trying to get out. The first 5 years groping in the dark about how to migrate, the following 5 years executing the plan that will enable me to migrate. Yeah, I could have saved some time by going to a immigration consultant, but I had no $$$ at that time.

It's tough to have dreams (and achieve them) once you become a parent, unless of course your dreams has something to do with your child. :)

Thank you. I'm sure you'll start to achieve your dreams once you get round to defining what they are. Nothing is impossible if you want it bad enough!

I remember from one of your postings you would like to create and build a self-sustaining business of some sort ya?

Perhaps it's time you start doing up your business plan? We don't have much time left; 11 months and 5 days till the end of the world! ;)

I don't know how to do a business plan. Do you?

No I don't, sorry. Never had much business experience! You probably have more experience through your mum's stall than me!

I do know you don't need a business plan if you don't need investor's $$$. But it's good to write down some sort of plan to focus your thoughts and directions...

Let me figure something. I'll share if i ever get started?

Bring it on!

cos u are negative ma muahahah

it looks like a great link. but it's fucking long. i wanna sleep after a few sentences of it. can summarise?

Hello good sir,

I just wanted to highlight how the author, a psychotherapist, hits the nail on the head when she talks about society's unhealthy aversion to normal human emotions that it views as "negative".

"Emotions like grief, fear and despair are as much a part of the human condition as love, awe and joy. They are our natural and inevitable responses to existence, so long as loss, vulnerability and violence come with the territory of being human. These are the dark emotions, but by dark, I don't mean that they are bad, unwholesome or pathological. I mean that as a culture we have kept these emotions in-'the dark-shameful, secret and unseen.

"Emotion-phobia dissociates us from the energies of these emotions and tells us they are untrustworthy, dangerous and destructive. Like other traits our culture distrusts and devalues-vulnerability, for instance, and dependence-emotionality is associated with weakness, women and children. We tend to regard these painful emotions as signs of psychological fragility, mental disorder or spiritual defect. We suppress, intellectualize, judge or deny them. We may use our spiritual beliefs or practices to bypass their reality."

She then goes on to talk about how society categorizes these "negative" emotions as some sort of illness to be treated or problem to be solved.

"As for despair, how many among us have not experienced periods of feeling empty, desolate, hopeless, brooding over the darkness in our world? This is the landscape of despair. Judging from my thirty years of experience as a psychotherapist, I would say that despair is common, yet we don't speak of despair anymore. We speak of clinical depression, serotonin-deficiency, biochemical disorder and the new selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors. We treat the "illness" with a host of new medications. In my view, "depression" is the word we use in our highly medicalized culture for a condition of chronic despair-despair that is stuck in the body and toxified by our inability to bear it mindfully. When we think of all despair as a mental disorder or a biochemical illness, we miss the spiritual metamorphosis to which it calls us."

Finally, she concludes the passage by advocating that we overcome social stigma, and accept these "negative" emotions, both in ourselves as well as in others, as but another aspect of the human experience, in order to learn from them and be a better person.

"When we look deeply into the dark emotions in our lives, we find both the universality of suffering and how much suffering is unnecessary, the result of social inequities, oppression, large scale violence and trauma. Our awareness both of the universality of suffering and of its socially created manifestations is critical to the healing journey. Knowing how our grief, fear and despair may be connected to larger emotional currents and social conditions de-pathologizes these emotions, allowing us to accept and tolerate them more fruitfully, and with more compassion for ourselves and others. We begin to see the dark emotions as messengers, information-bearers and teachers, rather than "negative" energies we must subdue, tame or deny. We tend to think of our "negative" emotions as signs that there's something wrong with us. But the deepest significance of the feelings is simply our shared human vulnerability. When we know this, we begin to heal in a way that connects us rather than separates us from the world."

I apologise if that was still too long and/or technical. In my own words, I feel that the author is trying to impress upon us that each and every one of us is a product of our own unique history, and to deny any part of it is to deny being human. After all, how can we truly know happiness if we have not personally experienced and understood despair?

Perhaps you could quote from the passage whenever your friends try to convince you that life is one big wank session.

Leon

P.S.- As a Singaporean who, studied and worked in Australia for four years, returned to Singapore, regretted returning to Singapore, and is going back next month for round two, your time in Perth, as catalogued in this blog, interests me greatly.

lucky u made the choice to come to australia, if not i no friend liao.

i made the move because i felt there are more choices here too. and it's for my children's future as well, definitely. how long more can i live only? it's definitely for my children..

you must be a grumpy old man like me.
if you are young chio bu, people will call you playing hard to get that's all. heh heh

"anonymous jan 17" is me actually. Moving to Melbourne. Maybe I'll share my experiences in a blog and become famous like you did. Heh.

ah Leon, why don't u continue the blog and i retire?
You're also a Singaporeanson in Australia. Technically correct.

buy and never play, still dare to say :)