A Singaporean In Australia

Yesterday I couldn't blog. Not a chance, after how knackered I was by clowning around with my bio-clock. I was supposed to work at 1530hrs in the afternoon. A few hours into work saw the sun setting and my pupils and eyes would brightened. By 2300 hrs I would feel a bit tired but I would push myself until 0200hrs. I would reach home at 0210hrs, got the bath done and fiddle with the blog while waiting for the hair to dry before sleeping.

Night is when I concentrate exceptionally well, I realised over the years. Those were the days when I mugged for exams or any moment I needed to think over something in clarity. If you read some of the blog posts here and there, you would have noticed a rather inconsistent standard of blogging. A few of the posts that I personally felt pleased with were probably blogged at night. Many of the rest were bad enough that I contemplated deleting. To date though, I have never deleted a single post or comment in the blog. Let's just say that the person who wrote those things are not quite me by now. He was past. Some of my perspectives probably changed along the way.

Waking at 0545hrs brought some memories back while I drove to work this morning. I was puzzled why I did not recall my army days when 0545hrs was a common time to wake. Instead the memory train brought me back to my primary 2 days. Mum would wake me up cruelly from my sleep every morning. I remembered wishing that I could sleep more. 0600hrs just isn't time for any human to wake. The eyes, comfortably brewed in darkness, just aren't built to withstand the onslaught of sudden artificial indoor lights. Belong long, the heat and humidity of Singapore would have vanquish the cool refreshing dawn and the smell of the morning dew. I grew to hate sun rise.

There I was standing, quivering slightly in the cold of an autumn morning. This time I seek refuge under the shelter of the sun rays instead of running for shade. There is no absolute in life. Circumstances change with variable factors such as age, location, status or health, just to name some. Life loves to toy with you and give you an egg on the face when you least expected to. You see an anti-Christ mate ended up marrying a Christian girl. A girl who insisted she would never step into 'third world' countries like Thailand or China, ended up doing exactly what she swore she wouldn't - and loving it. You know, stuffs like that. Some things though, are impossible to change. For one, no one could persuade me into loving ladies' fingers or egg-plant - and Korean food. Nothing new here. A man's meat is another's poison. You don't lambast a person because of his preference in food. Similarly you don't judge a person by his views because they differs from yours.

Driving in the morning traffic brought back sick memories of driving rolling the car along the daily congested AYE to project Marina Bay Sands where I used to be involved in. It was infuriating hell. Fortunately it takes half the time to navigate through the version of hell here, despite many roads I used are only single-carriageway, one-laners.




The worst of work here could not be hard enough, no matter how dangerous, how grueling, how boring or even how lost I felt.



I do not understand why Singapore leaders love to sneer at how mollycoddled Singaporeans are. We may not be street smart as compared to people of other nations. But soft, we are not. Singapore has toughen me up. So much so that life is so easy here, even when the previous job was very physically challenging. The mental state I was built up to was adequate to pull me through. In the process, it strengthen me even further.

I found myself picking up most of the work and operating the machines with ease here. My pace was almost as fast as both the workers. However I was perhaps 5 times as industrious, thus I was already more productive than any of them were by the second day. I am not here to spoil anyone's market. I am here to lead both of these workers and I am setting the example right from the start. I choose to persuade by inspiring, not by words or coercion. I'm still lost but the big picture is getting clearer but I'll strive to do so well that it is impossible for the manager to consider letting me go after my probation.

The manager seemed to care about his underlings here. I spent at least 2 hours traveling around in his 4x4 because he wanted to provide work wear for me. We went to Work Sense in Henderson and got myself 2 sets of work clothes. They didn't have safety boots of my size in that outlet. He went as far as driving us down to Rockingham just to pick up my boots from the outlet there. Good start to win a new staff's loyalty. He also repeated that 'we are a small family here' a few times. Yeah small indeed, we have less than 10 staff in total here. I'm not sure about family though. These "family talk" in Singapore could mean working during public holidays without being paid or compensated with off in-lieu. Well, I had enough of my previous 'family' in Singapore.

Talking about family, I still miss them very much. Hope we'll be able to be reunited soon.