Archive for May 2014

PM Lee created a mist of irony [link] when he stated his expectations of what a good opposition party, labelled the Worker's Party substandard because they did not perform to his guidelines and then asked the Worker's Party what they stood for. I supposed if the opposition stand at where exactly the PM Lee preferred, that would be what the PAP referred to as 'Constructive Politics'.

At one point, a flustered PM Lee jabbed his finger in the air while making a point as if he was waving his finger-wand to cast an Avada Kedavra on all the members of the opposition party in the House and closed his speech with, again, by telling the others how they should behave. He said,

"We have to call a spade a spade. If you have to change a position, because your previous position was wrong – say so. But to weasel away, play with words, avoid the issue and then claim to be responsible – that is what we fear can drive Singapore’s politics into same place where many countries have gone."

I was told that when one decided to point or wave a finger, he should be aware that his other four are pointing towards himself. I would expect the PM and his party members do conduct themselves in the same manner that they advocated their opposites to do so. Year by year, the people's faith in the PAP government wanes, as suggested by the declining number of votes they received on each GE. It seems to me nobody has bother to whisper to the PAP when it comes to managing a country, not only actions speak for themselves but the integrity of their words hold the same weight, if not more.

The power of words lies in the people's faith in them. In other words, when this faith is no more, the people will cease to believe whatever the government says, even if it is nothing but the truth. This happens when the government is the biggest offender in playing with words, diluting their integrity doing so and allow the civil service to emulate it.

When 'constructive politics' means 'serving the government by telling them how to do better and not to 'make a molehill of out their mistakes', it served to tell the people that the government is perplexed over the people's growing unhappiness and has little confidence in themselves in reading the minds of the general population.

If 'ponding' had to be officially used to play down actual circumstances, where do the authorities stand in terms of tackling the issue head-on?

If an 'honest mistake' is a licence to move on, whether or not the population is primarily concerned if the mistake was intentional, where is the claim to be responsible for a shocking error?

If 'lease buyback' means literally pawning your assets for survival, why should a scheme be regarded as a solution to broken mechanics in terms of sustainable living in Singapore?

When the PAP government and the civil service pick up a habit not to call a spade a spade, play with words, avoid issues, evade critical questions, claim to be always here for us and promise more good years ahead, one can't help but wonder where does the government stand?

Why so dulan? Passive income coming lah

I've been pasted plenty of links of blog articles often. Among them are links to bloggers who called themselves my father and Roy Ngegntrng, however you spell or pronounce that name. In all honesty I never read their blog articles because I have an extremely short attention span and have a strong dislike for blogs that paste pictures or videos all over the place. Purely personal preference, nothing personal against the bloggers themselves. Now then I learnt the Roy may potentially be sued by our Prime Minister, maybe it's time to read his blog - for it has to make plenty of sense. I used to think Dr Chee Soon Juan was a academic wank until two of our ex-PMs sued him. Then I listened intently to whatever he had to say and found plenty of sense in words. That was the standard our government set for us, everyone should consider heeding it.

There are plenty of articles going on about whether the PM was right or wrong or what he should do or not. That was really no concern to me because the PM has the right to make his own decisions through legal means. His morals and character is out for the public to judge, nothing more needs to be said. Even before Roy penned his articles on the CPF, the topic has always been a black hole of mystery and secrecy. In any situation when the truth is withheld from minds, endless speculation and imagine follows. A classic example is Area 51 of the US government. Conspiracy theories about the secret place could be published in volumes by today. Aliens, human testing, you name it. So whose fault is it really, when a zealous commoner conjured a hypothesis so believable to the masses that sound truer than the real truth itself? And the real truth. That was swept under the carpet, bursting at its seams as already.

What PM Lee did was effective for his standing in the upcoming general elections - to stifle online dissenters and thicken the vile miasma of fear that such an act can and will destroy an individual's life. That's a considerable weapon by his side as half of the battle of the next GE will be fought on the internet. Apart from that, the CPF mystery remains. By suing Roy's pants off, what the PM achieved was merely driving the coffeeshop talks to the backyard and will only create wilder speculations and interests by the Streisand effect.

Come to think of it, that is such a great money making machine. Mystifying something of great concern to the masses, bait for the next guy who question it hard enough, sue and profit! A rough calculation tells me that 5 successful sues should generate enough passive income for a common Singaporean for lifetime. What a privileged position one can be get to. That is a common illustration used by financial gurus to explain why most people are poor, as their parents do not impart sound financial education to their children. As we can see, PM Lee has great parents.

I came across this blogger Tan Kin Lian's article [link] on the CPF last night. In this article, bold printed in its title, the writer declared to Singaporeans that our CPF monies is safe and went on to justify his claims by offering some facts and figures (with a link - so it must be true). If you are worried about the 'safety' of your CPF funds and need a fatherly figure to assure you and coax you to bed, do take a few minutes to go through his blog post.

For I did but yet I couldn't sleep as well as I should so I got out of bed and read the doctor's prescription again. It said,

"The annual report of the CPF at 31/12/2012 showed total amount owing to CPF members to be $230 billion. This is invested in Singapore Government Securities totaling $229 billion, with a few other billions invested in other assets.

If CPF were to be wound up, will the government be able to pay the $229 billion?

The answer is clearly "yes". The reserves of the government comprises of $198 billion in Temasek Holdings, $305 billion in MAS and "over $100 billion" in GIC. The total is over $600 billion.

If this were to happen, will the government be able to sell the assets to raise $230 billion to pay the CPF members? There is no need to. If the government were to issue bonds of $230 billion, that is backed by the $600 billion of actual assets, it should have not much difficulty.

Another way is for the government to "print $230 billion" of money to pay back the CPF members."

- extracted from my insomnia doctor's blog post

You know what? I'm glad somebody was able to provide some figures for us to ponder about. Just about 2 decades ago, when the people's President Mr Ong Teng Cheong requested for access of information regarding Singapore's financial reserves, the government told him it would take 56 man-years to produce a dollar-and-cents value of the immovable assets. [link] Since our financial blogger was able to produce some figures straight from a government website, I'd assume that the government of 1993 was actually honest and did not lie to President Ong and in fact, should be applauded for completing their work 35 years earlier. Those once-in-50-years time warp floods must have helped a little so PUB should take some credit as well.

So referring back to the 'facts and figures', Mr Tan did a simple balance sheet for us. The government owe CPF members blah blah blah and we have blah blah reserves, blah blah GIC, blah blah Temasek, so if you do some simple subtraction, we have surplus! Therefore,

"The winding up of the CPF is completely hypothetical and inconceivable. I have used this scenario to illustrate that the savings in the CPF is safe, and that the fear that there is no money to pay back the CPF balance is totally unfounded."

Beautiful illustration on paper but Mr Tan probably did not understand the fear of worried Singaporeans do not end from knowing there are money somewhere to pay us should the "inconceivable" happens. From a government that tells the a President representing the people that they need 56 man-years to calculate immovable assets (whatever they meant) and produce figures on paper, I wonder how many years does this government needs to sell those assets when the need arises.

For somebody with a strong financial background, Tan Kin Lian seemed to be completely hypothetical himself but conveniently forgetting how difficult it is to liquidate assets. Even a small time retail stock investor knows that you might not be able to sell all his shares at the same price during a sell down. Any sell down involving millions or billions of dollars will definitely create a temporary correction effect in the market as it demand deals with the sudden oversupply of assets. So if we put Mr Tan's hypothesis to test, the government will definitely end up with a significantly lower amount of cash than what it suggests on paper - that is provided 'immovable assets' can be moved at all. Coupled with the fact that Temasek Holdings and GIC are heavy stakeholders of countless of "GLCs", what would be the ripple effect of such a great sell-up to these companies and our economy in general? Putting the possibility of liquidating as cleanly as said aside, it comes down to whether Singapore is able to cope with the effects of Mr Tan's own hypothesis. Print money? Sure. In all honesty, it gave me more fear just reading the basis of his assurance. I hope I'm the only Singaporean thinking so.

Facts and figure may never lie but human beings are fallible. The CPF is NEVER safe on a day when

1) The government refused to be transparent and provide relevant information freely and rightfully to the people.

2) The same people with track records of a monkey continues to handle investments funded by public money and be made accountable for their mistakes.

3) The CPF board continues to shift their goal posts as and when they need it without consulting and reaching a fair consensus by their stakeholders.

The people should never rest assured and continue to be fearful until the day these change to an acceptable and ethical level.

Actually I didn't die.

Or maybe I did and didn't realise it. In any case, I wouldn't be the first undead from Singapore, since there is already a famous 90-year-old species.

Undead or not, there were fingers left to type stuff and they did. You would have found out by now if you happened to visit the site these couple of days. I wouldn't if I were you. If the site I visit often has no updates for 7 days, much less 1 full month, I would probably never return. So thank you for being extraordinary. I did not notice how long I stopped updating the site. For a month or so, I stopped checking my emails or answered any phone calls because all of a sudden I felt weary of life in general. The dark clouds of Autumn probably add on to this gloom. Perhaps Jo and husband chose the wrong time to make their big move. In the middle of all the gloom and doom of Autumn, it may be easy to get discouraged or depressed. Like everyone else, these negative vibes will come to pass. Or become undead, whichever comes first.

A phone call was made to the far north, breaking my social exile finally, to the Duchess of the Brook

I'm back to updating bits and pieces and I will try to return to the box and reply them. (Special apologies to Veronica from the Atlanta, I will definitely reply you in time to come). I didn't even realise a month just passed like that and almost forgotten I actually have a blog that was supposed to be updated. The consequence of forgetfulness was that I received several strange messages via the phone hoping for a respond. When they realised I hadn't died, the messages naturally stopped coming as well, except for a couple of people whom hanged around like ghosts and one suspected might end up being proper friends with.

Talking about friends, everyone I know seem to have a different perspective about friendship. That is because it is so difficult to explicitly define friendship itself as well as its components. So most of the time, friendships were build on the assumptions either sides that they opposite party have similar ideologies about friendship. Many fall outs are so hurting and painful because parties involved could not understand why the opposite reacted or behaved in certain ways. That of course, was never due to cause and effect but the casual assumption of the opposite side all along, thus failing to establish the exact friendship ideology that he or she believed in. That left it possible to crossed lines that was drawn differently on fields of either sides or opening of closets with skeletons unintended.

Had another conversation with Mum during another one of those long driving. It was sad to hear that little stall we painstakingly built up for 8 years had been, at least from what I gathered, ran down to the ground by the owner to took over the business. In 1-2 years, the stall went from the most to the least popular stall in the canteen.

I was curious why things turned out that way. Mum actually spent a few good months showing the new owner the ropes before leaving for good. It was a little heartbreaking for me to impact all the know-hows Mum, Jen and I learnt the hard way to another person but we decided to do to the best ability. So Mum taught everything she could, not just the procedures of running the stall but the philosophies behind the success as well.

For a close observer and PT helper of the little stall from its inception, I always thought our success was due to the mechanics of the business that I designed. One basic principle was to order stuff in bulk for price discount, as far as we could since we had limited storage space. Another simple one would be taking advantage of whatever economy of scale we could find in our workflow. On top of that, a creative ever-changing menu to freshen up the feel of the stall. Of course, these wouldn't be enough without great customer service, which had to be attributed solely to Mum and her assistant, who ran the front end of the business daily. I thought that was that - the secrets of our little success.

Only after hearing the stall wasn't doing well at all, I realised that these were not enough. The workflow was only the heart of the business but the philosophy behind it was the soul. Without the soul, any workable solutions or model could be ran to its knees, as it seemed. So years after shamelessly taking credit for success just because I designed every mechanic of the workflow, I realised I didn't deserve a single ounce of it because Mum's philosophy of running the stall was the soul that bound everything else together. Without that, everything simply broke apart, shattered into bits of useless entities of their own.

Mum probably did not even know she was business-wise. To her, success came from hard work for everyone who played a part. In fact, she repeated that again when she was lamenting sadly what it could have been for the new owner. "Lai chiong boh tyun ma," she went. It was a simple concept, yet extremely powerful. A direct translation would be to cut off from the long to support the deficiency of the short or 拉长补短 in Chinese. Despite it's simplicity, the concept could be profound because of the difficulty of defining what is 'long' and 'short' when running a business. When I did a reflection and recollection, I realised this principle was applied in every aspect of the business and not just pertaining to the end product only.

The essence of this idea was that it served as a balance between the strengths and the shortcomings of your business, be it the aptitude of staff, logistic limitation, product and price restriction .... everything. It is like life or health in general, only by balancing the yin and the yang, things works smoothly as we preferred it to. To apply this principle to employment or even migration, it is useful to know we cannot win every battle, all the time. I must take back my words against Emeritus Goh Chok Tong, who coined the term, "Net happiness," which received plenty of ridicule from the public, myself included. I am willing to give the Emeritus the benefit of doubt that he didn't literally mean Singaporeans should be happy because the balance sheet said. To be fair to him, the balance sheet, if it existed, probably showed a surplus back then. I'm not too sure about today. It could look like SMRT's last quarter's balance sheet.

Finally people here who come for migration related reads, if you are thinking moving to Australia (or any other country) you may want to use this approach to manage your expectations of migration. There is paradise in this world. Your property agent will tell you to pick two from the three categories:- 1) Cheap 2) Good location 3) but a house with all these factors doesn't exist. Even the pimp in Geylang will ask you to pick two out of the three catagories:- 1) Young and pretty 2) Cheap 3) Big boobs. Migration isn't as simple as picking two options out of three or be prepared to pay for it. Though many people found their happiness in their adopted home, they were prepared and probably went through their share of hardships. Most importantly, they took their losses with their gains well. If you can keep to this mentality, you'll be able to replicate the paths of your predecessors.

Simple maths.

Qns 1: Johnny invested $100 and lost 50% of his capital in his first year. On the second year, he made a 50% gain. How much does Johnny end up with at the end of the second year?

I bet none of you got this one wrong. The answer is, of course, $75.

If you insist that I got my calculations wrong, then you will be the favourite customer of your investing manager, taking good care of your retirement funds.

How about another one?

Qns 2: Johnny invested $100 and averaged a 0% gain in 2 years. How much capital will be left in his investment account?

If you have an answer for this question, you are a genius because there is no definite answer for this question. A straightforward 0% gain over 2 years will see Johnny keeping his 100 bucks intact. The devil is in the details - and the key word is 'averaged.' The question did not provide sufficient information on what constitute the 2-year average. It could be a pure no movement 0% stagnation, or something of a scenario in Qns 1 - losing 50% on year 1 and gaining 50% on the remaining capital gives a 0% average gain for 2 years.

So should Johnny realise his investment, he will be left with $75 in his pocket despite averaging a net gain of 0%.

So when a specific fund told the stakeholders they averaged a 20+% gain over x years, I didn't give a shit. Maybe you shouldn't too. Show me the accounts and I'll do my maths myself. Losing $50 out of $185 billions makes that a broken investment. For those who are more familiar with the principles of gambling, losing $50 out of $100 in the first game is no big deal because if you win the second game, you'll get back to $100 where you started off. It is much harder to do a comeback on a huge investment loss. In investment, your money is put into a product, a brand or even an idea. The first mistake any investor can make is to failing to cut their losses on a bad call. Anyone who allows a $50 billion loss is sleeping on the job because the extent of the damage on the capital was so serious because it makes a comeback a mammoth task.

That's the dilemma of an investor over a gambler. A gambler starts the next game fresh but the investor must decide if he or she should painfully cut a loss or risk holding on to a rotten investment who may never recover to its past glory, never mind outperforming its peak. Should you need to realise your losses of $50 our of $185 at a 27% loss, you'll need to make a 50% gain of your remaining capital to return to where you started off with. How many years would that take, considering another loss on the horizon is always possible because the same gambler on identity crisis is still pretending to be Warren Buffet.

So what happens if people are waiting to use that money?

The craziest thing I've heard of is that a fund manager has the authority to dictate when their investors are getting their money back. Just imagine your insurance agent, or financial planner whatever they like to be called, gives you a call on stormy night,

"Mr X, I would like to inform you that endowment plan that you have been painstakingly servicing for the past 10 years is not going to be matured in 20 years' time as agreed. It shall be extended by 10 more years because the company reckons you are going to live longer. The payout may be adjusted on yearly basis within our discretion. There are also plans to retain a portion (say more than 50%) of it after maturity for your own good, in case you spend it on charismatic foreign women."

Your reaction should never be anything lesser than, "Lan jiao, understand!" and rightfully so.

You can't really see them but they are there. That afternoon, I traipsed across the driveway after I was done with the toils. Normally I would go straight to the door, unlock it and walk straight up the stairs to search for little Albany for a hug.

That time instead, I walked to the end of the driveway at the fence abutting the verge where the Grava tree from the neighboring lot overhung. I closed my eyes and took a deeper breath. That scent took me back all the way to 1991, to the corner of the "Elephant Field" as we called it, at Queenstown Secondary Technical School (as it was called then). At this little corner, was overgrown shrubs and grass. No teachers or school staff would relish a venture into that territory. So it remained a secret of the pupils, the soccer players to be precise. In the midst of that overgrown, stood a short Grava tree that spawns pink grave fruits. We had no idea the exact species of this fruit that was but we knew it differed a lot from the typical Grava crops we import from Malaysia and that species was not available on sale for the mass market. Non-availability, secret corner, free food. What more could 13 year old transitioning teenagers, still with plenty of child in them, ask for? Many of us helped ourselves to the pink Grava on regular basis, didn't die from poisoning or whatsoever, and loved it.

The neighbour's tree didn't produce pink Grava but the matured fruits were about the same size. The texture of the fruit was similar. Soft, fragrant and juicy but not as sweet as its pink counterpart. I spared a few quiet seconds chewing on one while I stared mindlessly into distance, the mind filled with nothingness. Perth didn't seem to be such a strange place to me already. As one got into some sort of work routine, the differences in the new environment seemed blurred. You don't hear the harrowing croak of the crows anymore. I always waited for my Singaporean friends on holiday to exclaim how gigantic the crows here were and how much louder they crowed, as compared to those back home. I call these the sounds of life. When a city boy becomes a farmer deep into the jungle, the initial hiss of the winds and shrill of the crickets would ring out loudly in the mind at night. Survive long enough at that environment, the music of the jungle will become a symphony of lullabies to the city boy.

Though I am not a farmer, the principles work the same for a city boy learning to live in a quiet desert town. On quiet afternoons, the noise of the rare automobile passing reminded me of my visits to Malaysia, where my maternal family was based. Total silence after the odd car or motorbike passed by. I might have already decided what kind of melodies of life I preferred in early life. That might be why I didn't find it uncanny to hear a Singaporean telling me he or she had wanted to migrate out of Singapore long, long ago. It might be due to little details inception-ed into my minds all along. That may be why those who don't get it, never do.

I called mother and had a chat with her during a rainy drive. I wanted to tell her something that was bothering me in the mind for decades. My mother was a great story teller. When we were kids, she often described to us how her life was in a particular jungle somewhere in Malaysia. Life was poor, life was tough. "Hoh cham," was an adjective she used a lot to described general life back then. Perhaps she said that to coax us to appreciate what we had or it could be a simple reference to how much living had progressed ever since.

She based progress on the material we get to enjoy in our generation. We have warm water for bath upon an effortless turn of a knob. We have mobile phones not just for calling but the functions to stalk our friends without leaving our homes. We live in modern HDB flats built with expensive materials such as stainless steel and glass because bricks and concrete are just not inspiring enough. That's progress for you. In return, many of us worry about our job security, the ever-rising prices of a standard, no frills meal and how we can properly afford to raise a child. That is because the price tag of progress is pinned to a child the moment he is born. What is really progress, if we have to pay for it?

I finally asked mum if she remembered telling me how poor they were back in her days. She could and iterated her point. My grandfather worked in a rubber plantation and my mum grew up tapping rubber trees as her first job. Every worker was provided accommodation by the company. Those with family were similarly provided for. The houses were often built with wood and roofed in zinc plates. The floor was compacted dirt in the earlier days, then plain cement later on (progress). Workers were paid a pittance but meals and living expenses were extremely low by today's standard. Mum would often educate me on the types of vegetables by telling me how abundant those were back in those days, growing like weeds around the vast amount of unused zone just outside their houses. Tropical fruit trees such as durians, papayas, mangoes, rambutan and jackfruits were aplenty but seldom harvest because according to mum, they were sick of them. There were plenty of edible fishes in the rivers that were caught, barbecued over a flame and consumed during their leisure trips. Here, we need to examine whether it makes sense to compare 2 generations of different timezone using progress as a yardstick. Just imagine if I go back in time and hand my mobile phone to my mum, what good can she do with it in that era? I measure quality of life not by material, but the amount of time we need to put in into our jobs to cope with the demands of the society in our respective eras.

My grandfather worked himself up to a mere supervisor in the plantation. He had 5 children and my grandmother took care of them as a housewife. Accommodation was provided for so there was no worries about mortgage payments or rental. Power sources were scarce but so it was for everyone else living deep in the rural regions. It wasn't about poverty but the level of infrastructure set up at that moment in time. Fruits and vegetable were aplenty so much so no one touched them much. Family hens were kept casually to supply any family adequate eggs for consumption. Eventually, my grandfather saved enough to buy his own land to start his own farming business and bought more land with his profits. He managed to raise all his children, gave them ample education to survive of their own and left behind a small legacy in his death.

In our generation, the golden era with internet connection, 3D cakes and edible underwear, some of us could barely go unemployed for 6 months. Forget about having 5 children. Some of us hate kids anyway. How about a free flow of food supplies, no loans to service and a job that gives us a chance to save enough money to set up a business in today's costs? So have we really progressed then?

I explained to mum that they were, in fact, the wealthy ones. She thought about it for a moment and she laughed.

For almost a week, I had my shower setting tuned to the maximum right. You almost find this out before my wife did but last weekend the cat was out of the bag when little Albany needed the toilet and I let her in after she drummed continuously on the bathroom door yelping.

"Why are you taking cold shower?" The wife asked. Tucky asked the same thing when I told him that during our raids in Guildwars 2. To be exact, the fact thing he said was, "Crazy." Due to budget constraints in the earlier days and perhaps habitual preference in the later, Tucky's family never had warm water in their shower for a single day. That may not be unheard of in Singapore but it is certainly unusual these days. Thus, it is understandable in from Tucky's point of view, for me to take cold showers when I have the option not to.

Am I so hard up that I have to cut down on gas and shower time? For the time being, I better be specific lest the Perth people here start giving me even more freebies on top of the free chili, fruits and meals I received on regular basis. It is kind of embarrassing, but at the same time, harder to turn down kind people who made the effort to offer. For example, a neighbour turning up at the door with rice dumplings he made himself. What should I do? Ask him to return home with them? I better start buying newer cars and stop wearing the same clothes with holes and walk around the place. It doesn't help our case leaving our smashed rear quarter-glass on the burgled Stargazer for more than 2 weeks without repairing it. Anyway, let's clarify this for good, I didn't do this to save some money.

Autumn cold may be nowhere as biting as Winter but getting under the shower without heating can be challenging for someone who loves warm - hot - long showers even in Summer time. As opposed to Tucky, I was the kid with hot water showers all my life, except for my days in NS. In fact, the NS experience reassures me I won't fall sick from cold showers. Albeit water temperature in Singapore on its coldest night will never feel as icy as water on an Autumn Perth night and that it will feel a lot more uncomfortable, the principles remain the same. There is no tricks in trying out a cold shower. I am someone who doesn't believe in a gradual adjustment. That's why I never buy into the bullshit whenever a smoker tells me he is quitting smoking by reducing the number of cigarettes he smokes a day. That is as good as telling me, he'll move to Batam first before moving to Australia. When it comes to such transitions, it is everything or nothing. I hope you migrating punks bear this in mind and never forget it.

So I stood there right under the shower head naked. The air temperature was enough to make me shiver slightly. I placed my hand on the knob and turned it all the way to the coldest setting paused and closed my eyes. Then I pulled the triggered. How I danced. I quivered and struggle to catch my breath. I did that even on my 5th day when Albany was sitting on the toilet bowl watching his prancing father through the shower glass in amusement. Then she smiled and said, "Muddy puddles." I laughed through my misery and suddenly it felt like liberation.

When Jen and I were schoolmates in the university, she used to use a quote on me often. It went, "Do what you think you cannot do and you'll realise who you are." I'd retort, "A stupid fool," much to her annoyance. Unfortunately the wife was the wiser one than the smart mouth. In truth, each time when we make ourselves look at fear in the face so hard that it pierces, we gain the strength and courage to take the next thing that comes along. Thus, doing a thing that we fear every day is not entirely an act of stupidity. I couldn't pick a better time than to do this in late Autumn, as Winter is looming. They used to call me all sorts of names. Weird, oddball, someone even called me autistic when I was in the army. But then again, a little bit of craziness took me to where I am and gave me what I am having. I can't be more grateful for that. If the flames of passion are stroked by heat, then bites of insanity must be formed by the cold.

The feeling after an icy-cold shower may be actually worth the ordeal on its own. It has to be experienced, not described as it is difficult to do so. There I stood all bare after the cold shower, shivering in my fully wrapped in a towel otherwise if I had gone hot, totally unaffected by the effects of the chilling air on my bare skin.. The feeling of invincibility.

Every since Uncle Wong's baby Sarah joined Earth, he disappeared from the game, leaving Tucky and I the only miserable members of our guild, which I suspect, is the smallest guild in the Guildwars2 global server. Since then, our headcount increased by 50% when a Singaporean player with a curious name somehow chose to join us. While most players in the game have multiple characters, some even multiple accounts, the guy has only 1 male human Mesmer which he played since the beginning of the game. His character's name is Cutearmpit.

When it comes to game character names, usually players would choose something mighty, such as "Ultimate Slayer" or something to troll opponent players such as "Your Heads Are Mine" and just something ambiguous but cool enough like "Timeless X". You don't choose a name as such "Pussy Willow" or for that matter, Cutearmpit. Strangely, he didn't explain why he chose such a name for his game character. One could only assume he has some sort of fetish we aren't too keen to find out about. Whatever it is, we eventually gave up finding out. As far as I could recall, he didn't explain.

While Tucky and I have gotten used to his peculiar nickname, the rest of the random players who encountered us will be amused just as we did when we first met this guy. After playing together for a couple of months, we got to know one another a little better. We knew Cutearmpit works in a bank and he knew Tucky is getting married later this year and I am a strange, erratic Singaporean (yes, even in games) living in Perth. He had to bear with my random threats to kill someone for Summer heat and my gloats about the beautiful Autumn temperature.

Lately, a Taiwanese girl-gamer also joined us occasionally on dungeon runs. I knew her since the beginning of last Summer and eventually introduced her to our tiny group. She is a funny girl whom I got along well with though her command of English is limited. She plays a Guardian as her main, protecting us with her enchantments. Her Chinese interpretation of the game ticks me off often, such as calling herself a 铁龟 due the nature of her character's class dynamics. Like Cutearmpit, her nickname drew my attention and we got to know each other after I asked her what does her name mean. Her name is Meebao, which she later explained it was meant to be "Rice baby".

All along, Cutearmpit seemed to have little interest in Perth, except for acknowledging the fact or telling random party members kangaroo jokes about me. Lately though, he commented several times about my working routine. He probably noticed it during the couple of public holidays in Singapore, where I had to go to work here in Perth, obviously. When I logged into the game, his first respond was an exclaim that went, "Wah! You home from work so early?" I shrugged it off by telling him, "Uncle, I start work at 7am leh, what are you doing at 7am in Singapore?"

For awhile, he had no response whenever I reminded him of my working hours. On Vesak day, out of nowhere, he told us in the guild chat that he had been really envious of Meebao and I. He pointed out that he saw Meebao in the game at 9am in the morning, still at home preparing to go to work and then me at 4pm in the late afternoon and told us he had to work extended hours like how we know it in Singapore very often. Little did he know Meebao is a pathologist and is planning to semi-retire the next month, working on part time basis. She shared with me she was "sick of working" and want to take a break from her rigorous work routine. When I asked her how is she going to survive with just 1/6 of her pay working PT, she simply told me life is short.

I've been there before. Prolonged envy is not healthy for a person. It breeds unhappiness and a false sense of inadequacy. What Cutearmpit didn't realise was that Meebao and I have similar but uncommon priorities in life. We are ones in many and it was just unfortunate that he has been meeting both of us at the same time on regular basis. What bothers Cutearmpit wasn't the wish to have more time to play the game but a slow painful realisation that "that" is not the only Way. In my position, I am qualified to tell you how easy it is to be engulfed in the Way such that we first assume and eventually accept, that the rest of the world works that way. I'd just need to listen out for the new Singapore in Perth to comment how very silly that the price if diesel is higher than petrol here. Truth to be told, many ex-Singaporeans in Perth remains adamant and occasionally annoyed some way or another about how things "should be" but isn't in Perth. (and the rest of the world, in fact)

It is clear to me how a human mind can be programmed to an entire different reality if one is to be put through a specific routine and being fed a certain paradigm long enough. A newly arrived Singaporean couple proved that right. The lady was a nurse in Singapore and was told too often how easy for healthcare professionals to find work in Perth (or anywhere in the world really) and came with an expectation she could walk into a job in a matter of days. She asked me for advice and told me that "even fast food restaurants are not hiring and I didn't know it is that bad here.") though she was only 2 weeks young here. To come with a preset mentality, the shock couldn't come ruder and has since make it seems harder than it is. In reality, nothing has really changed in Perth. The good and bad times are just in the state of mind. That is coming from someone who came to Perth against the frantic warnings from a friend's uncle, who have been living in Perth for decades, that times were really, really bad in 2011. As far as I am concerned, times are never good. Trust me on that.

"Is the short working hours the reason why you went to Perth?" asked Cutearmpit. I probably came to Perth with a general idea that "things will be better", sold to me by Jen of course. To be fair, no one will leave their home country for another that they don't think they will be better off at. Some eventually returned to where they came from, after they didn't find that rainbow at the back of their minds. Perhaps the bo-chap attitude in me helped me in more ways than I expected. I came with the hope of a better life but I expected it rough and I got both. To ease Cutearmpit's agony, I told him my story briefly. About my work regime, far worse than what he was going through when I was in Singapore. About how I came here hopeless, weary and lost with no friends, little money and a pregnant wife. About how I worked myself to exhaustion with multiple injuries and permanent scars in the early days until he met me online as a persona that seems to work very little and sucking strawfuls of Pina Colada while outplaying him with my Mesmer in PvP despite I am a left-moused player.

Behind anyone seemingly doing well, there is a story about sacrifice. A rich farmer may sacrifice his marriage for want of enlightenment in the jungle. A politician may sacrifice his sanity to live a life of ridiculed puppetry. A salaried worker may live an entire life of financial slavery to chase expensive toys and touring experience. The glamours are never given but as an exchange for something that hollows one out from within. It is simply about picking the sacrificial aspect. In that sense, life has a peculiar knack to select it for us. Randomly, unfortunately. Sometimes the arrangement works naturally for many of us. On occasional cases when they don't, it is important to realise that, we simply have to set it to manual, put it in our hands and select it ourselves.

How many of us would have the courage to self impose a semi-retirement in our 30s, learning to live on 1/6 of our original pay? The keyword here is living on lower pay - not living on savings. So the argument that a pathologist who had earned and set aside enough to do so is invalid. How many of us is willing to live on $800 a month, as an exchange of buying back the precious time we claimed of utmost priority in our life? Must that be an exchange, are these really mutually exclusive? Of course not. It is possible to have lotsa time for your family and have enough financial means to maintain your quality of life. To do so, you'll either need the luck of the devil to win your lottery or sacrifice Security - that's the big S that only a special minority are willing to exchange - to take the risk of setting up business. The fear of the unknown, anxiety and endless worries in exchange of the possibility of having the cake and eat it eventually. The bigger your dreams, the bigger the exchange deal.

I hope Cutearmpit understands the point I was trying to put across. That life is like hanging on to a monkey bar, to reach out for another, you have to let go an existing - always with the risk of falling.

A Singaporean In Australia

Past Rants