Sigh..

Why sigh? I have no real idea, maybe its because of my pathetic grades, maybe its because of the totally wasted holidays (albeit halfway through), maybe its because of "other things"..

I'm just a bit confused with life now, and yeah, all aspects of life. My dad and friends always say, 船到桥头自然直。Maybe my problem is that I don't have a boat to start off with? Actually the boat is there, just that the captain (which is me) isn't ready to set sail yet. That's because I'm still anchored to the old world of conventionalism, being brought up the way I am, study hard get a job and earn $. Now that I've completed almost .. 13 years of education, I still cannot find the entrance to the "big sea". Still playing silly computer games, still joining my friends for KTV (no offence though), actually spending day after day lazing around at home doing nothing but surfing the net, playing online games and listening to mp3s.

I wonder how different I would have been if I had been in my dad's generation. I always feel that I'll never be able to live life fuller than a person like him. He was brought to Singapore before he could walk and being in a huge extended family, his dad (my grandfather) passed away before he could walk or talk. The youngest of 7 children, he attended school in Singapore. After lessons which ended around 12 noon, he would have 1 hour's grace period to go home, change and reach the coffeeshop at Beach Road to help sell prawn noodles. Anyway without our ah-kong, the resident "dictator" was my eldest uncle, the eldest of the 7 children. So my dad would go home after school, change, perhaps play and monkey around with his neighbour (the hairdresser's kid) and when the big clock on the wall hit 1, he would know it was time to go. Then he would often have to carry "steaming hot" bowls of prawn noodles to customers. Because there were no plastic bowls in those days, all the bowls they used were made of porcelain and so once you drop them, that's it. Its automatically a scalding on your leg and a knuckle down on your head courtesy of my eldest uncle. Did I mention that even if you made it to the end of the day without spilling anything, your palms would still get 水泡 or "pong pah" in hokkien because the soup is so hot it just cooks your flesh?

Can you imagine living such a life? Work after school for everyday of every week, save 2 days of Chinese new year every year. So that's technically 363 days a year. And its not like you have comfortable quarters to live in, going back to your bed was practically diving into a colony of bedbugs. Trust me, you will really scratch till you bleed when you get attacked by bedbugs (I had an experience from secondary school till college..) You think about now, how my family is relatively better off selling ngoh hiang. They used to only have the chance to eat it during Chinese New Year. Yes, it was sold only during that period of time.

Maybe it is only through going through some real tough shit that one can mature. Unlike all of us, living in a cocoon of creature comforts, airconditioners, handphones, computers, radio, television.. How many of us actually make full use of the day that we have to spend? I doubt even half of us that can be so industrious without any pressure on us. Its incredible that a family of 20+ people lived in a shophouse then, fighting for their survival while in my case I'm living with my 4 other family members is a house where we are too lazy to tend to the grass at times. How conceited humans could possibly me you tell me.

After all this pointless and senseless whining I still have no sense of direction in life so .. I really have no idea.