Nothing interesting

My apologies for my lack of updates over the years. When you have nothing remarkable in the past few years and they do not build substantial things, they do not make you a better person, you just simply do not grow and there is nothing interesting in a stale plastic thing that was me in the past few years. 

Life is not about driving a big car, living in a big house, wearing designer clothing, living harmoniously with a wife and having some well-adjusted kids, or dining in the hardest to book restaurants as and when you desire. Life is about making the most out of what you have.

Everyone is shaped by the era they are in. My grandparents had to make a choice over a poor and resourceless China and a poor and resourceless newly independent country they were in, and they chose the latter, simply because their Chinese homes were so fragmented they might have more resources to survive with. They were tragically right, as China went through the initial pain of stabilization. My parents also had to make a choice: align with a clearly ascending Japan/US/Europe presence in my region, or stick with what their own parents and grandparents already knew, the same old Chinese they knew, and they honestly chose the latter with open eyes because there is no guarantee the West would dominate forever, and they are right - however too late for them. They lived much more modest lives than their counterparts who grew with the West's influence in our region and our country. They did, however, leave us with the message do not give up with China, and those who heed this message really beat the odds and achieve success on our own, if we make the best of what we have.

Am I in the best time in my life with the most opportunities? When the good news comes that Malaysian or Singaporean Chinese people like me find success in China, I just could not help but to question. What is success? If I learnt anything from these people, success means the right to live in China and to contribute relevant things that Chinese people need. People of Indian or European or African descent, to me, seem more celebrated and valued in China than people like me, people of Chinese descent who just had parents or grandparents who moved out of China out of circumstances. We do not belong to China and feel lost in China. Despite my parents' best planning and wishes, when we love China, we may not appreciated, we might be even taken for granted and we feel it. But if we do not support China, we are the first to be criticized because we are supposed to support everything Mother China does, by default, even if we hold other citizenships ourselves. Just look at Fish Leong not supporting Lin Dan over Lee Chong Wei, her compatriot, it is exactly a type of Chinese nationalism that even people of Chinese descent are expected to follow through.

I honestly like many things China does, and consider China as a positive force of the good. However, I feel shameful I am not good enough or have the relevant skills to immediately bring good to China at this stage right now. Like my grandparents and parents, I will have no other choice but to choose to be sidelined, as a Chinese Singaporean born to a Chinese Singaporean and a Chinese Malaysian. I am not the suffering Malaysian Chinese who would tolerate themselves as second class citizens who gets the most good from China, I am not living on a country where Chinese troops fought against and then made peace with due to regional strategic importance, and my land has no resources China needs either. I am not even talented enough to contribute to the Chinese Motherland, to the extent my parents and grandparents would say I am good for nothing, I am not even working in the Government, a big firm or say, 'startup founder'.

In the next century, I am not even certain whether Singapore will still survive, and I do not think China or Indonesia will conquer Singapore. Singapore will sink as long as she is irrelevant to the rest of ASEAN/Southeast Asia, which means Singapore is no longer needed to balance the interests of India, China and AUKUS. And given that China has no interest having people of Chinese descent back in China because we are brought up with different viewpoints, they can't even quite assimilate 7 million ethnic Chinese in Hong Kong so what's with the 20+ million Chinese people in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia? We will either accept that we are no different from second class people in our neighboring countries, or we chart an alternative way to mere survival.