home stretch and milo

Lornie Road. I keep coming back to this analogy to get me through the present moment: When you run the cross-country trail at MacRitchie, the final stretch back to the starting point is a pavement alongside Lornie Road. While in the forest, you are winding along amongst trees, and perhaps if you weren't keen on being mandated to run this trail every year, you might want to stop and walk. But once you emerge from the trail onto the pavement along Lornie Road, that's the final stretch - run straight and you will cross the finish line, which you can see is ahead of you, because it is a straight road. More often than not, you will want to sprint, or start running again if you had stopped, because you know it is coming to an end. 

I am using this as an analogy for the gargantuan goal I have to attain right now. I am setting up my new home, for just me and Sayang. After months of unpacking, purchasing, planning storage space for this studio I am currently living in, I just have the Lornie Road stretch left to complete this task that comes under various working titles: home care, A+S Studio Life, avalon recreates. After I have set up a fully functioning home that I can manage, I can focus on proper self-care, Sayang-care, and going back to cat rescue management work. For that last item, I have already started to shift and pivot my thoughts and actions towards it, talking to the volunteer-managers, mentally planning my personal re-training for the role and the sector, working on the vision ahead that I need to return to set, as the course a captain of a vessel ought to direct for their hardworking crew. 

Back to MacRitchie and my new home, I use the cross-country analogy, because it does feel like a trail run, something equally if not more physically demanding due to chronic pain, fatigue, and depression. I have lived in this new place for almost four months, and still I have not fully achieved the goal, because my chronic illnesses and disability mean I am slower in everything I do around the house, needing plenty of rest in between, or simply idling while fighting fatigue and depression symptoms that just make it very hard to get up and get things done. Like how it is really hard for someone with depression to even get out of bed to do basic daily activities. I am slightly more functioning than that, but nowhere near able standards. 

It often feels like I'm a workaholic trapped in a disabled body. In this case, maybe a cross-country runner that is being trapped. As a result I also have a to deal with guilt that I am unable to do things I have planned out for this trail run. I try to practise self-compassion, but that state of mind is on a pendulum, with the other side being self-blame. "You should be doing Tasks 1, 2, and 3," and "you need to give yourself a break." There will be people who believe I am just non-stop whining about something I am not doing, and should just spend the time and effort actually just doing it and shut up. Whether these haters' voices came from the past or present, it isn't something I can forget, especially when I know there still are people who are saying the same thing in different words, behind closed doors. 

The problem with "giving myself a break" and talking about trying to practise self-compassion is that self-blame is my automatic setting, even though I have gotten better at dealing with it now; it is an ongoing process with a lot of obstacles to overcome. Yet I don't recall ever blaming myself as I ran long distances back in my teens. I wasn't the fastest; the highest ranking in my school that I had ever achieved for cross-country was being the fiftieth runner to finish, ranked out of the entire school from secondary one to four. Mandatory sporting event heats in that school, I usually didn't even qualify for the races I had to sign up for. But I didn't beat myself up much after such losses. I could score an A for my 2.4 kilometre runs, so I felt good enough, even if just barely. So if I can now put blinders on and stay focused on this Lornie Road home stretch of my current goal, stop blaming myself for being weak because I was slow or simply walking, I will eventually get there. And there would be lovely ice-cold Milo served free-flow from the Milo truck at the end of this run. 

Labels: state, status, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 4:03 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

The Guilt of Suicide #MHAW2017 #MHAW [TW: Suicide]

Today, I am feeling guilt. Thinking about all the people who have given up on me through the years, because I keep attempting to take my life when depression hits its hardest — which, is far too often. I am chronically suicidal; my depression is both chronic and severe. I will never totally be rid of this, and yet: I have been given up on, and I feel I deserved every desertion.

"Elaine, again?!" "You need to stop." I wish I could be rid of the self-hatred and desperation my illness makes me go through every now and then. I wish there was a cure. But there isn't.

I am writing this, because I need to tell myself that I never deserved any of these reprimands, desertions. For every one of these 'talks' or wordless cut-offs from my person, I feel more guilt and shame, no unlike the very same feelings that drive me to end my life, to rid myself from them completely. You actions toward me make a difference.

Labels: state, status, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 10:35 AM    [ 1 comment | ]

trauma, survival, safety, relationships, and my bed as safe space

After recently reading a lot about the science behind trauma, this morning I came to a revelation about my own life, specifically my behaviours in my romantic relationships. I have classically put up with a lot of shit in my relationships - not to discount these men also having to put up with me - sometimes, for far too long. I remember my three years with C as a waste of three years of my life. When faced with shit I have to put up with in my marriage, I always tell myself to continue to bear it, to never give up, to lean towards loyalty and longsuffering. These are my values. Nothing has changed.

I am not known for my survival instinct. Instead, because of emotional trauma in my childhood, the neuroplasticity of my brain has changed. Instincts have been thwarted. I have become chronically suicidal, viewing my life as worthless to this very day, believing my life is expendable. I ended up becoming hypervigilant, as Marcus once said to me, a good person to have in a team in the event of a plane crash on a deserted island. The ideal sense of protecting one's self is far from being in equilibrium in me. I oscillate between wanting to die, and having panic attacks triggered by simple things.

What I realised today is how my values in the relationships of my life pair with my thwarted survival instincts. I innately believe I deserve to be emotionally abused or neglected. My parents, whom I love, were my protectors, providing me with a safe space to grow up in while I was living with them. But they were also the people who threatened to abandon me, who stifled expressions of my fear and sadness and anger, who criticised me incessantly, who neglected me by not being around - to pick me up from the babysitter, to be at home with me, to not treat me as invisible or a burden. It was something I got used to, and my brain equated the safe haven of love with emotional neglect and abuse. i believe I deserve it.

My Bed by Tracey Emin

When I did imagery work with a psychologist during my hospital stay last year, I pictured my safe space as my bed, in my current home. I have gone through a lot of ups and downs while being in this bed, whether asleep or awake, for over a decade. To cry, I curl up in a foetal position in bed with my pillows. To ponder life choices and meditate on what is important, I spend time thinking and writing in this bed. The times I felt such emotional pain that I overdosed on pills, most of them occurred in this bed. To temporally feel the pleasure that anhedonia prevents my brain's circuitry from experiencing, I have spent time with various men and boys in this bed. The times the men I loved have hurt me, I retreated to this bed to try and heal, and often re-invited them into my figurative bed as well, to try and re-enact the traumatic incidents. I have received far too much emotional abuse and neglect in this same bed too, the treatment that I feel I deserve from the men I love. I believe I am that flawed, to deserve the kind of emotional pain that has been inflicted on me, whether consciously or not. I blame no one but myself, and feel a deep sense of shame only belief in God can alleviate.

In trying to recover from the physiological response to emotional trauma, I have thought about all these things and how best to realise what my heart, mind and body need to be able to live well and live fully. I cannot keep thinking that I deserve to be treated badly because I believe that it signifies love. I should not equate love with shutting up and putting up with various forms of emotional abuse: being ignored, being blamed, having my emotions invalidated, being misunderstood.

I have nowhere else to go but writing here to say the following: J has been emotionally distant from me, from our marriage, almost from the time it began. Of late, this has reared its head as a cold war initiated by him, catalysed by my not understanding the sequence of events in stories he tells me, because his words are often unclear to me. He got annoyed with me for this again recently and said angrily that he doesn't want to talk to me anymore. This overflowed into him telling me not to text him, because my texts trigger anxiety in him. He said that when he does talk to me openly, I get upset and suicidal, even though those times he opened up were not in vulnerable confidence, but in hurtful blaming words and tone. He says I threaten him with suicide, even though I have never attempted suicide as spite and revenge towards him. Hence, for all this and more, he no longer wants to talk to me, at all. He admitted that I am not deserving of high regard as his wife.

The turning point happened around the time J's mom fell ill and subsequently lost the battle with cancer. We got married during that time so as to have her present as his witness while she was still alive. When she went back to the hospital during her last days, I couldn't get to the hospital often enough to visit her, because I had to go to the cattery to feed medication every day, because SGH was far from our place and going out of the house and having to commute are stressful activities to me.

During her final moments, J's mom's bed in a C class ward was overly surrounded by people. A tape of a Buddhist chant was repeatedly playing. Chanting is something I find to be an auditory trigger, though I do not know why. But more so, being in an overcrowded scenario, I eventually succumbed to a panic attack. I had to leave the ward for a walk. During the time I was walking around hospital grounds, J's mom passed away.

I was not present for him during his time of need. What did I do for his mom? I can remember weak, discrete efforts of mine. I hugged him when he came home from the hospital visit that was the official prognosis. I arranged for her to see a private respiratory specialist for a second opinion. I only had to pay $200 for that. I suggested marriage earlier than I promised, so that J's mom could finally see her older son get married. I arranged for a pastoral visit to the hospital during which J's mom found salvation in Christ. A list of items anyone could count on one hand. J said I did not help him with any of the logistics of her death. He understood why I couldn't do more, but was and still is disappointed in me. In a text he recently sent me, he said, "And you expect me to view you highly as my wife?"

Our only semblances of a union are in shared meals, his doing of household chores in my stead, and his providing for me financially. I truly am a burden, because I feel like I am seen as a duty, and obligation to fulfil, something he feels he needs to do so as to do the right thing. But because of my somehow unyielding loyalty and willing capacity to put up with emotional trauma, I hang on, and accept all of the abuse, silence, and feeling like I am nothing but a responsibility to bear. I deserve all of this, not only because I have hurt him, but because love to me means to limitlessly accept this kind of emotional trauma, from the very people I love. I should not expect to be esteemed, to be held in high regard, because I truly don't deserve it. I am not saying these things to be melodramatic. I am clear-headed while sharing these beliefs of worthlessness, beliefs that I have upheld for almost all my life.

I was writing in my journal earlier, around noon. Although it was hard to express how I felt about the cold war J is having with me, I knew I had to at least try and write some of it down. It started with me writing about how J said he wouldn't go and pick up ear medication for a fungal infection Scotty is suffering from, simply because he didn't want to do it. This exchange of words happening at breakfast time. Writing all of that made think long and hard, as journalling often does. In a moment of clarity, I recalled how the human species, like other animals, has the same brain that wills us to survive and thrive. This should be the norm, this is to be expected. While we cannot avoid unpleasant events in life or even trauma, we are still wired to protect ourselves. For me to believe I should put up with the lack of love and attention, that I deserve to be emotionally neglected and attacked, means that my survival instincts have short-circuited. Fight or flight, nothing else; not to stand there and get attacked by a predator believing that I do not deserve to live.

I cannot survive without J. I have no income nor means to support myself and the furkids. Even J himself has said, that he feels his mission is to help me recover to a point of functionality, such that even without him I could survive. He prepares his investments such that in the event of his untimely death, I could access those funds. This is important to my survival too, but it is in opposition to my misdirected belief that the one who provides for me should also have the right to emotionally abuse me. As a result, not only am I once again being traumatised from this cold war and his apparent lack of willingness to try and reconcile, I am faced with a paradox from my screwed up neurobiology. Fight or flight - I don't know which to choose. But today I took a step towards realigning my beliefs, to try and think of myself as worthy of love, as someone who shouldn't have to go through emotional abuse and neglect and not recovering from it. I don't know if I should continue to tell myself that love is patient and therefore I must continue to bear this pain.

Labels: me, state, status, therapy, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:09 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

Ending an 8/10 fibro pain flare

Labels: me, state, status, therapy, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:32 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

Paying For Care, Impressing My Loved Ones to Care and Failing to Be Cared For All the Same

I am sure most of you would agree that repression is not any good for the soul. With that in mind, repressing my account of the story below has taken strong medication to make me keep it to myself lest I anger people - making people around me upset is one of the motivating factors behind many things I do - but it has merely calmed the physiological trauma symptoms. So here I am, writing all of the hurtful things I experienced yesterday night.

On that note, in the light that undergoing psychodynamic therapy has cast on many aspects of my life, I realise that many actions of mine are postured with the fear of making J upset. I have in fact been trying to impress the people I love since I was young. I tried to impress my parents, so that they would find me worthy of their love. Because of that, when I was asked to do something I would likely do badly in (by my own perfectionist standards), like play the organ for them to listen, or speak Mandarin, I refused to, until they gave up asking. Instead, because my parents were proud that I was proficient in my mother tongue - English - thus I made sure I tried my very best to read every book they bought for me even if it may have been a bit beyond my age range of understanding. I believe that this proficiency in English was something that helped me gain some love from my parents. I managed to get some verbal affirmation from them for this, and that helped me feel worthy of their love. On the other hand, crying because I was emotionally hurt, was so prohibited by my parents that I never felt safe to cry in their presence until I was 17 years old. The repression of crying and negative emotions made me often hide away to cry, for my entire childhood. When I had to start seeing a psychiatrist, I felt I let them down, and only revealed this to them reluctantly, because negative emotion was something that would make me even more unworthy of their love.

As I grew into adulthood, I did the same posturing with my boyfriends. The fact that I was unworthy of love was pummelled into me with hurtful actions and words from them, H being the main perpetrator among all my exes. Even C, who said hurtful things towards the end of our three-year relationship, praised me verbally when I did something well in his eyes. With J, I get extremely anxious about him being upset. All I want is to make him happy. I fail most of the time. Every time he is upset, I feel it is my fault. I try my best to make him feel better. This is so even when he is the one in the wrong. And yet, I am not worthy. Why is my very being, not enough for my other half?

This sets the stage for the story I am writing about today.

My new psychiatrist at CGH - Lim - assigned to me when I was admitted to hospital on the day of my suicide attempt this year - is incompetent; I feel unsafe and traumatised by every single of other five times I have had a consult with him. I will now list the reasons why he is not a good doctor.

1. In the place of having a conversation with me, his patient, he prefers to pontificate. There is no room for me share how I feel, my concerns; he rarely even asks questions, and when he does, he does not give me the courtesy of paying attention to my replies. Three of the five times I have had a consult with him, he spars with me verbally. My mother told me that on the day I was admitted and talked with him, he was arguing with me. My mom and dad are bewildered by the fact that a doctor behaves like this. Such behaviour is not right when talking to someone without a mental illness, and much less so when talking to someone with post-traumatic stress.
2. He is no bedside manners at all. When I talk to him, he is looking at the computer screen, typing. No eye-contact. Closed body language. If I start to cry because of intense emotions, he ignores it completely. Every psychiatrist, psychotherapist, counsellor I have met will offer me tissue. He never does. No tissue offered is not as bad as someone stopping what they are doing and offer to listen in order to calm me down. 
3. He has no understanding of me as a patient. After I had already started psychodynamic therapy for a while, he decides to inform me why I should go for psychodynamic therapy. It is simply incredulous, to ask me to do something I am already doing on a regular basis, as if I was uncooperative, when in fact I enjoy my sessions with Dr T a lot, and in fact the only reason why I am still seeing Lim is because that enables me to see Dr T on a subsidised rate. He did the same verbal theorising to me about my sessions with my psychologist while I was inpatient. I had already been having sessions with my psychologist weekly. He spoke at me to verbally strong-arm me into attending sessions with my psychologist. This is like saying to someone who is busy eating a burger and already halfway through, to exhort him to eat a burger. 
4. When I ask him whether Lexapro, my first-line antidepressant I had been taking for years and with tangible effects in the past and also helps with anxiety, that he had struck out of my psychopharmalogical regime, could be reinstated - he said no. Fair enough, he is a doctor. But when I asked him for reasons why I shouldn't be on it, you would reckon the doctor would explain with medical reasons: why it is harmful to go back on it, or why with my present state of health I no longer need it. His answer was neither of these, but, "Who has a better track record with making decisions, you or me?" If you ask a GP for antibiotics for the flu' and he says no, you would likely get a reply like, "This is a viral infection, antibiotics are for secondary bacterial infections and therefore won't work, so it is no point taking them, unless you show signs of a bacterial infection." I hardly believe you would get the reply that Lim gave me. 
5. He has seen me for a total of five times. I might have miscounted; maybe it was six times instead. Nonetheless, compared to the years I saw Dr Kong before, and Dr Marcus after, he definitely does not know me as well as they did. Furthermore, they are private doctors, their salaries are directly impacted by their performance as doctors, whereas public service doctors don't suffer from a loss in income if their patients aren't treated well. Kong, who wrote a thesis on only-child environments causing mood disorders in the 70s, attributed my symptoms of depression an anxiety to being an only-child raised by a slew of foreign maids. He also believed that my symptoms were due to emotional trauma in childhood - something based on the attachment theories by John Bowlby. Dr Marcus had also said before that he believed my depression was organic, and not a personality disorder. However, after the grand total of five or six times Lim has seen me, he decides all these years those two doctors were wrong and what I have is borderline personality disorder. I have read BPD symptoms over and over, think of people I know who have BPD, and I really do not identify with the disease. I told Lim that I don't agree with his diagnosis, which is based on very little information he has on me. He said that "We shall have to agree to disagree" and continued typing on the computer. 
6. In our last consult - that was when he said I have BPD - I broke down and cried in his consultation room, because he refused to listen to me and why I believe that he was wrong. I break down and cry when I see Dr T too, during therapy. However, Lim told the management that I was causing "loud altercations." In a psych clinic, almost every patient would be prone to breaking down into tears. How could this be construed as causing "altercations"? If you term it as a nervous breakdown and corral me into a safe/isolation room, it would be far less a betrayal than saying I caused "altercations".
7. The management was informed that I caused "loud altercations" because we were in correspondence with them. Lim suggested in my last consult with him, whether I would like to change doctors. He then later said, when I went to the clinic for my regular appointment with Dr T, he failed to find any doctor within the entire psych clinic at CGH. We wrote to the management to appeal to them to find a way we could change doctors. The management declined, saying at first that they cannot find another doctor, then saying that I had caused these loud altercations when I had broken down in tears, that I disagreed with his diagnosis, so they no longer want me to see them for my psychopharmalogical needs. The fact that Lim can impress upon the management that these are characterisations of my behaviour when I have done nothing wrong, is a low blow indeed. 
8. Because of his behaviour and actions I feel unsafe being in a consultation with him alone. He may not be physically violent but he is meting out dictatorial emotional oppression. I feel as fearful being in a room with him as I would in the presence of someone who is close to violently attacking me. 

Labels: state, status, therapy, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:11 PM    [ 1 comment | ]

Patterns

I've had friends throughout my life who were good to me as well as friends who were mean to me. I know you're probably thinking, mean people are not my friends, friends wouldn't be mean to each other. But I've willingly continued in friendships with people who always wanted their way and their say, even if it hurt me.

I don't know what that pattern is a symptom of; everything has its source. I guess it could be that I tend to love too unconditionally, even beyond a point when it is no longer healthy for me to do so. I often go into interactions with people with an implicit trust that they will do unto me what they would want done to themselves by others. Another reason could be that I'm so hungry for friendship and affection, that even if you slapped me in my face and called me a wretch, I would still regard you as a friend, because I need someone, not bearing with the emotional abuse means letting go of someone I love. Both reasons are probably true.

What does this mean then? It boils down to just poor little Elaine as a young child, again. Back then, I wished someone would give me emotional and physical intimacy. Today, I'm still starving for those things.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 9:00 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

#avalonreads On the Theme of Escapism

The theme of escapism has bubbled to the surface in my recent readings, and may partly also account for my lack of writing - of book reviews, or blog posts on any other subject. (I would at least post on Instagram, but my camera is not working, hence some silence from me in that realm.) I keep immersing myself in reading, with some reluctant physiotherapeutic exercise as an accompaniment. Have I sunk into reading as an escape?

I'm no stranger to escapism, be it the neutral activities of watching YouTube documentaries non-stop, or playing game after game of Sudoku, or those almost socially-unacceptable addictions to alcohol and cigarettes. It is a way I dissociate; numbing myself and thereafter becoming someone else that is not me, and it means distancing myself from the pain and anguish I accumulate within every day. These activities require very little thought, and because they are mindless they seem even more dangerous as addictive means of escape.

I've been quite disciplined, focusing on, apart from the necessary chores of daily life, exercise, reading, and writing (in my journal, minimally). But sometimes I read excessively and instead of exercising and whatnot. I hardly nap anymore, which is necessary for managing the symptoms of fibromyalgia. I've noted my obsession with reading in earlier posts, but obsessions need not be addictions. I should stop clicking post after post after post on websites, or finishing one chapter after another and another, in a way that gives my day little manoeuvre for other activities.

I read this story on New Yorker, Relive Box by T. Coraghessan Boyle, which reminds me of spec-fic novels by a favourite author of mine, Margaret Atwood. The Relive Box is a console that allows you to experience in virtual reality, user-specific times in your past. The protagonist often relived till dawn, and it affected his work because he wasn't sleeping. That sounds like me when I delve into a video game. I would start at 8pm and the next time I looked at the clock, it would be 10am.

The Noonday Demon (which I'm almost halfway through) covers the correlation between depression and addiction. Andrew Solomon expounds on the nature of addiction and includes his own propensity to indulge in substance abuse. He writes:

"It gives me a kind of blissful energy and a sexual exuberance and a feeling of superhero power that are quite fantastic. I get to the point of being unable to string together a sentence and I don't care if I never string together a sentence again. I realise that the solutions to everything are simple and straightforward. Being high on cocaine breaks up your memory enough so that the past can't haunt the future. The chemical happiness of a good hit of cocaine feels completely uncircumstantial. I can remember sitting around with a numb nose, thinking that if I could freeze life in that second, I would do so and stay there forever. I almost never use the drug, but the idea that I would never want it is ridiculous. I fell in love with cocaine in those first minutes of rush. The spectre of imbalancing my brain and the devastating hangover are all that keep me away from the cocaine high."

How is substance abuse different from the high of reading and gaming, when all these activities allow us means of escape? I just finished this novel The Less Than Perfect Legend of Donna Creosote by Dan Micklethwaite, which is a light read about a woman who spends her lonely nights in the fantasies concocted by books she has read, of which there are so many that her floor is tiled with them. She has another deeper hidden addiction than reading, but the way she turned mere reading into a substitute for all else, is scary enough for me to stop and rethink my own obsession with reading.

The discipline required for activities such as exercise and personal grooming, is something I built and depended upon a lot for my recent recovery. Without it I would hardly be as ambulant as I am now. I have never been disciplined, even in childhood I didn't have a fixed bedtime. Although the symptoms of depression and fibromyalgia are often counter to what discipline requires of me, I have to fight them daily; on good days it feels like I'm canoeing against the current, on a bad day it feels like I'm pushing a boulder off of me. Sometimes I lose, then I go to bed and try again the next day. In such a climate, reading is my respite, but I have to force myself to consume it within set limits, so that I can at least brush my teeth daily.

Labels: books, pleasures, therapy, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 11:09 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

my thoughts that confluence around my current #avalonreads #dailyreads

In response to Trauma Stewardship, Lipsky and Burk, and The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, Andrew Solomon.

I want to change the world, because ever since I have had awareness of reality, I have found this world to be tangibly sad; so different from the worlds in my storybooks when I first learned to read. Whether it was because I have depression that began in childhood, altering my worldview, or because the world truly is a sad place, that has no bearing on my ambition to do good in this world in a big way. My perspective may be skewed; the lenses of my proverbial glasses definitively not rose-tinted - tea-coloured, more like. It makes for keenly-felt suffering, either my own but more pronounced than its actual proportion, or that of others, human or animal, as though it was borne by me as well. This is very painful, sometimes even more so than is usually felt during extremely depressed states; this weltschmerz may be triggered simply by current affairs. But it also empowers me; after I have reckoned with this pain I have the the unction to act upon injustice in aid of preventing this suffering, or on healing efforts after the fact.

I ask myself today, who am I apart from being God's child, apart from my parents or a string of significant others? In humility my answer used to merely be, "nothing," as it is sung, "I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow." But, if I need to be tethered to reality in aid of my own suffering, I need to know more facets to the truth of who am I, not in arrogant exalting of the self, but a refusal to deny looking at the mirror. Without observing my own reflection, acknowledging it, studying it, depression causes me to wholly believe I see nothing but a wraith in the mirror. I have learned to love everyone but myself, but I have failed to love my neighbour as myself, because my neighbour is God's creation and not a hollow-eyed wraith, long-dead and snuffed out. I have only known myself always as a part of another, like a moon orbiting Earth, when in fact I am greater than a star without a need to be attached to another. I must learn, that I am no longer a daughter in lack of parents' affection.

Labels: books, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 5:52 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

When volunteers disappoint

This is a sensitive topic. It is about people, hence.

Within my loyal, dedicated, motivated and committed volunteer family, I have some black sheep. Usually it is because their work in real life gets in the way.

When you often use your work as an excuse to fail at your volunteer commitments, to become a mediocre instead of excellent volunteer, you slight the rest of the family who - also - have work in real life. You are saying this to them: "Yeah my work is really important. Not like yours."

The volunteer family believes in excellence, not mediocrity. They don't just volunteer to pass time; they aim to change the climate of cat welfare in Singapore through whatever skills they can master. They are often humble, believing there is more they can learn, more they can change for the better.

Not everyone who loves cats are as noble as my volunteer family. Unfortunately I have some who are in the family that don't have this nobility. It doesn't anger me. It slights me a little. But it utterly disappoints me.

I have no qualms sending what our organisation calls Volunteer Valuation emails to people that need to buck up after failing time and again at various areas. I have no qualms asking these people to leave if they fail to change. I seldom have to do it, but sometimes it is necessary. Leeches need to be removed before they inject too much anti-coagulant into our system.

But I also believe people can be mentored towards becoming better at serving at LKP, becoming more fervent about our mission, taking ownership of the work that we do for cats, and building character values along the way. I always try this method first, sometimes to my own detriment. But I do this because I believe in people, and I love my volunteers as much as I do the cats. Just because cats cannot disappoint me, doesn't mean I don't love my human volunteers.

Which is why disappointment is the biggest emotion when volunteers fail at their tasks, not anger. Because when you love someone, expect their commitment and they fail, you get disappointed, not angry.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:53 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

i believe

I believe in Jesus as my saviour. I am not ashamed to say I am a charismatic Christian, and have been since 1995. I will never give my faith in God up. I believe no one is without sin except Jesus. I believe no one has the right to cast stones at another, or judgement of any kind. I believe in miracles. I am baptised by water and of the Holy Spirit. I know I am not perfect, but that God already loves me anyway. I believe in the bible. I believe in human rights. I believe the bible says that the door to our hearts opens or closes by our own will. I believe God respects everyone's right to choose. I believe the law of the land should reflect this. I believe that criminalising anything that does no harm to another is in itself casting stones no one has a right to. I do not believe in 'gay rights' but I believe in human rights, and they are the same thing.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 11:06 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

Sophisticated Online Bullying

I am not quite sure what to make of today's social media culture. Bullying has taken a new form, and the proponents of it don't even realise the impact of their actions. One would be able to research a whole thesis' worth on today's internet subculture; different from the 90s and noughties because of how sophisticated human behaviour has evolved.

The lower caste bullies take the form of 'haters' that have no logical sense to their destructive comments. Referring to the kind that lurk on STOMP and Yahoo, that basically find reasons to spew hateful words rather than speaking up because something is truly and logically wrong. Lower caste bullies do not understand what is truly wrong and what isn't because logic eludes them. Self-policing might eventually solve this problem. For those that refuse to change their hate-for-hate's-sake stance, they will likely just gather in an echo chamber of similar folks and then be cut off like an ox-bow lake. Well, one can hope.

No, I am not actually feeling resigned about lower-caste bullies today. I am concerned about the sensible and intelligent ones. Those that propagate truth. Yes, there are such bullies.

These bullies are so sophisticated in that they find one pearl of wrongness in a tweet, Facebook post or YouTube video - you name it, they are everywhere - and correct the person it originates from. The correction might be justified but the impact is not.

In real life, if someone were to say an equally wrong statement, the correction from the people who hear it is simply not as harsh. It could even be easily ignored as just a human quirk, or will be seen in the light of its context and the originator's entire personality and character. This is not to discount that said comment really could be insensitive or obtuse. We are just kinder when faced with a real person, body language and all. We generally fight mild injustices in the form of flawed statements with more kindness for our fellow human being.

Kindness almost eludes us when we are on online platforms. Unable to see or feel the other person entirely, it frees us up to be more critical because we cannot feel the other person without any imagination on our part.

In business and other discussions this is good because the socially-sensitive will be able to speak up with fewer repercussions. Online platforms where anyone can freely have a say is the internet version of, "May I speak to you in private please?"

But when it is a simple whine-and-opine post, does it really need so much scrutiny and correction? Perhaps it does because compared to a comment said aloud at a dinner table, online stuff goes much further. But in doing this kind of police work, aren't we forgoing the type of kindness we would display if this really was said at a dinner table? Because it is so much harder to intuit a person's feelings, character and personality online, we pretty much subconsciously discount all of it about a person and he becomes an avatar.

Yes, because we do have an innate emotional intelligence quotient, we intuit subtexts of what people are saying in real life. The EQ parameter online is simply lowly weighted - fact.

And this amounts to sophisticated online bullying that breaks my heart. Not just because I feel for those being bullied, but also for the bullies, that they have become so keenly aware of all the tiny injustices online that would otherwise be insignificant. Suddenly, everything is something wrong that needs to be corrected, online police work becomes so busy they never have any rest as bullies now.

How do we change this culture of sophisticated online bullying? Perhaps we need to put the emotional intelligence back into our social media apps. It means feeling harder, trying to find clues about subtexts otherwise plainly intuited in real life, and seeing real people around our dinner table, instead of displayed avatars.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 1:55 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

to all the men who inspire me with your art

You inspired me with your poetry through words and images; inspiration spurred so deep in, I almost fell in love with you right there. As I am the flower fading, you believe yourself to be but a wave on the ocean, transient and minute in the vastness of eternity. Yet to me you spoke with what seemed like vastness of eternity itself. Time almost halted when I listened to you.

I doubt I was meant to be the sole audience of your thoughts.

I wonder if you think of her, as I think of him, maybe too much like a refrain of Love Me If You Dare. But I wouldn't trust you otherwise, had you not been heartbroken before, lonely in a crowd, missing the wondrous moments you had with her. If I fell in love with you, I want to be a better version of that memory, but I can only be better, if you had that memory to begin with.

If you ever were to help kiss my tears away, I know mine won't be the first taste of salt on your lips. I only hope that my tears will not remind you of your own. But if they already do, selfishly I want for you to make art of it, because when you are so passionate, even if as a broken man, you are a wonderful artist. All of you - your words, your images, depending on which you you identify with - inspire me even more when you create out of brokenness. Come to me thereafter if you can, I will then kiss those tears away in return for your art.

I see what you create - every piece an immortal work of art. I want to have a stolen moment with you, to kiss you deeply, to feel you and taste you and make you vulnerable. Perhaps your art makes me want to consume you. Again, I know that none of you create your art for me, only, but this is what rises out of me when you create. I want to make you senseless, lose all restraint, and be for a moment a heap of nothing but flesh, moisture and deep breaths.

After which, you will go into the sunset, as they all do, because a man as great an inspiration as you are, will always leave me, to continually be inspired - and I will let you.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 7:11 PM    [ 0 comment | ]

(because @contrabandkarma told me to write): the war nurse

I wonder how war nurses feel. Dealing with soldiers away from home, already in emotional distress, wrecked further by the trauma of war. Blood, tears, last words and letters. The war nurse sees more soldiers dying or maimed or traumatised psychologically, than patients she nurses to health that go home relieved and happy.

Not only is the job heart breaking in itself, there exists the threat that one day, one dying soldier might be that one straw that breaks the camel's back. And she becomes irreparable, albeit still going about her duties, but numbed and overfilled with the sadness of the ward, and the world. Welschmerz.

Then there are the matrons, other nurses, nurses' aides, doctors. People who undermine you. Almost like a persecution, somewhat like how Mother Teresa was turned down time and again to be allowed to do missionary work in India. The war nurse loves her patients, but already pulled and torn by the amount of suffering she has sought to co-bear with the soldiers, she faces more crushing blows to her heart from the spirits of her comrades in medicine. It is a war after all, everyone is distraught, and has no luxury of pandering to or pondering over.

Even the young, school girl nurses' aides undermine her somehow.

There is no one to turn to, to whom she can simply whisper her woes, to let them occupy another vessel as well as her own. For she is either surrounded by others who have no vessel to bear, or people who will invalidate her thoughts through some magic of the absense of love and respect. Who will rape the contents of her vessel, or simply disallow them to enter their own.

She meets a farmhand, who works not far from the military hospital. He is cheerful almost everyday, despite the air raids and constant ambulance traffic passing him. He brings her field flowers, fresh eggs from the barn, walks with her when she can take a break off nursing the infirmed.

She tries to enter the farm boy's vessel with her worries and thoughts, but tragically realises, he cannot bear them. Simply because he knows nought of the deep river of empathy that drives her, for to him, a simple, good day's work that bears fruit to bring home to his family, is more than sufficient. The nurse understands this, but she has never been one who satisfied easily with such content. She continues to love the farm boy's sunshine, and decides to bury her vessel, for no one in this war, around her, now, will be able to hear of its whispers and not break without judgement.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 12:18 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

stigma on #mentalhealth patients in the workplace

I was reading a Time to Change article about stigma revolving around revealing one's mental ill-health at work: http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/blog/disclosing-mental-illness-bipolar-at-work

It is real, this stigma. There are people out there who think that I should not be taking care of rescue cats and running a cat rescue group because I have severe clinical depression. A minor few of the stakeholders, that is, the concerned public that knows about our work.

It extends even further. I am not likely to secure a job with another organisation than my own because I am mentally disabled. Never mind I am shit-hot good at whatever I do embark on (that's what people said). So to prevent stress on hiring managers on how to handle a person like me, I should do no-brainers like reception or administrative work perhaps. Only, I am over-qualified to do them and I won't get hired. So, no, I am not high on chances in getting a job outside of freelancing and my volunteer work (which pays me a small honorarium).

If I were to get a job (like my teaching stint in Indonesia) even after revealing my mental health status, I am a source of stress to the leaders and co-workers because I will often get panic attacks or psychosomatic illnesses. Who on earth wants to give so much medical leave to an employee? Eventually, I will be deemed un-useful and terminated.

Ways out of this stigma in the workplace? Organisations must understand the common mental illnesses well. They need to make accomodations for us, without undermining our actual ability to do the job. Kind of impossible for now, but perhaps someone will write a good policy paper on this for organisations to follow.

Another way is to go entrepreneurial. My choice of route. Navigate your business according to your own health and pace. Make your organisation a success, heck, a force to be reckoned with in your industry. And work your way towards getting your income from your venture. Disclose your mental illness, and with shit-hot work done by your hand to show, no stigma for you. Or at least, only from a few; but the minority tail cannot wag the majority dog. So, be shit-hot!

The entrepreneurial route is not easy to take of course. If you can still work, disclose your mental illness only to those you trust. So that at least someone at work understands when a symptom shows up. Play your office politics well in this scenario, so no one can use your mental illness against you. This is the conservative route to avoid being stigmatised too much.

Not a mental health sufferer? Please read up on common mental health problems like generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), clinical depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia. And do me a favour: after you Google these and find statistics on how prevalent these disorders are, forward them to your colleagues. There needs to be a revolution on mental illness education in the workplace, so oddballs like us can be less stigmatised by the people we work with.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 12:55 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

Marriage is an Ecosystem

What sometimes couplehood is, is simply an ecosystem that works in division of labour, being good friends who like fucking each other. In trying to find that perfect match for me since I wrote down my List - every girl has that List - about ten years ago or longer, I realised a while back that he doesn't exist.

So we give and get and compromise. And coming to that ecosystem might be our final result. Cynical perhaps? Try dating the one who is the love of your life and the breakup will be harder than all the others. No ecosystem, no fucking of your best friend anymore. A cruel end.

The love of my life is H. Dig my archives to 2003; I started this blog for him. And I'm still here. But we wouldn't work if we tried again in another few years or similar. Because creatives can't work well together in love. Classic case Song and Kelly.

Am actually quite tired of relationship gathering, trail of memories in my wake, losing some and gaining some. Maybe I am just too eclectic a mix of character traits, dreams, personality perks that make me an unsuitable for the cult of Marriage. Maybe I secretly want to be Charlene.

Tiring also is maintaining the ecosystem of Marriage when you have so many thoughts running through your head that a blog post and a poem can't even begin to encapsulate fully.

Labels: state, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 1:37 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

splicing work and recovery #ihavedepression #nostigma

Trying to get back into the swing of things called work, but am feeling out of sorts; unsure of how fast or slow I should go, how much rest I should take, how to splice work and rest together for the entire day to be therapeutic yet productive.

Working from home where my volunteer work is based means I have no colleagues in the day to banter with, and that also means I have no sounding board to brainstorm aloud with. No banter no brainstorm unless I do it on my own to myself, which is how I have been sustaining. I guess it is a good thing I am an only child used to talking to self my whole life.

Not that I am complaining about the nature of my volunteer, also my full time, work. It is what I want to do and what will take me further along towards my dreams.

Writing has always made me think clearer, be it scrawls and flowcharts on paper or writing here like this. Coming to worlds upon words this morning has already cleared my mind somewhat on how to splice rest and work together, today.

Interesting, ain't it - normal folks just need to have morning coffee, work, lunch, work, dinner, rest, rinse repeat. And I have to drum up a whole new way of working to accommodate my recovery and my work. This is a daily battle depression sufferers face and often lose because paid work given by an employer very often does not give leeway for our depressive breakdowns, panic attacks, cognitive chokes and psychosomatic illnesses.

Welcome to the real world. Are you willing to accommodate us?

Labels: state, worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 9:00 AM    [ 1 comment | ]

#sgelections PAP, you are missing the point

I am sick of the words 'track record', are you?

This term being repeatedly used as a trump card by the incumbent party's members further cements the fact that they are truly missing the point.

So, what is the point exactly?

The PAP does indeed have a track record - a cleaned up Singapore River, HDB flats, tuberculosis control, making spitting in public illegal, transitioning Singapore's economy from primary to tertiary industries, et cetera. Note that these examples really are, firstly, true - just pick up any history book - secondly, they are facts in history, that is, the past.

If the PAP continues to advocate that its track record in the past is the basis for our future, it is nakedly acknowledging that Singapore as a society has not evolved as a civilisation since the time of our independence from the British. Which is saying that Singapore has not truly developed, a huge political leadership failure! The implication of what they have been touting, is that as long as we have our basic needs met, we are satisfied, and should be, (or else). That may be true for the poorest of the poor: food to eat, shelter and safety, these are the basic needs of any human being, cf. Abraham Maslow. Before you can talk about intrinsic needs of a human being such as self-esteem, we really do need shelter, be it HDB flats or the what-have-you sheltered walkways.

But harping on and on about having provided the basics as their track record only reflects how archaic and uncivilised the minds of the PAPies are. I refer you to Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, 1893 (emphases mine) -

This does not mean that civilization has no use, but that it is not the services that it renders that make it progress. It develops because it cannot fail to develop. Once effectuated, this development is found to be generally useful, or, at least, it is utilized. It responds to needs formed at the same time because they depend upon the same causes. But this is an adjustment after the fact. Yet, we must notice that the good it renders in this direction is not a positive enrichment, a growth in our stock of happiness, but only repairs the losses that it has itself caused. It is because this superactivity of general life fatigues and weakens our nervous system that it needs reparations proportionate to its expenditures, that is to say, more varied and complex satisfactions. In that, we see even better how false it is to make civilization the function of the division of labor; it is only a consequence of it. It can explain neither the existence nor the progress of the division of labor, since it has, of itself, no intrinsic or absolute value, but, on the contrary, has a reason for existing only in so far as the division of labor is itself found necessary.

In layman's terms, "Who cares about upgrading?!" is the very essence of this sociological thought, and this extract alone should be read in accompaniment with the rest of Durkheim's writings to gain a full picture of what I am about to say. We have evolved as a society, which means that now what we need apart from food and shelter, and 'upgrading', are 'complex satisfactions': Political freedom, not a mock sense of democracy. Solidarity - a feeling of kinship and community. I could go on, but let's just stick to these two examples.

You have probably heard enough from opposition party members about how the PAP wayangs and kelongs through the GRC system and suchlike. I shan't elaborate more, but I will refer you to an extract from NSP's Ken Sun's book, "Concerns for Political Balance" which quotes Dr Lawrence Britt in his article, "Fascism Anyone". According to Sun's book, Britt listed several critical features of Fascism:

... Disdain for human rights: people are persuaded that it is all right to ignore certain human rights such as imprisonment without trial, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc... Cronyism and corruption: important state institutions are often governed by friends, relatives and associates who appoint or support one another, without much accountability and transparency. Unfair elections: common use of threats, and legislation to control or influence the voters. Other tactics include boundary gerrymandering, smear campaigns, character assassinations, hounding of opposition candidates, media manipulation and lawsuits.

I think you can make your own conclusions as to how fascist, or democratic, Singapore's political regime is from what Sun has written. (I would advise that you research on the history of Fascism on your own too; triangulate your research from multiple sources.)

What I do want to pitch in on is the need for Singaporeans to feel a sense of connectedness to one another. As Durkheim has expounded also in his sociological theory, population growth that is too rapid leads a society towards a disintegration of its persona, essentially degrading the solidarity of its people. As I have written before, nobody is propagating a supremacist regime of completely disallowing population growth through foreign immigration to our country. But the toll it takes on the social structure of our nation is apparent, valid, and relevant. When the PAP fails to address this issue, it fails to fulfill the human need to feel a sense of belonging. Yes, I am referencing Maslow again, because really, who hasn't read his theory of the hierarchy of needs? Yet the PAP seems stuck on merely wanting to fulfill the lowest rungs of this hierarchy of needs and banging on about its track record of already doing so. It really makes me wonder how well-read my majority representatives of state truly are, if they do not even exhibit basic academic knowledge of psychology, sociology and management schools of thought.

I am no academic, I only got a third class honours grade, and I had to dig up Durkheim to read again because I only scraped through first year sociology. But if I can write this, and the PAP can't even make one layman reference to the more intrinsic needs of Singapore as a civilisation, then really, the party has missed the point so greatly that there may never be any way back.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:30 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

#sgelections My parents brought me up this way.

Today I am not ashamed to say I am anti-PAP, nor am I afraid to do so regardless of where I am declaring this. As I have been saying a lot recently, I am just a kucing kurap 3-room flat resident and am no threat to anyone. If declaring my political alliance and disagreements is illegal, saying I am anti-PAP would merely be a petty crime. That is also why I firmly stand on planting the opposing party's flag at my corridor window on the very night I bought one.

That flag represents my household's vote - officially on paper, my mom and myself are the owners and family unit members of this flat. My dad is a Malaysian, I have no siblings, and I only have a common law husband. When I called my mom to tell her she had to come back to Singapore to vote this May 7, she said, "Come back just vote for the opposition will do." That's my folks for you. If we could have voted every year there were elections in Singapore, it would always be a cross in the opposition party's check box. My dad has told me before, and I paraphrase, that PAP sucks. He did not elaborate much further than that. My dad is a river-runs-deep kind of guy.

The audacity with which I proclaim my anti-PAP sentiments today would have been a big problem in the past, so I never heard my parents outright declare their disdain for the ruling government too often when I was growing up; I shut up for a long while myself too, only proseletysing the need to rage against the machine in private circles, in somewhat hushed tones. Well, if you know me in person, you know I can't really do hushed tones, but you get the drift.

Even in the early noughties, it would have been quite a silly thing to declare on the internet your hatred for the ruling party - the blogosphere was small and blogs were the bread and butter of online citizen journalists. With the proliferation of social media today I doubt any one will knock on your door to send you to jail just because you tweeted with a hashtag that states an opposition party's name or have become a fan of an opposition party's Facebook page.

This levels the playing field, so now I am about to delve into how my parents helped turn me against the Lee regime from early childhood.

You know by now I was that girl who went up on stage to deliver flowers to Tan Chee Kien at an opposition rally when I was around nine years old. That night itself was my first experience in rally-chasing. In my parents' car, we drove round from location to location and I remember thinking to myself, 'Finally!' when we arrived at the rally I was supposed to do my job at.

As time unfolded, so did more stories from my parents about their political affiliations and the forces behind them.

My dad is a Malaysian, and when he first arrived in Singapore in the early seventies, he worked for the Singapore police. After that, he and my mom, aspiring entrepreneurs with a kid in tow, tried countless times to apply for some form of residency for him to remain in Singapore with his Singaporean wife, Singaporean daughter and to build a Singaporean registered company.

They went to meet the MP in their ward. They wrote letters of appeal, they hired lawyers to write the same. My mom was chided by the PAP MP she met to discuss this, told off with a "Who asked you to marry a Malaysian?" and sent away from the Meet-the-People's session. No can do, didn't work, my dad had to leave the country. For good.

So my mom had to raise me on her own. I didn't know that till much later. I had depression even as a child, so I really don't have a full-strung chain of memories.

My mom and dad are renegades, so eventually they found a way to beat the system. It involved something illegal, and I will share it here only because it happened more than twenty years ago - I reckon it would be too late now to consider it a chargeable offence. My mom couldn't possibly run a business and raise a little girl on her own while knowing her husband was suffering and lonely in nearby JB, so she drove over with me in tow, and smuggled my dad back to Singapore. I was an accessory, told to smile and chat to the customs officer as we passed the gantry with my dad in the trunk. My dad stayed in Singapore to provide for his family - us - for five years, illegally.

My mom would only tell you this story in person when she is adequately inebriated, so that was how I found out about it myself too. When I did know about it at last - no, I didn't know at the time during the actual smuggling - I pieced together the reasons for my parent's disagreement with Singapore's ruling party.

Their MP didn't listen, and not only that, he provided no solution to my parents' very real problem in protecting their livelihood and family unit. The government declined my dad's countless applications and appeals for a permit to stay in Singapore, no matter that he worked for the very same government before, no matter that his family needed protection from separation and a means of living.They were tossed aside like garbage, literally, and my dad had to be reunited with us clandestinely.

My mom herself, she was more of an ardent PAP supporter to begin at first. Because she witnessed firsthand the advent of HDB flats - respite from the horrid longhouse conditions she grew up in. But after seeing what my dad had to go through at the hands of the same government that built the houses, she had her Hillary Clinton moment and switched sides. It was a gradual switch, my mom isn't easily convinced. Other clinchers included the cruel way she was instructed to have very few children and thereafter see the policy change in front of her when Singapore's birth rate declined too far. I don't know if she had to do drastic things like an abortion when she was young, which would be very much in line with the population policy advocated at the time. But having to go through two very different kinds of instructions where life is concerned, will be traumatising for any young woman.

Then came the financial hardship. My mom's family is wealthy, but being female, the family business she helped build did not give her any share of the profits. So it was just her and my dad, building a business on their own together. It was hard, because not too long after, the 1987 recession occurred.

Today we hear opposition parties talk about financial assistance for the poor and marginalised of society. For us when I was growing up, the only means my parents could turn to for financial assistance was by going into debt. We were the poor and marginalised, and we definitely did not get any help at all by the ruling party's government.

I pieced all of my experiences, recollections and retelling of my parents' stories, and now it has become our family's identity to be pro-opposition. For the marginalised like we were, the opposition parties were our only hope for change.

With that kind of a political upbringing, it isn't too difficult for me to be left-wing. Combine  that with my constant desire to help the voiceless, the poorest of the poor, those without basic care. Combine that with the well of empathy in me that overflows into tears for the lonely. Combine that with my destiny to be in the business of making a difference in this world. It really is no wonder that I am a renegade replica of my parents.

Karl Marx was right, the marginalised population produces the political change necessary to overthrow the ruling power. The PAP marginalised my parents throughout their adulthood spent in this country. Thanks to that, May 7, the opposition party gets our votes.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 4:48 AM    [ 0 comment | ]

#sgelections Against FT influx = Being a Supremacist?

It has been said in the recent run-up to the elections that "Singaporeans feel like foreigners in our own country," with 36% of the population being foreign talents, affectionately also known as foreign trash. Of course, no one calls them trash publicly, we aren't neo-Nazis, right? But in the tethering fabric of what is left of Singaporean solidarity, calling foreign talents, foreign trash, endears us to one another more. Because we really feel like they are marring our country with their smells.

We also hate that FTs are given more opportunities in schools over true-bred Singaporeans. We hate that their cultures stain ours and deconstruct it to the point we feel alienated. We hate that they are given the privilege of citizenship in a blink of an eye, when not too long ago, it was near-impossible to become a foreign 'talent'. Yes, to that last reference I am citing the case of my father's mission-in-vain to become a Singaporean PR, nay, even a work permit would have sufficed, after serving in the Singapore Police Force, marrying my Singaporean mother locally, and having me, in this country, during the 80s.

But are we being supremacists in wanting to rid ourselves of the negativity that FTs have brought onto our island country? In wanting to 'give Singaporeans priority' in education and employment? Isn't that being somewhat Neo-Nazi and Bumiputera?

We aren't suggesting ethnic cleansing of any sort that involves degrading into some form of genocide of all FTs in Singapore. (Actually, I believe there are some out there would want that, social genocide at the very least). We want after all simply a true democracy that is relevant to this time and age. It makes sense because we are a moderate country without extremists anymore. By the way, if you are wondering where the radical Communists have gone, I hear some of them are still up north near Thailand. Anyway, no, we aren't degenerating into wanting to flush out the impure citizens that have already infiltrated our trains and supermarkets.

But even without genocidal thoughts, it may be misconstrued that wanting fewer FTs in our own country counts as being supremacist, like the Nazis and Neo-Nazis. I think I speak for all those who are against the influx of FTs, that it is not their arrival per se that makes us feel a lack in Singaporean-ness. It is the process in which they are integrated and the pace at which we are opening our doors to them coming in. We aren't being supremacist, we just feel that we need a little justice.

Look at other cosmopolitan cities, like say, New York City. The city loves itself for being cosmopolitan to the point they can get any kind of cuisine in the city and meet people from different nationalities all the time. It actually makes their city feel special. It makes New Yorkers -  American - even, because they are the land of the free that opened its doors till today to all who want a better life.

So why don't we feel that way here in Singapore? Why do we feel an injustice with the current level of foreigner-to-local ratio?

I learned before in business school - human resource management - about procedural justice. Sometimes it is not the decision that is made that makes people feel unjustly treated, it is the way the decision was made. The process itself, not the end-result. Kind of how it is when you watch your team play your favourite sport - did they play well? If so, it was a good game to watch, even if your team lost in the end. NB. this rule does not apply to gamblers.

I am going to make a crude analogy to further explain our indignation against the current level of FTs living in Singapore, please skip this paragraph if you may get offended. If Singapore was a prostitute, we have opened our legs too wide, and too freely to FTs, inviting them to come and fuck us and get free memberships for life to do so. High class escorts serve one client a night, whereas comfort women during the Japanese Occupation were repeatedly abused to service the soldiers sexually with no breaks in between. Which kind of sexual servant are we, Singapore?

In order to become a cosmopolitan city that Singaporeans would be really proud and connected living in, we need to change the process and slow down the pace a little on inviting other nationalities to become part of us. How that should be done - you have heard and will hear more during the upcoming opposition party rallies in their promises.

We are not being supremacists. We just want our team to play well, and be a high-class social escort. We do feel Singaporean when we walk down, say, Katong, and find so many different cuisines available, from local to exotic. We do want to be the iconic Singapore Girl that smiles at tourists and newcomers to our island showing them how to get from point A to B. We just don't want to feel outnumbered and trumped unjustly. This feeling is not one of being supremacist. It is simply wanting to see justice in how well and how quickly FTs enter our land.

Labels: worlds

worldsuponwords by avalon at 5:07 PM    [ 1 comment | ]

once again, time to write about -

I seldom write about politics so it wasn't hard to try and find anything on this 8 year old blog that was vaguely political in content. I found two posts. One was the post I got quoted on Today from. The other is on Marxism. Those two are all there are on the topic of politics.

I guess the Marxist post still resonates with me because re-reading it inspired me to write this post, here, now. I see Marx as a sociologist more so as than the founder of Communism so I have no qualms about publicly writing that I agree with Marx.

Where I stand exactly on this - agreement - is what I shall clarify tonight.

There are books that are Communist-angled that have truly inspired me: Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Che Guevera's The Motorcycle Diaries. Even Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory is somewhat uplifting. I love the ideology that drives social change even if it is Marx-derived and therefore dangerous to admit so.

Recently SDA's Chiam See Tong (once again, I am not related to him) made a declaration to participate in this year's elections because even though it is hard for him at his age, he says that it is more truly difficult for the people who are suffering in today's Singapore and it is for them that he is continuing to campaign. His declaration made me shed a tear. This is what should inspire political ambition. The sight of masses of humanity in need in your own nation - or in Che Guevera's case, continent - is what should trigger the need for a revolution.

Hence I support the ideals behind Communists such as Che Guevera because of the fact that the ideology, the ambition, and the cause were all because of the masses whose lives could be made far better.

But I disagree with Communism in practice. In reality, Communism as an administrative system does not work, as we can see in so many countries today. Imagery of bespectacled citizens being executed or exiled from their countries because they are educated does not sit with me at all and conjures up tears. Capitalism is still necessary and is in my opinion not the polar opposite of Communism such that they cannot co-exist in the same system. How else will we have food to eat? I am Protestant and believe in the Protestant work-ethic too, so no way am I against capitalism because I believe in Karl Marx's theory.

A new ideology needs to come up from another mind in present times that will be as brilliant as Marx was in his time, one that will be relevant to today's social structures, today's literacy levels, and one that can co-exist with capitalism without unfair power imbalances. If you ever write a thesis on such an theory, let me know. 

Marx essentially said that the regular man (the peasant, the proletariat) will eventually 'wake up idea' and a revolution will definitely take place for a complete paradigm shift in the balance of power. But today, we are educated enough to have woken up our ideas so to speak. The problem today is not about realising that the bourgeoisie have intrinsic power over the people, because we already realise that. We have realised, and we are upset about it.

This emotional response breeds two kinds of behaviour in our society. One is nonchalance, where we admit that the ruling party simply has too much power shrouded in elitism - untouchable - then we sigh and shrug and just go on with our daily lives. The other response is to support left-centre ideology parties that have actually good plans in place to better our fellow man's welfare in this country simply because we want to fight the bourgeois elite ruling party.

As for those partisans contesting the ruling party, the real challenge is still Marxist in nature. To what extent have we woken up our ideas that the ruling party has too much power? What the opposition parties need to do is to realign the ideas that need to be 'woken up'. Ideas that will inspire them to change and want change and want your party to be the one to change the face of Singapore. Sylvia Lim of WP is doing a good job of that.

Obviously, a revolution Egyptian 2011 style is not going to take place because in Singapore, participation in anything remotely like that is going to be suicide in this country. But when the proletariat masses finally awaken and realise that, 'Hey, ruling party buys our votes with monetary gains, do I want my kids to be materialistic Singaporeans and nothing else?' a revolution of another kind will come into play. It will be slow, it will be small at first, but eventually, the tide will turn, and as it has been written - the Tipping Point will emerge to change the face of our political climate and therefore our societal power balances.

No revolution involved that involves guerrillas fighting in jungles or masses gathering with banners shouting for so-and-so to resign. But still a revolution is needed, and will happen. And that thought is Marxist is nature, because his pyramid imagery of society always turns over.

And that's that. Now you know where I stand on Marxism in relation to today's political climate in my own country. Sounds like a lot armchair-theorising about a very real and practical issue at hand, but Marxist ideology drives a lot of admirable politicians and change-makers whether they realise it or not. If you ever were moved to change something somewhere in society because you came face-to-face with a marginalised member of society in suffering - you have had a Che Guevera moment. Go buy a tee-shirt with his face on it, he looks better than Karl Marx.

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worldsuponwords by avalon at 2:34 AM    [ 0 comment | ]