Photography by Nguyen Thao Ngan
In part 1, I celebrated the personal resurgence I was blessed to have in Junior College. I recalled how attitude can be the ultimate factor in determining your happiness; in other words, one has the final power to put on a smiling face in the face of difficulty (pun mostly unintended). What this means is that, theoretically speaking, you can always be happy; it gets harder the more difficult your life is, but it is still always possible.
However, I think that most of us understand that we aren’t always strong enough exert that sort of control over our feelings. Sometimes life throws more than what most of us mortals can handle, and we lose it. After all, always possible hardly means always (or even largely) achievable.
The following are stories of some of those times. These are times that are not easy to look back and reflect upon, much less write about. Therefore, I hope that revealing these low points of my life will provide some good to you, dear reader; may they not sadden you, but instead help you see hope where there seems to be none.
The shock began on one fine, typical morning, right after the daily college assembly.
My General Paper (GP) tutor came up to me and quietly beckoned me for a minute. This in itself was unusual; subject tutors rarely call anyone. As we moved away from the dispersing crowd, I came to the natural conclusion that he was not going to speak about anything related to GP (honestly, I couldn’t think of anything that needed to be discussed about that), but rather about one of my two co-curricular activity (CCA) organisations, which he jointly supervised over with another GP tutor. I was correct, but I would soon wish that I wasn't.
“Terence,” he said in his deep, powerful voice, which was incongruous to his rather small stature. “Some people have been expressing unhappiness with your performance in the CCA.”
I was silent, but both my mind and heart had begun to kick into overdrive. These were not words that I expected, nor wanted to hear.
“They say you haven’t been contributing much to the society; that you’ve been missing meetings; leaving early; and some other rather concerning things, yeah. What’s going on?”
I was stunned beyond belief, and told him so.
“Sir, that’s… that’s hardly true. I’m… I’m really shocked to hear all of this. I recently talked to our president…”
“Yes, she mentioned meeting you,”
“Yeah, and I thought it was resolved after that.”
“Well, it seems that there is still some tension in the committee, from what I can see.”
High Stakes
I became the vice president of this organisation, which will remain unnamed, in the first half of 2014. The route towards this position definitely wasn’t easy: from the start, our seniors decided to train us through a series of sadistic challenges, straining us physically, mentally and emotionally (they were a generally nice lot, though, and later apologised for this). And for what was a very new CCA, the competition for the top roles was fierce, with a surplus of capable candidates. The first round of interviews alone had around nearly half of the ~40 new members seeking the presidential role, myself included.
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From left to right: Mabel, myself. One of the biggest reasons I stayed sane between 2012 to 2013. Always quirky, always there. |
As you now know, in the end the role was not awarded to me. And naturally, there was disappointment to be had, but not nearly as much as you’d expect. I had experienced far worse setbacks during my years in Chung Cheng, and I was determined to be happy with consolation prizes. But more importantly, I was satisfied with who they had selected to be the new president, or my boss. She was dedicated, hardworking and detail-oriented, the latter bit something that I was particularly weak at. I mentioned that I was up against people of high calibre; looking back, even now, I can’t deny that our seniors’ choice based solely on the talent they saw was a sound one. I even sent out a message to quell rumours that I was dissatisfied with the decision, as I really did respect her and was particularly concerned that people would think otherwise.
This would make the events to follow particularly difficult to swallow.
Backstab
“Are you free now?”
“Oh yeah, yeah, right. Come, we talk over there,” she said, gesturing towards the canteen tables.
I started first. “I was talking to our tutor this morning,” I said, sitting down on one of the cold, flat benches. “He said… that someone, or several people on the committee have said things like I skip meetings, like I’m not responsible, don’t contribute…” I spoke quickly, trying to prevent the weight of those words from resting too long on my lips.
“Yeah.”
“I’m honestly shocked to hear all of this, I… I don’t understand. It didn’t make any sense to me.”
“Yeah."
Wait a minute. I leaned back ever so slightly, and chose my next few words carefully. “You told him?”
Silence. Then: “Yes.”
Oh my god.
I inhaled deeply, trying to find the words to respond to this utter horror. Throughout the entire day, I had been unable to focus, admittedly preoccupied with dissecting the odious piece of information that had been presented to me. Who could it have been? X, Y or maybe Z? I certainly did have my suspicions; rarely do you have a team where there isn’t at least one or two members for which you harbour mistrust or even dislike. But, honest to god, I did not even for a moment consider her.
”Why?”
Of Harsh Truths and Harsher Lies
There is a cliche in Chinese remarking how waves aren’t created in the absence of wind. Some of us may be more familiar with the English counterpart of how there’s no smoke without fire. And indeed, to some extent, I have burnt myself.
Whenever I am faced with criticism, or a situation that at least suggests partial fault on my part, my initial defensiveness soon wears off, and I nearly always do my best to search for my flaws and mistakes. It is something that I consider to be one of the few positive traits I can truly say about myself. And I have been able to identify plenty of such mistakes in this whole debacle. Ever since I became the VP, my contributions and role in the organisation can be best described as ‘fulfilling criteria’, or if one wants to be more critical, ‘mediocre’. I do attend meetings and events, and coordinate them in my capacity if called for. I complete whatever that is assigned to me. But I did not go beyond this. Rarely would I come up with something more or something new for the organisation. I, as was very bluntly told to me in the above conversation, “don’t initiate”.
This much is true, and all this I can humbly acknowledge. Without trying to excuse myself, there are three major reasons for this attitude. The first is that this was my character by nature; I would not see a need to initiate something without a personal desire, passion or vision to motivate me. The second is selfishness: I was very worried about my academic performance particularly in the latter half of 2014, leading to a substantial withdrawal of my enthusiasm for other activities. The third, and probably most crucial, was misunderstanding and miscommunication: I honestly was led to believe that she preferred the independence of deciding and planning things, and thus coupled with reason two I was happy to leave it as such. The accusation that I failed to help in such initiatives was therefore a raw, painful shock to me.
As much as I tried to blame myself and take responsibility, though, I could not help shake the immense feelings of betrayal and injustice. I came to a minor epiphany when fighting for my right to stay and keep my position — why was I being solely punished for the lack of communication? Before the storm of incidents, I had been given a “warning” (if you could call it such) a grand total of once: several weeks before the shock, she had voiced out to me about wanting me to step it up, so to speak. And I did. The comment was a big motivator to me and I poured a large amount of time and effort into making (directing, filming and editing) our organisation’s promotional video. That in particular made me so unprepared for the confrontation; I was of the impression — and there was no feedback to the contrary — that I had listened, and made a genuine effort to do more. But this was brushed off as a one-time thing, and she tried hard to point the focus of our supervising tutors to my other failings.
Misrepresentation is one thing; outright lying is another. There was an accusation made that I had lied to skip a meeting. When I brought up how untrue this was, this was swiftly brushed aside as if the complaint had never been made. Worse — and this stings me until today — it was alleged that the entire executive committee worked harder to me; in other words, that I contributed the least among the approximate twenty of us. What an utter load of horseshit. Half a dozen of the committee didn’t even show up on a regular basis anymore; some had stopped showing up entirely. Some even went to the extent of disrupting meetings through fooling around and being generally unserious about everything; a couple of these people were the same she hailed as examples of hard workers to our tutors. I had a really tough time being courteous enough not to interrupt when all this bullshit was being spewed. Even at the time, I could readily acknowledge that I could have definitely done more, and that there were a few really dedicated members who certainly contributed more than me. Going to such levels of deceit and exaggeration, however, made me rage for months after the fact.
And when I think back to recall, some of the times where they had the opportunity to contribute more were in fact times where she had explicitly told me that I should be less involved, largely because of my being home in Penang during term breaks when it was most convenient to meet up and do work. The more I try to justify it all, the more I find it difficult to do so, and the more I reluctantly realise that it was ultimately a very successful attempt at a coup. The sudden confession from her during the canteen conversation that “[she] already knew from the start that [we] would not be able to work well together” only served to confirm this. She did not want me to stay and improve, which both our tutors and myself suggested; she wanted me gone, period. It became even clearer when I realised that none of those in the exco was in the loop of the attempt to oust me; several came to me later on to express their shock, with one of them even facing a similar (successful) attempt at removal.
I initially tried hard to fight for justice. I accepted that there should be some consequence for my actions, or inaction; however, it was and still is outrageous that only one side takes all the blame for what is ultimately a two-sided mismanagement of the whole issue. I was warned once, and tried hard immediately thereafter to redeem myself; what I faced was secret dealings behind my back, a complete discounting of all my positive actions, and to top it all off a sudden sledgehammer of accusations and lies directed towards me. Even in a company, if you consider firing someone, there is ample discussion and, if necessary, warning beforehand; this is a bloody college organisation! There was literally nothing to be gained from ousting me for the organisation itself, something that I pointed out and she was unable to deny. It was personal gain, plain and simple, masked with a devious desire for supposed “justice”, not even in the name of the organisation, but for her “suffering” due to my inaction. A “suffering” that was not once — zero, nada — mentioned to me, until the very end.
And so I resigned. While my desire to fight for fair treatment was very strong, I realised there was nothing good to be gained from staying on: I would have to endure the daily torment of distrust against those who had ganged up against me, leading to increased tensions in the committee (especially once those out of the loop found out), which would be ultimately used to blame me anyway. I thus typed a short letter, detailing both my apologies and my unhappiness, and handed it to one of the tutors. Without a word to anyone else, I was gone. I was replaced by one of her yes-men, and those who were close to me were left in the dark until much later, some of them expelled themselves.
Hunters In The Lion City
I have long tried to keep an open mind about Singapore. I did not want to be a typical foreigner bringing in stereotypes about the country and applying such a mindset to the residents here. More than anything, I wanted to believe in the ultimate goodness of people; I didn’t want things like the “rat race” or “cutthroat” behaviour to be true, at least not overwhelmingly so. I still don’t believe it is, and have many dear friends that prove such stereotypes wrong, but I’ve had to accept the fact that there are good reasons why the society has long been characterised as such.
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From big to small: Jolene, myself. An unfortunately poor photo of a really great friend, immensely changing my last few months in Chung Cheng for the better |
There is a real problem when the entire social structure is built on material success, with an education system that systematically (hah) encourages this. Sure, it has served the country mostly well, as many locals will rush to tell you. But at what cost? The media was abuzz the last few years about Singapore’s supposed lack of empathy, but their focus was off. They zoomed in on daily interactions and the treatment of the poor or marginalised, but the issue is far more rooted; the society is directed to only cherish success, and thus only those who succeed. It is an egalitarian society only in concept — by having laws that protect minority races, all religions, etc — but the sad truth is you are only worth as much as your perceived “achievements”. How can there be empathy when you are told, from young, that your whole life is a race and everyone else is a mere opponent or competitor? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Closer To The Edge
I never thought that I would have to pull someone from death. In 2015, I did it multiple times, for multiple people. The following is merely one of those times.
“Please come down.”
She sat there, both hands planted on the cream-coloured ledge, legs uncertainly swaying in front of it. I could not fully see her face, but I felt her eyes staring vacantly ahead, expressing the emptiness of a spirit caught in the void between life and death.
“What’s the point?” was the whispered reply. “There’s no reason for me to stay alive…”
“That’s not true.”
“…my grades are like shit. My family life is like shit. Us… we are like shit now,” she continued, her inflection rising with every curse.
“Please. Just get down, and talk.”
“When I was losing everything, I thought no matter what there would still be you. But no! There is nothing.”
I inhaled deeply, and made a judgement call. I quietly stepped back, and took off my shoes.
“So what’s the point, right?”
I lunged forward and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her off the ledge.
“Listen to me,” I hollered over her protests. “Listen to me. You’re staying here, okay? Stay with me. Stay with me.”
“Let go, people will come.”
“I don’t care. Stay here. Stay with me.”
And so I held her there, tightly, for the next few minutes, refusing to give in to her struggle towards the direction of the ledge. It took a while, but eventually the repeated orders instructing me to let her go ceased, followed by the attempts to pry my arms apart. Then I let her go, and we both cried.
One More Thing
I promised at the start of this article that there was hope in all this. And there is.
I wrote in a recent article about the fragility and preciousness of life. I recognised that with all the shit everyone was going though, it wasn’t easy to stay alive. I’m glad that after all is said and done, we’re all alive. Maybe to some, staying alive is a pretty low bar to set as an accomplishment, but to me it’s a fucking big deal. I wrote that the human spirit continues to surprise me, and now, a month after the end of the arduous A-level ordeal, it has triumphed again.
There is a rat race in Singapore. It’s frightful and merciless and occasionally even fatal. But if there’s anything to be learnt over my four years here, you don’t necessarily have to be part of it. It requires being sure of yourself, and thus takes a lot of restraint against temptation, but it’s possible.
I’m not there yet. But I’m learning.
TO BE CONTINUED
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