It's 11pm here in Singapore on a Sunday night and I have decided to start this blog mainly as a personal journal of self discovery. In order to do so, I need to be brutally honest to myself. I'm 25 and tomorrow I will tender my resignation to what was my lifelong career. I give myself 5 years, till 22nd August 2020 (thank you Mum and Dad for having me in a year that ends with a 0. It makes calculating my age so much easier) to find myself.
I was born into a middle class family and before I was 4, my parents worked hard and had a higher than average combined income. As far as vivid memory served, we had a large condo apartment (with a front and backyard that could sit 50 guests comfortably) and a Mercedes Benz in the parking lot. Dad was working overseas as an expatriate and Mum was here with us and her career. Money was never really an issue, but it was issued. At 4, I was given a generous allowance of $2 a day (in 1994, and I'll get back to the value of that in a bit).
My brother and I would start our day by waking up, going for a bike ride within the condo compound, or a swim, or (to the horror of my maid, Aunty Lydia, who was with us all the time), both. We would ride near enough to the pool and jump in, pajamas and all *grins*.
About my little brother. My Mum recalls time and again that when she was pregnant with him, and I found out I had a little brother on the way, I furiously rejected the idea of having to share her attention with someone else. (Also, I asked one day about my parents' wedding photo, "Where is Jojo?" [that's what my mum still calls me, which is actually soothing. And when she calls me Julius, even now, I know I'm knee-deep in shit]. My mum replied that I'm not in the photo because I have not been born.
"I don't like this photo."
I think from here on out, bolded statements represent a realization of truth about myself. The first being is that I am self-centred/centric, jealous and insecure.
Insecure because when I was a blob in my Mum's womb (thank you DeboRAH for this term), she recalls and tells me that when her employer found out she was pregnant with me, she was fired immediately. At that point of time, my dad was making very little working for his dad and her income was what supported a lot of the household bills.
This all changed when I was on the way and born. The fortune child. Perhaps the responsibility of having a child hit my dad and he decided to make a career switch into design, a decision that paid off in spades. My parents would recall how as I was born (my dad is the oldest son in his family and me being his first son, that I was the male heir to the family name. I do have an ancient older cousin to an older aunt but I guess in many ways he was more of a sibling to them as he was just years younger than my youngest aunt). Anyway, my parents would go on and recall how they didn't have to buy diapers or milk powder for a year thanks to the generosity of family and friends.
I am arrogantly proud and have a sense of entitlement. I think I bring luck and that I have it constantly on my side. (My forays into gambling into casinos have proven otherwise, I think I've lost a total of about $1,000 in my adult life, I should probably not try any further)
Back to the $2. When I was in a pre-school, Aunty Lydia would bring us out after lunch to the market. On the way out, I would stop by my next-door neighbour's white picket fence and call out, "Aunty Carrie, Aunty Carrie, do you have any S-W-E-E-T-S?" I think at some point she asked me if I could spell "sweets" and there, I learned my first word and performed my first trick, like some circus animal. She was nice enough to show that she was impressed for the next God-knows-how-many months, years perhaps, at my trick.
I believe that if I find something that impresses people, that the same trick will bring about the same results over and over again.
