Empowerment

Work was hectic, but was interrupted by a nice dinner with Simon & Gang, fun bunch of peeps, and it was hilarious how they kept making fun of Caleb. Anyways nice peeps. Not very close with them, but it was a great dinner anyways.

I saw a nostalgic photo in my cupboard this morning, and thought I should blog about this important aspect of my life, past, present and future.


That's me, back at the age of 10, a pretty coconut-headed me, holding the ultimate lego set back then - a lego technic supercar which retailed for 199. Which was like up there in the sky to me back then. My mum knew I wanted it, and so took a pic of me with it.

And came one of the most significant episodes of my life.

My mum, promising me to get it for me if I performed well for my P5 exams.

Perhaps a little background is called for.

Since I was allowed near small toys, I have been meddling with lego bricks. That figures to be about 3.5 years of age. Perhaps that's where I got my technical affinity from, as well as the not so good side-effect of anti-socialism. Not to the extent of having no frenz, but of being reluctant to make new ones. While I loved those brickies, they were never mine. They were always my brothers', or hand-me-downs from him.

However, it changed when I entered Pr. Sch. My parents were pretty proud of my performance in sch, where I hovered near the top 5-ish in the cohort. And every year, I would be rewarded for good performance with a Lego set of my choice. Always something moderate, not the huge sets, just not too big and not too small average sets.

And I remember the elation of my first very own box of lego. The allure of the infinite (well, almost) configuration of the bricks, where everything was up to my imagination, was, simply put, breathtaking to me as a kid.

Every year I performed, looking forward to my "reward" at the end of the year.

Well I'm not waving a flag for meritocracy, but my point is coming soon.

In P5, I performed the best that I ever did in my academic life, getting 2nd in the cohort. I had the same score as another girl, thus both of us were 2nd. The girl who got top from my p1 year till p6 year every year without fail, I concluded thereafter as unbeatable. Nevertheless it comforts me to know, after being out of touch for many years, she's running a small time biz as well, just as I am. Outperforming consistently as usual.

Anyway, that year, I never got anything. I didn't ask, cos I was always too shy to ask for things. I didn't think that my parents owed anything to me, but I also realised that my mum had broken her promise. Only later that I found out that my 2nd aunt had told her that "doing well is for the child's own good, you must let him know that, and stop rewarding him".

Bad move.

I mean seriously bad.

*for god's sake, please be consistent with your children in future. If you wanna go meritocracy, keep at it. If you wanna go fascist, keep it all the way and hopefully your kid will be oblivious to your fascism*

It blew my mind.

Before this, I never even thought that saying something and not doing it is a possibility of the human condition.

The sudden shock of knowledge that this had just been done to me, I just blew up. Thereafter, I did lots and lots of crazy things that made my life totally haywire. In fact, now I'm working extra hard to compensate for the time I had lost in the dark periods of my life from the age of 11 to 16.

I always think back, and this is the only logical root cause of my hellish adolescence, where I pitted myself against the entire world, where I was right and every single other soul was wrong.

The impact of this part of my childhood was so bad, that it took 2 long years of constant reminding before I fixed the problem of lying around the time I entered the army.

Eventually, as I built up my business, I realised that there's still a stigma which needed certain closure.

And that was when, I told myself that the emptiness I perceived had to be filled.

That was when I bought myself the dream Lego set that I had always wanted.


And I bought two.

The price was not an issue. It's vintage collector's item now, being out of production since 1996, thus the price is pushed up quite a bit. But the money did not matter more than the fulfilment of a childhood dream.

That's one set, built as an F1 car lying around in Hougang.
That's the other set, built as the supercar on the cover, placed in my Bishan home.

I placed one in both locations, to constantly remind myself, of the dream I had fulfilled with my own two hands. The gush of empowerment that fills my soul, if there is one, is overwhelming.

It's the same feeling that I felt, the first time my first business opened shop for business, on a Sunday Morning at 11am. It was a cool Spring morning, with nice blue-grey clouds.

It's the same feeling when I was flooded by e-mails thanking me for my work after the launch of that particular site.

Dear friends, follow your childhood dreams, for your truest self is when you were a child, free of doctrinations. I profess that only living towards your dreams, irregardless of whether you achieve it, is the most fulfilling way of living your life - at least, I have found none other which is more fulfilling as this.

For as long as you were always marching towards the fulfilment of your dreams, you can lie on your deathbed a century from now, and smile as you say, "I have not a thing to regret, nor to lament achieving nothing, but I can leave proudly asserting that I have dedicated my life to fighting for the freedom of humanity."

By the way, that's a really nice quote which is deep in my mind, I just can't recall who said it.

Nice cityscape view from a clients' lavender apartment at 25th storey.

Well I just came home from work amidst heavy rain. Refreshing, but there's a certain sad nostalgic feel to it. But I still like it lotsandlots.

I was looking up into the falling droplets while waiting for my cab, and a certain flashback to when I was back in tw, on a nite where I really didn't feel like doin anything, I just looked up at the falling droplets and let the feeling of melancholy overwhelm me.

Stood there for more than an hour I think.

And it felt pretty good.

Just like it did today.