If any of you have seen the film
Identity and identified with the main character, then maybe you'll have an idea of what's been eating me the last couple of years. For those who don't, click the picture of the movie. You'll see the montage of a hand made out of 5 people, all disparate personalities of the same person. They called us Gen-X, Gen-Y, etc. The generation that could not figure itself out. I'm still trying to figure myself out.
I was born in
Singapore, a little island straddling the trade routes between east and west. The country itself, is balanced between the two. Political policy was always to balance China and America and hopefully, reap the benefits of the two countries. Socially, it started out as a free port under the control of the British in the 18th and 19th centuries. A port where one came to seek his fortune. Or to lose it. Many cultures, religions, races came. It became a melting pot where hopefully, something beautiful would emerge. A nation of people, unique, special, with their own little space in the sun.
I grew up in a normal family, like many of my friends. I remember my best friend then telling me that every family was dysfunctional. Every one dysfunctional. We all had to find our paths. In school we were taught both english and chinese, in order to harness the potential of China in the future. In retrospect, it was a very shrewd move by our government then, of course, others argue that 70% of the population being chinese, we would have learnt it anyway. Maybe the smart thing was to teach us chinese people english then, in that case. In any event, we were taught, even forced to learn it. Try to memorize lines of chinese text where you have no idea what you're memorizing and you'll get the idea. It was like that for me. At home, we spoke mainly english and hardly anything else at all.
My mother's side of the family was more China-aligned. My grandparents (mother's side) came directly from China in the 1930s I think. My uncles would talk about China is great, China has so many resources, China is going to eat up the west, etc etc etc. All
jingoism, it sounded to me. If anyone listened to Shakespeare's Henry V's speech at the Battle of Agincourt on St. Crispin's day, it would be about the same tone.
My dad's side of the family was from the straits settlements, descendants of chinese who intermarried with Malays. They called themselves
Peranakans. It was important for them, as far as I know, to be able to speak the english language, as they had much communication with the British. For domestic issues, they shifted to Malay. The formal dresses the womenfolk wear are about the same as the Malays women, I believe. I'm no great observer of these little things.
My friends called my an "Anglophile" when I was growing up due to my preference to western culture. Some called us a banana. You know, yellow outside, white inside, with reference to our skin colour and outlook. I never had a problem with that. I am what I am.
I went to school in the UK. I liked it, yet I felt like I didn't connect there. I married a german girl (one of my best decisions - I better put this if not she'll read it and nerf me... ><) and moved to Europe to stay. Still not feeling connected at all. Rather, more isolated. Nothing wrong with them, more maybe with me. So am I asian or am I european? What does it mean to be a part of one yet neither of both?
You want to reach out and touch someone, yet you wonder if it's the right thing to do, so you think "hold on, let's think about this". I should just do it, as Nike says.
Some would say values. Traditions. Family. If no one keeps the meaning of these alive, then we would all be mindless clones, out for self-gratification and purposeless. I don't know. Growing up, I had many traditions we celebrated. There were stories behind each one, carried over by ancestors from China, the Malay Islands, India. They were all interesting to be sure, but they never filled me with that sense of "oomph, I belong here".
When I'm in Europe, I think of home. When I'm home, I think of Europe, partially als o because of the weather. In the tropics, it can be brutal. I always need my airconditioning. The "freezer", as wifey terms them. Life as usual for me. No way I'm going to shop up and down
Orchard Road if the malls weren't airconditioned.
I don't really want to go home yet because I love the "outside looking in" point of view. Though I miss home, and I miss food from home ^^. My brother was with me a couple of months ago, and he emptied his bank account just so he could see the outside world and he wasn't disappointed. We hear so much about it back home in Singapore yet not get to see it, not get to live it. Jump away from the "Frog in the well" mentality. The world is so much bigger than you expect it to be. The experiences more grand, more sensual that what you can expect. The fall might be harder, but what's life without the ride, the passion, the adrenaline?
In the future as transportation improves with technology, the world will be a smaller space. Maybe there will be teleporters like in Star Trek (but I won't use them - check out the Fly movies for why), maybe they might find life on another planet somewhere in the universe, maybe they might set up planetary colonies on Mars, the moon, etc. We are going to get commercial suborbital spaceflights from 2008. We want to set up a base on the moon by 2020. Mars doesn't seem so far after all.
People will start moving around more, be more open to live elsewhere other than home. Commute to other countries to work, find love, etc. It's already happening now. Love relationships will be across continents. Borders will mean nothing with the Internet. Maybe America (in the revolution) and the EU, and the UN (hopelessly over-bureaucratic and ineffective) set the path, but one day, I'm hoping there will be no more borders. Just One World.
I may be from a small country, but I'm also a part of this huge wide world called Earth (Sol System). And I'm proud of it.
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