How would life have turned out: 02 (Singapore)

In my younger days, most Chinese parents aspired for their children to become one of the following three when they grew up, and in the order given: 

1. doctor

2. lawyer

3. accountant

    I read a book about Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) and his work in Africa when I was about ten, and aspired to go and work with him.

    I was in the Science Stream for my four secondary school years, and got good marks.  It was, therefore, automatically taken for granted that I should go into the pre-med(ical) class for my two Pre-U years.

    For some reason, however, in spite of all the hard work I'd put in for physics and chemistry, I simply never got my head around them.  Even the physics and chemistry lab experiments never quite produced the readings required, although I'd followed the instructions to a tee.

    In hindsight, I should've switched over to the Arts Stream after a year of this, but it was never my ambition to do History or Geography or Literature, I wanted to heal people, so I doggedly stuck to physics and chemistry, perhaps hoping a miracle would happen last minute.

    Well, that miracle didn't happen, so I couldn't get into medical school.  It was a huge shock (/ source of shame) at the time, to have failed for the first time in my school life when I'd been top girl of the grade seven years out of ten for my secondary school.  Top girl out of 200 students.  (In those days, the standard size was 40–44 students per class, with five classes per grade at my convent school.  Nobody suffered from the size, although a big deal has been made out of class sizes here in the UK.)

    The alternative was nursing, but with three health professionals in the family, I was strongly discouraged from going into it:  low pay and low status; hard / heavy / dirty work; shift work which would mess up my family life when I got married.

    So that I could be financially independent as soon as possible, I took up a secretarial course.  That completely changed my life, because it got me to Taiwan (the American oil company job), and then I was able to use my secretarial course skills to support myself throughout my student years in London, working part-time as a telex operator.  (Typing wasn't a default and universal skill in those days, unlike now -- one had to learn it properly.  Don't forget it was the manual typewriter then, with the electric typewriter being still fairly novel.)

    Looking back, if | had passed my physics and chemistry and got into medical school, this is what I might have become -- based on what I think is a fairly typical model:

1. maybe set up my own health practice

2. lived in a bungalow house (rather than in a high rise block), or in an affluent residential compound

3. got married, had children

4. driven a Mercedes Benz

    No sour grapes here, but that's not me.  And in view of my being squeamish about blood and open wounds, failing Pre-U physics and chemistry was the message from above, I think.  (I know, I know, one can always go into the bloodless branches of medicine, but I think the basic training requires one to go through the whole gamut.)

(Singapore)

Some Chinese practices: 09 (Contributing to the family kitty.2)

I was determined to be financially independent as soon as possible, not wanting to be a financial burden on my mother who had to be the breadwinner to her brood as well as support her younger siblings and cousins.

    When I failed to get into medical school, I decided to do a secretarial course as one could be a secretary in any line of business in those days.

    I'd done a short stint of teaching at a secondary school as a temporary teacher, while waiting for my Pre-U ('A' level) results from Cambridge (Overseas Syndicate Board).

    Two of my students at that school were from Indonesia.  Their parents had sent them over to receive their education in Singapore, and they were sharing a house with other children (cousins or children of their parents' friends).  I ended up being approached to give a number of them private tuition (on all the subjects that they were struggling with, as it was an English stream school, with every subject, except the Second Language, taught in English).

    So, I was giving private tuition in the morning (sometimes at the weekend as well), and attending my secretarial course in the afternoon.  This meant that I was able to start giving my mother money towards the household kitty.

    How much to contribute is not laid down clearly as such.  I think it depends on how much money is actually needed, and how much the contributor can afford.  In a family where money is not short, it's then a case of a token sum as a token of one's filial piety.

    I was earning three times my third sister's monthly salary as a bank clerk.  She had stopped giving my mother money because she was building up her nest egg, knowing she was going to marry the man she'd met, so I decided to contribute a third of my earnings towards the household kitty.

(Singapore, 1973–74)

Relativity 01 (Singapore)

Traditionally, the Chinese tend to behave according to their status, not their age.  

For example, someone aged 18, especially if a woman, will behave almost child-like if still at school, more grown-up if already in paid employment, certainly even more grown-up if married, and finally, definitely very much more grown-up if she’s a mother.  It may not be conscious role-playing, but it is not “acting your age”, it is “acting according to your status”.

I did some supply teaching at age 18 while waiting for my ‘A’ level results to come through from Cambridge (Cambridge Overseas Examination Syndicate).  My students were 14, only four years younger than I, but I had to act authoritatively, whilst only a few months back, when I was still at school, I was “the naughtiest girl in the school”, playing all sorts of tricks on people.  

At the end of the first term, I left that temporary post to go and do a secretarial course.  My students bought me farewell presents, little knick-knacks that children of that age like.  In return, I took them out to an open air food stall, sitting down for shaved ice (heaped over sweet mashed red beans and dowsed with multi-coloured syrup and condensed milk), paying for all 30 of them.  Very grown-up.

(Singapore, 1973)

The naughtiest girl in the school:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-naughtiest-girl-in-school-singapore.html