I don’t think anyone ever prepares you for the multiple times that you have to go through different changes, learning different things and different parts of your life. I guess some people warn you, like your parents, or family members who are concerned enough to say something. But it’s not like we actually listen to what they’re saying, we just think that they’re raining on our parade.
I’m not going through any bad patch right now, but I was just thinking about the things we’re told to look out for when we’re growing up. In Singapore, we’re always told to make sure that we eat right, that we take care of our money well, and to be careful whenever we move around. That’s the simple stuff. The harder and more intimate ones are about how we need to look out for people who are trying to make buck out of us, to remember to care for our parents and family members, or maybe just to learn how to be a human being.
I’m going to receive my BTO keys tomorrow. For those who are not from Singapore, these are the Built To Order housing units. Most Singaporeans live in a HDB Apartment, standing for Housing Development Board. It’s public housing, but because of how it’s made, it’s the standard form of living for us. A BTO would mean that I’ve got to put a downpayment of a certain amount of money, and then wait for the apartment buildings to be built. Considering it’s public housing, we’re encouraged to use our government reserved money, and that is under the care of the CPF — Central Provident Fund. This basically takes a portion of our pay, and places it into a government owned banking system. Every citizen has their CPF, as employers need to also pay a certain amount into their employees CPF.
So after all the acronyms, what basically happens is that they will take our CPF to pay for our HDB apartment BTO. I don’t physically have to pay a cent, but instead the government sorts out the money on their end, based on these amounts that are transacted into the different funds. Thus, public housing.
It takes an average of about 2-3 years to build a BTO apartment, but because of the pandemic, we’re hitting the 3-5 year mark for some apartment buildings. I had signed the downpayment in 2019, and now we’re at the 2022 mark, which gives us about three years of waiting so far. I’ve grown quite accustomed to where I currently live, because it’s really central, and there will definitely be another range of posts about moving away from where I live. After all, all my keyboard videos and this entire journey started from this room, in this space.
But yeah, moving, leaving spaces, owning my own space, that’s really part of growing up nothing can really prepare you for. I feel just at a weird state of uncertainty that I’m quite cautious about, not fearful, just sad to leave.
How would I prepare myself to move? The emotional separations and change, not so much for the actual shifting. Those things are easy to do. It’s always the heart things that take a lot more from me that I prepared for.
It’s tough to grow up.