trisected

Tag: adulting

  • Falling Sick as an Adult

    Maybe one of the hardest things to get used to as an adult is falling sick. I think my first real taste of this was in army, when I was deployed to Tekong. I had quite a bit of freedom, which meant falling sick was totally on my own care. If I needed to eat food, I could ask a friend for help but most of them had their own things to do. I moved around and ate whatever I wanted for food.

    I clearly remembered having kaya toast and eggs, with coffee too. And the most interesting part was no one would be there to chase me for anything.

    Now, at least Clarice will leave things for me, or help me out at different times. But throughout the day, I could eat McDonalds for recovery and no one could stop me. I don’t though. I learnt to eat warm and soupy meals to help my stomach fill, or basically foods that make it easier to chew and swallow.

    Just a disclaimer: after army, and before I got married, my parents would take care of me too, but it was different to when I got married. Like if they found out I was sick and I still had McDonalds, it would not have been a good ending.

    But basically, falling sick as an adult is quite a lonely process. Until you get to the point where you can claim your insurances, because you’d lack certain daily abilities by then. Sad, but unfortunately very realistic.

  • Hot Summer

    It’s been a really hot few days in Singapore. Everything’s in this mess of “what are we to do now”. Housing mortgage loans went up, so everyone’s trying to get in with the government loans instead. The train services went mad for a weekend, and people couldn’t go home for some time. It feels like the world is shutting down.

    But of course, that’s not really what’s happening. I think it’s just life being life. It’s been hard to really focus the past few days. I’ve been enjoying my freedom, and writing a bunch here and there, but just not on the blog. I’ve been enjoying typing on multiple keyboards again everyday. For the past year it’s been working on whatever I have that day, and not getting the whole range, but guess what! The freedom of not having a job means that I can choose to type whenever I want, with as many keyboards as I want.

    One thing I realized recently, that I think is worth talking about, is that even when you become an adult, bullies are still around.

    They exist in different forms of course. No one is going to wrestle you into a corner and force your lunch money from you. But something that does happen is that some adults feel as insecure as they did growing up. Maybe they feel even worse, because when we were all kids, we could still get away with childish behaviour. But if that was all we knew of our own sense of power and authority, then that becomes how we try to exert our influence on the people around us.

    I’ve seen that happen first hand in the past few years. Adults behaving like children. Worst still, being non confrontational, and hiding behind their justified actions, exactly like when I catch children doing something wrong. Then as I scale to think, why in the world would people think that this is the right way to live, I realise the world actually encourages that behaviour. I see many world leaders doing that in one way or another. I see interviews, I see discussions, engagements, and the more you read about it, the crazier it gets.

    But the point I think is essential is for each individual to be your own person and understand yourself. Having confidence is definitely a luxury that is invaluable, and no amount of money can buy that for you. The most that could happen is hiding behind that money, but then who are you after that?

    So I hope that as you read this, and if you’ve come from keyboards to look for keyboard advice, nope, you’ve got some life advice instead. Don’t be a dick to other people, and learn who you are in life, as early as possible. Life does not get nicer to you in the long run, so just be nice to people because you can be sure of who you are instead.