future.

ah! where is my future now? It all started when I became 21. Suddenly, without me feeling the real impact it would have on me, I left Singapore for an education in America. How long would I be there? What was the system like there? I didn't know. What was I going to be after I graduate? Where was my future headed toward? Ohhh...such questions...terrible questions. The future is so uncertain. Yes there is the common phrase that people often don't end up doing what they studied in university, or that university is when you discover yourself. But I don't like the uncertainty. I wish I had just gone into a vocational concentration like engineering, medicine, law, or architecture in Singapore. Why was I in America? I could study the same things back home if it were these vocational fields of education. As it turns out, university is a time of discovering about myself. But probably every period in time is a time of discovery anyway.

What am I going to do with a degree in Linguistics? A science. I think of it more as a social science. I like to slap the word "pseudoscience" on it. Oh, people are going to say "Oh! How many languages do you speak?" as if Linguistics was the acquiring of as many languages as needed for graduation. I'd have to answer "Oh, just two. English, half of Mandarin (I'm already being generous), and half of Russian (likely more generous here)."

They'd probably go, "Ooooh, that's nice."

As if speaking 2 or even 3 languages these days is anything special. I'd need to know Arabic, Spanish and Hindi to command some respect.


Well, I'd learned what I didn't want to do. Or at least I had more doubts about more things that before and more openness to others that I had shut out at first glance. I know I didn't want to study business because I thought that what corresponded to success in business, even in the educational aspect of it, was not intelligence in the kind of knowledge a school or classroom education can give but height and public relational skills. I took science courses and university halted there. I was transported and floated in a period of Junior College and Secondary School. Eventually I decided that a liberal arts education did not seem worth the money paid for the university education. I could probably read it elsewhere myself anyway. I should be studying something that gives me a job when I graduate! Ah!! But in the liberal arts, where does that lead? Everywhere and nowhere. That's the thing. Economics looked promising if not for some influences on my life that has made me doubtful of economics especially in its prescriptive-ness, but the bigger problem with economics was that there were just too many people doing it. The competition would be high. Too many people within my school, or from the people I had met to constitute my sample group, and too many other smart people in nearby Harvard and probably even M.I.T. to compete with.

But Linguistics is not the source of my troubles. I am happy with it. The stress comes from expectation.

My parents want me to become a doctor. a doctor? Oh my gosh. It is prestigious, it pays well, the working hours aren't my main problem with being a doctor. In fact, I don't mind being a doctor. But wait, really? Well, I discovered America only two years ago and man is it different from Singapore. Back home, we're a small place. Now, studying to be a doctor in America might, who knows, lead me to become a doctor in America. Stay in America?? Ah. Well, it's not too bad I suppose. But wait, which part? What if the job is not in the city? It's horrible! I can't spend the next decades of my life in Indiana driving to the 5-storied and tallest building in the nearby region to work with blood and coughing, sad looking, grumpy people amongst the smell of antiseptic. Life is not like "Scrubs". Oh my gosh! Moreover, blood and naked tissues, physical pain and mental numbness...these aren't my fortes. I'm not a true Spartan! And I'm not a masochist. I don't want to deal with light but intensely bright blood, viscous fluids like puss or mucus, or slice up a person and sew him back like a toy! Well, people can get used to anything. But I'm not exactly inclined to want that. It would be so much easier if I didn't have a choice. It even took me long seconds before I was able to pierce the prawns I caught straight from the water and hold them as they struggle, their life essence almost transferring with sick and innocent cries from their inanimate shells to my fingers, and then laying them up orderly like soldiers on my BBQ grill. The only thing short of making me a monster that moment was my ironic allergy to prawns. Wait, maybe that makes it more monstrous. But I don't have an allergy to humans, sickness or blood. So I theoretically could be a doctor. Oh No! But there are people who aren't allergic to prawns and don't want to eat it!

I'd rather go to do law. Law is prestigious. Maybe looked upon in a different light nonetheless. But it is more appealing to wear shirts and suits, hold briefcases, attend boring meetings in classy buildings, spend hours working on a computer and having none of it actually used, never having the fun of court moments as in "Boston Legal" et cetera, than it is to be a doctor. The pay is good. And I would be closer to the world - more meaningless than the doctor's world though it might be. I can picture having a drink after work nearby in the city. I picture doctors sipping coffee in the eatery.

And the MCAT. Oh my gosh. I'd rather sit for the LSAT. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but the MCAT means a lot of studying of science and things that I have no more love for. LSAT on the other hand is about logical arguments and critical breaking down of things or creating effective categorizations. Well well...that sounds more fun for the nerd I try to be! I don't want to know about chiral molecules, or about benzene, or have every boy's childhood fantasy "physics" degraded to a enemy of my future holding a spear that is the short time I have to neutralize it, or about the frickin' animal anatomy, or the names and processes of the cells. Plants are okay; I developed a recent fascination for them, especially for fungi and its mycelium.


But I want to do my family proud. This is my life. But life is so fragile. Life is so...meaningless, in the grand scheme of things (if any). And so, living for myself is also so futile. Maybe I should live to do my parents proud. After all, people can adapt to anything and I'm not being in denial here. I just have too much choice. The choices that give me something to regret. Damn you choice! I am only a sheep-like human. I am no God. I cannot cope with excess choice! Give me back my innocence. Send me back to the matrix. Give me back my humanity!


Ahhh.......so I sit here on my bed, in this wonderful hotel, with fresh city wind coming in through my window opening slit, a night view of the city and a river that does not let this place become still and stale....and I do not know where I am going. And as long as I do not know, I am happy. When I think I am going where I want, I am alright. But when I hear those words on the phone and the joyful tones that are covered over and in it, my heart sinks....and I don't know what to do. I must, begin on my preparations. And I must go one way. One way or the highway. One way or into the river (metaphorically, don't worry).