I’d like to think that I live my life in a logical way to some extent… well at least it makes a lot of sense to me.  Right now I’m doing this startup with a “friend” of mine.  Now, I’m sure you can tell how that is going with the fact that I put quotes around the “friend” part.

Well anyway, I think about my life and some of the decisions that I’ve made and I wonder whether I made the right choices in my life.  And I think I’m pretty certain that everything in my past has been resolved at this point.  My most recent decision… the one to come here and startup a company with this “friend” in Singapore… I’m still debating about.

The reason this is a conundrum is that even though my girlfriend is nearby… she told me to make this decision without taking her into account.  I totally agreed with her.  So without thinking about the advantages of being near her, I still decided to come here to Singapore and start this company with this “friend” I barely knew.  I’ve been here only about a month and a half, and already I am seeing some major cracks in the foundation that is this company.  I still plan on seeing it through for at least a year, but I feel like I’m slowly dying inside.  Here’s the breakdown:

1. Business: The business is going so-so.  I’m starting to believe less and less in the idea and that it will honestly work.  Furthermore, I’m not sure I trust my business partner.  I get the feeling all he cares about with this venture is money and he will stab me in the back the first chance he gets when he doesn’t need me anymore.  If I leave after a year, I basically wasted a good year of my life.
2. Life: This is a conglomeration of many factors, but I realize that I’m not happy here.  I’ve met some Singaporeans whom I don’t have much in common with.  I don’t like the location at all, and, no Singapore isn’t growing on me.  And, I’m starting to lose my strong sense of identity in this conformist society.  I long for someone to stand up and just yell at the top of their lungs “I’m an individual!!!”  Coming to Singapore makes me even miss living in the US.  At least there is freedom.  Singaporeans don’t seem to mind that they are told how to live, their media gets censored, and soon their private lives might be open to the government (i.e. ODEX for example).
3. Relationship: I’ve never been happier in terms of my relationship with anyone before.  I go up to visit my girlfriend in Kuala Lumpur twice a month and I have to say I love every minute of it.  If I hadn’t come to Singapore, would we still be together?  Would I still feel this way about her?  Would we have really known each other at that point?  I feel like I understand her so much more now that I’m here.

Anyway, so that’s what it comes down to… the reason I came to Singapore isn’t turning out the way I planned (i.e. the career).  Also, I’m getting really depressed in my life here.  I’m still looking for a place to stay, but I think I’m generally disatisfied with the way of life here.  Finally, my relationship is really a bright point in my life.  Angel has been with me despite all my whingeing about Singapore and work.  She’s still so supportive.  Sometimes I worry that she will just break down and tell me to shut up, if she is just pretending to be supportive.  I guess that’s the true test of a good relationship.  Any relationship can survive when both people are happy, but can it also survive during the darkest hours?

I still believe I can make it for a year here.  It’s more a challenge to myself than anything.  At one point I was thinking of living in Bangladesh for a year.  If I can’t live in Singapore, then I think I would really wonder how many places in the world I could live in.  I need to do this for myself.  This company is quickly becoming something that is not mine.  I wish I could steer it more but my business partner is pretty inflexible and naive at this point.  It’s hard to work with people that have never worked in games before… they always think things magically get done.  But even more than that, I didn’t realize how badly my business partner’s personality clashes with mine.  He’s kinda the type of person I don’t want to associate with (maybe I’ll explain more about that later).

By December, my girlfriend will leave her current job.  What will she do?  I wonder… I will support her wherever she goes.  I just don’t know if I will be physically there wherever she goes. :(  So many unanswered questions.  It’s exciting to try and find out the answers.

Obviously all of my waking time is consumed with thinking about why I’m in Singapore these days. I’m still trying, but more and more I’m just starting to feel like I’m giving up trying. I don’t belong here, but I will just deal with it. I’ll just accept the fact that I have no social life. I’ll go along with the flow and just become the model no U-turning, no free thinking, law abiding Singaporean. Follow the rules! The rules are your friends. I used to be worried that I was losing my creativity and very uninspired here.

The longer I stay here, the more I just don’t want to fight it anymore. I’ll just go to work and do a less than optimal job trying to be creative in an uncreative world. I’ll just follow the path that millions of Singaporeans follow every day.

1. Work is my life! Why you not working? Hard work = success = respect = better than your lazy ass.
2. Creativity? What that? You no make money from creativity!
3. Degrees, degrees, degrees… will make sure to mention them to make you impressed.
4. Shop, Eat, Work, Shop, Eat, Work. Is there really anything more to life? Sad
5. Live in super small HDB and like it la?

Obviously I’m a little bitter, and of course it’s bad to generalize… but I am starting to feel myself just giving up on being an individual. Just integrate and lose everything that I love about who I am. I imagine it’s a similar group mentality that drove the Germans to follow Hitler. Just do as you are told, and things will be good.

I really hope this isn’t a permanent change. I really hope I don’t lose all drive to creative pursuits because of being here.  I feel myself going on autopilot.  I hate going on autopilot.

I feel like such a hideous creature here in Singapore. I feel so bad for feeling like I don’t belong. I feel like I’m letting people down… like I overestimated my own abilities. But I feel, so horrible and depressed here. When I visit my girlfriend in KL, I feel happy again, but that is such a brief feeling… because I still end up in Singapore at the end. I need something more from my life. I need to feel a certain way. I just feel so hideous.

“Beautiful creature of darkness… what kind of life have you known? God gave me courage to show you… you are not alone!”

~Phantom of the Opera, Down Once More…

But what can I do? Everyone says “just give it more time” or “you aren’t trying hard enough,” but what does it honestly take and how hard must I try to belong in a place? Is there any place in the world where “just giving it more time” isn’t going to do it? I met one of my girlfriend’s friends here, Sell, and she said that even after 3 years living here, she didn’t like it here. How much longer can I keep this up? It feels like such a charade. It’s not me. I’m not being fair to myself anymore.

Well, I haven’t posted to this blog in so long. But I have an excuse. I just finished traveling around the world. Now I’m dealing with the pressures of starting up my own company in Singapore and living in Singapore. Trust me, the second part is much harder than the first, but both are presenting a lot of challenges.

I’m realizing a lot about what type of person I am and what type of person I prefer to be around. I think I fit squarely into the middle class American demographic. I like living in a moderately sized house, having greenery around, and associating with people who are not so concerned about money and status. Unfortunately, here in Singapore I have none of that.

I didn’t think the transition would be so jarring for me. Someone once told me that “Singapore is the most Westernized Asian country.” Maybe it’s true in terms of language (almost everyone here speaks some English), but in terms of living style it is definitely not Westernized. People live in big buildings called HDBs. Almost no one owns a house here except for the multi-millionaires. Which brings me to another point that really bothers me about Singapore: People are obsessed with status, work, and money here. A friend of my girlfriend once said “It’s like Singapore is filled with a bunch of clones.” And to be honest, trying to avoid stereotyping, it’s fairly true.

I can’t tell you how many times I have been introduced to people as “XXX, who went to (unnamed prestigious American university), who worked at (unnamed high paying consulting firm), who’s now working for his/her Dad’s company which makes (ungodly sum of money) per year.” The implication then is of course that they automatically deserve respect and in some ways are better than you. Ugh, this is the problem with starting up a business with a guy who has only really grown up in upper class society. He can never really understand what it is like to be middle class. He can never understand why we don’t talk about that stuff, and why that stuff is much less important than the person. And, he can never understand why the life of the upper class is not the type of life I want to have or aspire to achieve.

But, I think it’s a very Asian attribute to put achievements, status, and education before anything else about the person. I know I’ve said so many great things about Australian culture (and I am trying to cut down because it makes my business partner all depressed because I can’t say much good about Singaporean culture), but Australians seem to care much less about achievements, status, and education. They focus on the person… on the events experienced together. They focus more on life.

Furthermore, though I have met some middle class Singaporeans (not through my business partner obviously… all his friends are filthy rich and dreadfully boring), there is another thing that bothers me about Singaporeans. I couldn’t put my finger on it until my Singaporean friend told me about a term for it: No U-Turn Syndrome. I really see it now that we are trying to hire creative people for our company. The problem is that Singapore hasn’t promoted creative pursuits ever. In fact, with how orderly society runs, they discourage it. Singaporeans are taught since birth that if you follow a certain path through life, you will be happy and successful. They are not encouraged to “find their own way” like in the US.

So, what it comes down to is that it’s really hard to find anyone creative here. Recently, the Singaporean government has mandated that people “be creative.” But unfortunately, that’s not how true creative pursuits work. You can’t tell people “be creative”, you just have to give them the freedom and let them explore their own passions. I wonder whether you can have a creative society without it having many freedoms. Singapore is obviously a very orderly society, but how much freedom does its people have? The government has a vested interest now in promoting creativity among its people. But, can it maintain the strict control over people’s lives while at the same time promoting creative pursuits among its people?

I think Singapore realizes that their previous push towards technology is not enough. There are tons of graduates every year in IT or some other technical skill. But all these jobs are moving to cheaper countries such as India. What Singapore is realizing is that the country’s monetary and cultural wealth is contingent more on its ideas than on anything else. This is where the US excels in, and where it makes a lot of its wealth from is in its ideas. I have heard Singapore described as a “city without culture.” You can’t have a culture without promoting creative pursuits. Everything in Singapore is really just stolen from another culture’s traditions. There is nothing really distinctive about Singapore’s food or traditions. So in the grander scheme of things, Singapore’s lack of creativity translates directly into a lack of culture.