I'm halfway through session A.
That means 3 things
- Exams are coming. Need to pick up pace.
- Joel, Noshin and Tyler will come soon!!
- SKYDIVING is coming soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Joel and I randomly text each other and we can't believe that we are only a text away from each other! That's the good thing about the telecommunication network here. There are no extra charges for calls between states. I think that's great... since US is so big. It really helps that the one same number will be treated the same all across the country.
Here's an excerpt of our text conversation:
me: I've been hoping for the last month that I'll meet someone random and we'll just click.
Joel: Why if you wouldn't stay anyways for fear of raising your children in America.
me: cause he'll feel the same way and we'll move away.
joel: you just need to accept that we'll all be living in SF raising all of our children.
lol. I think Joel will keep repeating that for the rest of my life. If ever, I really move to SF, he'll be like "You seeeeee. I told you so... you'll marry an ang moh and live here". He said that 1 month after I met him. lol.
ah, I'm just so thankful for this friendship.. everything rolled out the way it did... cause of so so many factors. If I hadn't quarrel with my sister that year... if I hadn't cancel my Europe trip... if Ryan wasn't in town that week...if Joel's visa didn't have any problems and he didn't stay with Grace during his visit... I wouldn't have met him. And now? he's one of my closest friends and he has taught me so much about love, life and friendship.
I cannot wait for them to come over in less than 2 weeks!! I miss them so so much.
Side story-
I finally met Shane today. Shane is a researcher (I think) at UCB. And he's a friend of Amy's. Amy is my Shanghai jiejie. Amy basically acted as my big sister during my time in Shanghai when she didn't have to at all. She's one of my closest friends in Shanghai. Anyways... when she knew I intended to come here, she told Shane and I have been in contact with Shane since. He's been busy (he just got back from Hawaii on his honeymoon!!) so I only got to meet him today. He was really nice as promised by Amy... he brought me to this sandwich place... amazinggggggg. cheap and o-so-good.
And I took out my map so he circled and labelled all the good places to go in Berkeley.
Then he took out his pepper spray!!! He said to be careful around Shattuck... he was circling the corner on the map that wasn't very far from my apartment.
I was like...how dangerous is it exactly? Homeless people are just homeless. They may not be dangerous. I really don't like it when people say "beware of huge groups of black people" or "stay away from the homeless". Anyway... so yeah.. maybe I need to get a pepper spray. Apparently dangerous to him meant rapists and muggers. If I don't get to use it here, I'll bring it home to torture guys. hahah!
Another side story- warning, this part is heavy
For development psych class today I had to interview a classmate. It was an ingenious idea of the prof to give us an opportunity to make at least 1 friend in class. We were to ask our classmate a series of questions - like why choose Cal? What family background do you come from? What's your role in your family? If you could have dinner with one person- dead or alive, who would you pick and why? Where would you go for a 2-day all expense paid trip and why? What's your stumbling block to success?
So I know 3 other Singaporeans in this class and it was unspoken that the 4 of us would pair up to complete his assignment. But last night I was looking through the questions and I realised the whole point of the assignment was to explore the diversity in the student body. So I made a few calls and suggested the group to split up so we can get more out of this exercise. We did.
This morning we went to the lecture hall and waited for people to swap partners with us. I ended up interviewing this girl called Marne. She's awesome.
She's actually a working adult and she has returned for graduate school, and she's doing the course as a prerequisite for psych grad school. Her bachelor's is in social planning.
ding ding ding.
no relation to psychology! she only has to do 6 classes in psychology before she can go on to grad school.
That's something for me to think about...
long long time ago, in secondary school, when the 14 year olds would get together and ask each other what we wanted to do in the future... many of us in my group actually said psychology. I thought it was just a phase in life. but on hindsight, it was just that similar people get together. we just had similar interests and loved studying people. When it was time for me to enter uni, psychology or sociology never entered my mind. Not practical I thought. Maybe it was the influence of my parents. (I hate to admit it but what they say has so much influence on me. I just look up to them so much)
But last semester I did a career assessment test which analysed that my top 3 most suitable areas are
- psychology
- HR
- social work
Then it hit me... yeah, maybe I was built this way. I'm always intrigued by the differences amongst people. How people think, behave, how to relate to them etc. But alas, it's too late. I'm going onto my final year of university. Social Work would make my parents wallow and die in self-pity....
It will go something like this "ahhhhhh. I spent soooooooooo much money to put you through school, and this is what you wanna do. I know this matters very much to you. But you go work... have your business and then make lots of money... then you have a foundation and you have even more money to help those people. social work won't get you ANYWHERE. It's rubbish work, especially in Singapore. What, you wanna go to Africa?? Then you'll get malaria. Fall sick and die. Why do you want to do that to yourself???"
okay, maybe a little exaggerated. But you get my drift.
Anyway, I guess I'll have to ask myself how interested I really am in this field. It's not so impossible to attain a master's in Psychology after all. It's just 1 year to do the bachelor's coursework, then on to grad school.
Back to Marne. I know I digress a lot.
She works full time- is a director managing 70 people that looks into helping those impoverished children in the US and develops the school programme to cater to their needs, she's a part time student, has a partner and pets. She came from a broken family, and had to move like 4 times across the country in her youth as a result of that. It's complicated. I have so much respect for these people... they can be so strong.. so sensible despite all the hardship they have gone through. Sure, she didn't sleep on the streets. But divorce could be the worst thing a child has to go through..emotional support is so crucial for a young person. There were a couple of horrible horrible horrible occasions in my childhood that tore me up, and I got through it with my parents' help and support. I am privileged and lucky and I will never forget that.
After finding out about Marne's work, I just couldn't help but start discussing about the wretched system here in US. PROPERTY TAXES funds the schools here. So if you live in the rich neighbourhood with lotsa expensive property, your child's school will receive a lot more money as compared to the school in the ghetto. It's a vicious cycle. So how do you help the poor kids if you give them shitty resources?????
YES, their parents may be fucking lazy and therefore deserve to have nothing. they shouldn't even claim unemployment benefits. but the child is not mature enough to know the implications of living in this environment!!!!!!!!!!
shouldn't you let every single one start at the same point and reward them. equal benefits. equal rights. calling it socialist sounds extreme. but if anything opposite from individualism is labelled as socialist then so be it. Collectivism has it's benefits. And if the majority of Americans don't see it, the country will have itself to blame when the percentage of college graduates continue to fall.
Marne told me that for the first time, the percentage of college graduates in this generation is lower than the previous generation. This country is moving backwards.
I never thought much about Singapore's subsidy system. Our schools are subsidized.. Healthcare is subsidized. Poor people do get handouts. I don't know about unemployment benefits. There's workfare- but that is to reward those that do work. You see, they have to at least make the effort. I even felt that Singapore is not a good place for the poor. But now I think otherwise; America is nastier for poor people.
When I met Jonas in April, we were casually chatting about healthcare and education in his country. It's completely FREE. I never actually thought about the system in other countries. Shame on me, as an econs major. All I knew was... it was no good. It's bound to be inefficient. Taxes would be high. Workers would be underpaid. System would be inefficient and overused.
I did my research. Taxes are indeed high. But surprisingly, people weren't unhappy to pay. For college, they even received money while they're schooling. I'll liken that to pocket money from parents. Except for them, the parents pay the taxes, and the government gives the pocket money. Isn't that interesting? No matter how rich or poor your parents are, you can start on a clean slate; everything will depend on your hard work and brilliance.
The immediate thing I draw from this is
- Parents don't have to save for their children's future- education is a huge expenditure
- Will it affect the role of the family? So what is the parents' role in the development of their children?
Then I brought this up with my dad. He and I always talk about random stuff. I think we were talking about the different political systems and the impacts and how some countries managed to get away with being socialist and China's communist past yada yada.
He said socialist countries are bound for failure.
I'm not so sure.
But I am worried for the future generations of the socialist state. If you're brought up thinking, I have free healthcare, I don't need money for precautionary measures... the one day your government screws up and lose control of your country's funds, you'll be screwed too. Cause not only do you not have your own funds to use, you also lack the self-reliant mindset for those expenses that are traditionally paid for by the government.
My dad says that healthcare costs will only go up, especially with the ageing population. With the ageing population, you won't have enough tax revenue to cover the increment in spending to accommodate old people- in infrastructure, healthcare, pension.
So can you predict how long these systems can last for? Can you figure out why it can work for some countries but not for others? What are the differences in culture and values that make the system work or screw up?
I always knew America is all about the individual. But it isn't until today that I realise just how selfish this makes people. The rich person will say "well I worked hard."
How willing will you be to share your current wealth if you knew, in the next half of your life, it'll be your turn to be poor? How much would you share if you didn't know? And how much would you share if you knew you wouldn't ever be poor?
