The pros and cons of being an Asian in Australia

Alright guys, I believe the title alone provides enough details as to what I'll be discussing today and since I am a natural optimist, lets begin with all the perks of being an Asian.

1. You are born with the innate ability to do maths. A gift which I silently celebrate everyday.

2. The expectation of your English Language proficiency is generally low. It doesn't take much to amaze the locals since they'd thought you to be monolingual. (And by that I mean, Chinese speaking)

3. You will not be laughed at when you do well in school. Because academic excellence is expected of an Asian. Coincidentally, this is also one of the cons of being an Asian.

4. You are never grounded, no matter what you do. The Chinese homes don't have that under the punishment section.

5. You are indistinguishable between your Chinese counterparts and hence lecturers can never pick on you to answer a question.


Now, lets look at the not-so-good side.

1. You have to bear the occasional discrimination. (Just look at the controversial win in MasterChief)

2. You hardly, if ever, get invited to parties with the locals. (Whatever!)

3. You have significantly smaller eyes as compared to the others.

4. You cannot have a dog.

5. All hell break lose when you fail a test.


But even so, I like being an Asian. I am proud of it. And that sets me apart from some (the international students) and further apart from others (the locals).

Gone are the holidays

The holidays are drawing to an end. The major problem I have to overcome now is my habit of over-sleeping. I have just looked at my timetable and realised that I will soon hate Thursdays. Cos for the first four weeks, I'll have lessons from 10am-5:30pm with no breaks in between. Crap. Still, I'm looking forward to Monday. It is like a fresh start to a nightmare that I will soon wake up from.

I have yet to come to any conclusion about what I want to do in life. The plan right now is to finish my bachelor degree and see what happens from there. I tell myself not to plan too far ahead and just take opportunities as they strike and so in the mean time, quoting from Sarah, I will just breathe.

My boring life vs the others

I was just reading some of my friends' blog and I realised they all have a similar theme. It's a "things I did today" theme. And I saw how much difference mine was from theirs. While most people blogged about their lives, I blog about abstract ideas and long ago events. Maybe there's something wrong with me, I thought. So I tried to talk about my life. I started by thinking about all the things I wanna say. And there's nothing. On the scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most boring, the boring-ness of my life would be about 9.5. It is as boring as boredom can get. Maybe its because of the holidays. I'm sure I'll be singing a different tune when school starts.

Just in case you're wondering,

Did
1) went to the toilet
2) brush my teeth
3) bathe
4) had brunch
5) blogged

Going to do
6) read a book
7) watch a movie
8) dinner
9) watch 2 more movies
10) sleep

As such, is my life.

Circular argument

When I was young, I was made to believe that there are only two kinds of people in this world. The good guys who can transform into superheros when there's trouble as like the power rangers, and the bad guys whose primary aim is to create havoc and destroy all goodness. And it is very easy to tell the good guys from the bad ones. The good guys are ALWAYS good-looking, well-mannered, and they don't ever swear. The bad guys, on the other hand, are always hideous, wore dark clothing and they speak with... well, a witch accent as I would have called it. So when the adults were saying how sorry they felt for young Andrew when he went for an eye surgery and reported to the day care centre with a cover over his left eye , I couldn't understand why no one saw that he was, in fact, the notorious Captain Hook.

As you can imagine, I was already judgmental when I was very young.

But I am older now. I know that not everyone who doesn't fit your idea of good-looking, are bad people. I know that not all cops are good people. I know that it is not always black and white. I know that good doesn't always triumph over evil. I know all that and yet, I want to believe in those fairy tales again. I have learnt life and now I want to unlearn it. I want to believe in heros with special powers and secret gardens with magic flowers. I want to simplify things. Look at the world through a child's eye. But I can't. Because that's just running away from reality. And heros don't run away.

What do you want, really.

Hi! This year is very different from the last for me. One of the feelings I've experienced (and still am experiencing) is the lack of any feelings. Detachment, I think, is what I'm trying to say. I have implied this before but just never said it out directly. The need to write and report of my well-being is not as strong as it was before (note the drastic drop on the number of posts) and the desire to do well for exams is well, not really there anymore. I think its because I have lost the goal in life.

Last year, I had an aim. I wanted it so bad that it kept the flame in me burning. I pushed myself in everyway possible and then, I achieved it. And because of that, it feels like there's nothing more to want this year. One semester has passed and I don't even know what went on around me. I'm just.. getting by. I know I'll be fine and I'll do well for the exams but, what the hell am I doing?

I'll probably use this break to do some soul searching. Will let you know when I find myself. And by the way, who are you?

Back with the living - exams are over

Hello! I have just sat for my last and least confident paper and now I am happy to be freeeeeeeeeeee! On the whole, the exam felt alright (it wasn't extremely good but it wasn't a disaster as well). We'll see when the results are out.

Alright anyways since the last time I wrote, many things have happened. There was another ang moh stranger who cannot resist the temptation to speak to me in Chinese, Michael Jackson died, more H1N1 cases, few houses in Adelaide got their roofs blown away, etc etc. None of which I desire to write about. I want to write about something that is close to my heart because that's when words flow like water from a fountain and I don't have to think for too much but there isn't any thing I feel strongly for at the moment. So I reached out into the box of random ideas and pulled out a piece of paper. It read "Lies". So here goes.

It is generally believed that a good man is one who speaks the truth. Nobody likes liars. No one likes to lie. But truth be told, we are all guilty of it once in a while. We lie to make others happy, to make ourselves look bigger, better, and sometimes simply just to make things easier. When a friend ask me " Hey do you think I'm fat?" I have two options. I could stand by my morals and say "Yes, I do think so" but instead I would say " Fat? No, you look fine". Call me a hypocrite but I don't see any good in speaking the truth.

Imagine a world where no one lies. Hmm.. lawyers would be out of jobs!

Seriously though, I don't think it's possible to live a life without lies. So if everyone does it, what's the big deal about lying? I guess that depends upon the severity of the consequences it brings. How severe is severe though? The moral line drawn is blur. In the end, we all rely on our self to be the judge.

I don't appreciate being lied to so I don't like to lie. But I still do sometimes. And that's not to say I don't have a conscience. Afterall, I'm only human.