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I stepped into the auditorium of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and felt a little out of place. Mum had sent me an email two days earlier about Claire Chiang’s new autobiography “张齐娥登陆记”. I thought then that it would be interesting to turn up at the book launch to hear what one of Singapore’s most active civil activists had to say. Standing in a sea of people whom I could only instinctively describe as “decidedly Chinese”, I felt a little out of my comfort zone.

Like many others of my generation, we were brought up by English-speaking parents. Learning the Chinese language was a daily travail that plagued our educational journey. Looking back at how I struggled to pass the language year after year in school, it would only be logical to assume that I’d grow to hate my mother-tongue. It was only after spending many years in a bilingual church that I’ve come to fear the Chinese language less.

But this night would give me pause. As I stood alone in the crowd, conversations streamed about me in extremely fluent Mandarin. I found a seat in a corner, sat myself down and pretended to have an engaging conversation with my mobile phone.

It might have been the fengshui of that particular corner in the auditorium - a group of English-speaking folks sat around me. Paul Rozario from the Arts House introduced himself and sat beside me.

The event began. Speaker after speaker went on stage, delivering their speeches in Mandarin. They recounted their relationships with Claire, the person she was, and the amazing life she led.

What was fascinating was that I found myself translating the speeches to Paul. It just came so naturally. I wasn’t about to let someone sit through an entire event without enjoying these testimonies of Claire’s younger days, or the accounts of Claire’s children. As I translated I found myself enthralled by the beauty of the Chinese language when wielded fluently. Trying to retain that beauty while translating, while no mean feat, was a challenge I intellectually relished.

Paul’s appreciation of the intricate Chinese expressions (however callously mutilated by my substandard translating) touched my heart — this is the Singapore I want my children to inherit. A place where we can be proud of our ethnic identities, express them openly and share them freely with others. A place where we can have access to the richness of other cultures and be made better through the appreciation of the unique and the realisation of the common.

As I walked home after the event, it dawned on me that while I was translating cross-culturally, Claire’s speech and her book was an effort to communicate the values of her generation to mine; showing us that attributes like truth, virtue and beauty are timeless, and that more of us ought to be protecting these treasures against an increasingly mercenary and selfish mindset.

In the midst of all the hustle and bustle of things that cry out for our attention, there is no greater reminder of how quickly time slips through our fingers than that of our children. They graduate from phase to phase, so fast that by the time we parents learn to deal with the challenges of a tantrum-throwing toddler, we find them asking questions on interpersonal problems at school.

So such it is with Anne and Caleb, our two little stowaway adventurers who’ve become fellow journeymen and constant companions of our lives. It seems only yesterday Anne was born; how silently 6 years have passed! Shy Caleb has turned to rambunctious Caleb to well-mannered Caleb, and even as I write this, he’s already morphing into some new phase of cognitive development, complete with new challenges and joys.

Age is really beginning to catch up with us. For the first time in my life, sheer force of will is no longer enough to overcome the lead in my legs as I insist on chasing down kids less than half my age on the neighbourhood basketball court. I stretch to go in one direction, but there’s this perceptible lag between what my mind wants and what my body performs. I stubbornly refuse to accept the fact I’m past the age some professional basketball players retire, but the symptoms are undeniably visible.

We’re also starting to come face to face with our mortality, and even more immediately, that of our parents.

Dad just celebrated his 70th, a momentous milestone by any measure, but I must admit in my heart that there is a growing worry. The assumptions of life and health of our family and ourselves — assumptions that we so carelessly took for granted in our youth no longer stand up to the stark reality that everything earthly eventually atrophies.

As friends and colleagues around me deal with their parents’ declining health, I brace myself for the same eventuality.

It dawns on me that time is short for us all, and we ought to spend it wisely. For all the words that I should have said and not said, all the things I should have done and not done, there is no time for regret, only swift decision.

To love, to share, and to serve.

Despite being a father of two and spending most of my nights parenting them, I sometimes find myself guilty of the trait that irks parents all over the world:

Petulance.

Some weeks ago I headed down to the basketball courts for a decent evening’s workout, but found the community centre transformed beyond recognition. Though these two basketball courts were well frequented by teenagers who lived in the east, I wasn’t prepared to see a whole carnival of around 50 Filipino men playing full-court basketball on both courts.

A wave of heated emotion ran over me, and I let my temper simmer within me.

“Our community centre got overrun”, I thought to myself. Many other ugly thoughts clouded my mind, most of them revolving around having a country which I paid for in time (national service) and taxes forcibly taken away from me by a swarm of locusts who were using my home as a stepping stone to a better life…yadda yadda yadda.

I felt like gatecrashing - just standing at the rim and shooting my basketball without caring about whether these Filipinos were in the middle of their game. Heck, I’m a true-blooded Singaporean; surely I deserved that right.

I sulked for quite a while, before a few of the Filipino men called out to me and asked me to play with them on the next team. I accepted the invitation, bitter taste still lingering in my mouth.

It only took a few minutes before we were passing the ball around, engaged in the pretty universal dance that basketball is. We were laughing at each other’s misses and high-fiving when a good play was executed well. And I began to remember how different we are, compared to them.

It’s an odd thing, because you’d assume that when I was done sulking, I’d have this whole revelation about how we’re all one, kumbayah sorta thing. But when you’re really in the zone, you realise that harmony is not achieved through enforcing uniformity, but through the celebration of diversity. Through the course of our game, I learned how warm the Filipinos are as a people; how seriously they take their basketball, but also how they prize the playing of the game over its outcome.

I learned that I have much to learn from them.

It would be a mistake to expect the different cultures within Singapore to assimilate into one singular identity and erase the diversity that has made us strong. We ought to forge a home where we can accept others for who they are, and expect the same kindness and freedom to be reciprocated unto us.

I am a writer.

This is the story of my life.

For the longest time, as far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. For much of my childhood there always existed a manuscript of some sort, stashed away in a drawer or in the deepest compartments of my schoolbag. The physical embodiment of unfinished dreams. The great novel waiting to be written, now a memory strewn by the traffic of life.

Over the course of many years my dreams of being a writer reshaped and reformed itself, the winds of pragmatism slowly carving its canyon walls. At 12 years of age, fearing the high failure rate that accompanied writing for a living, I compromised and laid my aspirations to teach English literature instead.

Sort of like in the movie Mr Holland’s Opus. If you haven’t watched it, you should. Story of my life.

Till I was 16 anyway.

Long story short, my results from the major examinations weren’t what I thought they were supposed to be, and I found myself having to compromise on my life goals yet again. For lack of a better alternative I chose to study business. Those years were spent learning to apply empathy on a different plane, and helped lay a foundation I didn’t know then I’d need for pretty much every job I’ve worked at since.

A failed attempt at entrepreneurship early on taught some really tough lessons: the metallic taste of fear when the balance in your bank account was so low you’d buy a loaf of bread because you couldn’t afford a hot meal at the hawker centre. How you’d cover the screen at the ATM not for want of privacy but out of embarrassment.

The next chapter in my life revolves around working in the public sector, a path I had chosen to fulfill a debt of gratitude.

It’s been a few years in the public service, and it is an appropriate juncture in my life to remind myself not to be defined by the roles I take on, and to find the common thread that enables work to be a rewarding part of life; to remember the person I am.

It might have taken a great many different forms, but it is suffice to say that I have lived out my childhood aspirations of being a writer. Whether photograph or paragraph, UI or UX, I’ve always found the most joy in creating something elegant that elicits an emotional response. I am extremely heartened when people tell me that the sharing of my personal experiences on this blog helps them through their own tough patches. It’s been a few years removed, but I still swell with pride when someone tells me they appreciate the thought I put into designing and building the Ministry of Education website.

To share a smile, or move us both to tears; there is a great need to refocus our efforts on things that really, really matter, and be true to the person we were created to be.

“Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honour.”

I first heard of Inch Chua a little more than a year ago. Inch. If anything, her name was intriguing. Her music, like herself, was easy to like. I was proud that she was Singapore’s first solo musician to perform at SXSW.

So when I read her Facebook note that she was leaving Singapore, my heart broke a little. Many things she wrote in that note were true.

It is true that for some obscure reason, Singaporeans look down on other Singaporeans. “Made in America” comes with the notion that the product is heavy-duty; “made in Japan”, quality; “made in the UK”, quaint. But when you talk about something that is “made in Singapore”, it is always the Singaporeans who’ll be first in line to pull it down. You’ll often hear things like “trying too hard to be [insert name of western country]” or “cannot make it”. Best of all, these criticisms are uttered by the ones who’ve never had the guts to even try.

I know, because I’m guilty of it.

When the iPod debuted, Singapore’s own Creative Labs stood at the forefront of the mp3 player market. I owned the Creative Nomad at that time, having bought it after enduring a very long line at one of Creative’s sales. When the second generation iPod made its way to the market, it became clear that Apple had become a very worthy contender to Creative’s dominance. Apple’s marketing muscle easily pushed Creative out of the way. The Mac fanboy in me chewed up the Singaporean in me, and I joined the throng mocking Sim Wong Hoo’s attempts to reenter the fray with product after product.

Now a little older, and having failed at making my own business a success, I have newfound respect for Sim Wong Hoo. It is easy in retrospect to say what could have been done better, but it would be foolish not to see what Creative Labs did for Singapore: it showed us that we, small island notwithstanding, could have an impact on the globe.

Sadly, that lesson has not been refreshed in our minds often enough. It is not that we have a dearth of successes, but rather, there is the ongoing perception that there is a “pathetic need of validation from elsewhere”. Singapore-made Tiger beer has a very strong advertising slant depicting more westernised origins. Even Razer, maker of the world’s best gaming peripherals, has a Singaporean founder, but continually brands itself as a Californian company.

Though my experience abroad is rather limited, I’ve not encountered people of other nationalities belittling Singapore’s successes. We are our own worst enemy.

We have become the embodiment of the quintessential Singaporean parent - never satisfied with his child’s performance, and always comparing his child to the neighbour’s / relative’s / friend’s perfect progeny. Many of us have grown up with this baggage and seem hell-bent on perpetuating this destructive practice. The harder it is to gain our approval and acceptance, the more self-important we feel.

But if we ever want to succeed, we must first give ourselves that chance. If we deny ourselves and our children even the possibility of success, nobody in the world can ever give it to us.

It’s time we grew up, Singapore. It’s time we stopped blaming somebody else, anybody else. It’s time we stopped blaming.

Look around and you’ll see that we have been given every manner of happiness by the sweat of our forebears. Maybe I’m naive to tell you we can now afford to go beyond basic survival, and that we ought to look closer and work harder on who we are, rather than what we have. It might be naive to take our eye off the ball - there probably is a very real danger that we lose the economic progress we’ve spent a generation building up; but I’d like to point out that there’s also a very real cost that comes with only keeping our eye on our treasure trove while failing to define our character.

As Inch alluded to, we need to broaden our definition of success. We hold on to the old belief that if our children should grow up to be anything other than doctors or lawyers, they have not obtained success. In recent years we might have added “banker” to the list, but it does little to change our society’s view that one is weighed by his or her income.

We have lost a lot of amazing people because we’ve held on to such a narrow definition of success. People who have fought for higher ideals, people who’ve wanted to devote more time to raising better children, people who’ve added to other people’s lives through art, poetry and yes, music. The best, and most important things in life cannot be quantified by something so base as money.

Because of our narrow perspective on what success is, we have lost so many chances to celebrate Singaporean lives.

There is a shift these days, and change is in the air, and the cynics among and within us might sneer at its ephemeral nature. But it is to this fleeting thought that we need to add resolve, so that we may hold our heads high to have shared our lives with each other, however long or brief a time it might be.