Posted 1:02 PM

I dreamt that I failed my chinese paper.
My other scores for the other 4 modules were a little past 50 while I had 48 for chinese. Then my mother came down and scolded me, and taught me how to do the problems. She flipped my answer booklet and blasted me for leaving so many blanks, but I cried and I said I didn't know how to do them. And she shouted at me again.
I was thinking this means I have to retake the Chinese module next semester. And suddenly I find myself in the back seat of a car which my father was driving and my mother was sitting beside him in front, and both of them were shouting at each other saying how dumb I was. And as I looked out of the window my peers were laughing at me and the teachers were shaking their heads, not sure if they were directed at me or my parents.

And as I was having brunch at the dining table and reading newspaper a couple of hours ago I kept thinking about it and felt uncomfortable at how real it seemed, how I was treated whenever I did badly in my mother's opinions. My father usually bothered less. He was what I will term the 'second wave'. Coming in and telling me how I should buck up after my mother has bombarded with me grenades and machine gun chains. I've always pondered how my grades never ever seemed to be up to scratch and how sometimes I wish my parents were those typically poor uneducated people you always see selling chicken rice in dramas and will be proud of me for staying in school and passing each academic level.

But now as I grow up I realise people have higher expectations of you because you are special to them and they know you have the potential within. And they want me to set high standards for myself, to see how far I can go. With each passing stride it doesn't matter if I reach it in the end, but as cliche as it sounds, know that I have tried my best, and that my parents and loved ones are fully behind me and will support me whenever I need them.

Sometimes I tell myself it's not really whether I try my best. The end product is what matters. This contradicts what I've always told myself, that Product comes second to Process. But I see that everyone's really only concerned about what they get in the end. And I ask myself if I am willing to go through a bad process just to get a good product. And every time I do that I can't conjure up an answer.

So perhaps I should quit all this nonsensical thinking and concentrate on building a good process which will lead to a good product. Should I fail, sometimes I think back at all those harsh words and senseless shoutings I was given by my parents.

I miss the times they scolded me, caned me, made me kneel in front of a Buddha statue for hours. And the rare times that I do well I miss them giving me a pat on the head, back in the days when I was so much shorter than them. Now years have passed and I've outgrown them, and failures and achievements are both being merely treated as part of a mundane life in the race to riches for the human cause.

And my parents don't come in a pair anymore.


triggering Mr Ng HS |