Okay, so let’s take a walk through my life. The goal here is to try and get a sense of how I’ve been framing things, and how I ought to frame things. So – I was born in 1990 in Singapore, to a Tamil family. What were my earliest thoughts and memories? I was the youngest child. My parents ran their own business, – industrial waste disposal (wood, metal, non-toxic stuff) – which I suppose is fairly uncommon. My brothers worked for the family business too. I’m trying to try and make sense of our social status. We lived in landed property, which is supposed to be high-status in Singapore where most people live in HDB flats. But somehow… I never really felt this…? My parents were always worried about money. I think it might be accurate to say that we were probably living beyond our means. My family wasn’t very well-educated overall – my sister was the first and only member of my family to go to University (my mum still asks me to this day if I want to “study further”).
When I was a child, I loved books and video games. There were books in my home. Both of my parents would read from time to time – my mum was into things like Little Women and Jane Eyre, while my father was more into political biographies and history. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of my siblings reading, but I read a lot. I can’t really remember what the first books were. I find myself thinking about Robin Hood, and The Invisible Man. My mum would bring me to the library – I saw some receipts – books about Egypt, and Rome, ancient mythologies, natural disasters.
I’m trying to think now about my experience as a racial minority. When did I first begin to appreciate that I was different from most of the people in my country? What about when I realised I was different from everyone else in my family? I vaguely remember a couple of friends from kindergarten – one was Indian, I think Tamil like me – and one was Chinese. I went to his house at some point. But those super-early memories have gotten very vague. I went to an Anglican kindergarten, and was exposed to Christianity that way. I remember in primary school I had classmates who were Muslim, and Hindu. And then I transferred to an Anglican primary school, for the Gifted Education Program.
Looking back now, it feels like the GEP was probably the first major defining event/experience of my life, something that would mark me permanently, indelibly. At 28, I do feel like I might be thinking and talking too much about something that happened to me from the ages 9 to 13. And yet… there was so much in there. Was there anything else before that that would count? I burnt my hand playing with fire when I was 9, but that didn’t mean anything. Discovering the Internet was a game-changer. I knew immediately that I wanted my own website, my own ‘shrine/’.
There was a point where my family got cable TV (SCV), and that introduced me to AXN, MTV, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, BBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, History Channel, Animal Planet. Of all of those, it was AXN and MTV that fascinated me the most, with a bit of Nick, and some glances at all the others. I never cared for ESPN or Star Sports. Sports for me was always a way of relating to other people. I watched Slam Dunk on AXN (anime about Basketball) and I got into playing basketball for a while, but I never really got into watching the NBA, picking a team and following it, stuff like that. I suppose it might be nice to have something like that, something to follow and root for. But… I don’t really care. I have more than enough things to care about, and for me to move forward I need to be eliminating things from my circle of concern more than I’m adding them. I think there’s still a decent chance that I might discover new things that I find myself compelled to integrate into my life, but it’s far likelier that I’ve already walked past the things that I love and need to revisit. I need to dig deeper into my existing interests – these are the things that will lead me to the places I want to go.
I’m watching Luke Cage in the background while I write this, and there’s a discussion going on about people and the cities they live in – Harlem is the setting of this show, just like Gotham is the setting of Batman – and I find myself thinking, what’s my Harlem? What’s my Gotham? It’s don’t know if it’s Singapore. It’s probably the Internet. I suppose in both cases, I need to define it more specifically. I need to define my home, so I can build it, protect it, nourish it, nurture it. What is home really? There are all these variables for something truly optimal. And. I find myself thinking about how… I don’t know if I’ll ever be truly at home anywhere. I remember watching Somebody Feeds Phil on Netflix, and there’s a story about Uri Buri from Israel – this old man who’s just this absolute rock, this pillar of his community, a city that dates back really far. There’s nothing like that in Singapore. Being in Singapore means being a little bit amnesiac. Most people seem to be okay with this. Most people don’t seem to care all that much about feeling rooted via a deep sense of personal history. “You’re just kind of satisfied with your products and then you die.” I want the opposite of that. I claim to want the opposite of that, though maybe I’m afraid to take the actual steps on that path towards something real. Life is boring the way it is, though, so if I want things to get more interesting I have to start taking more radical action. But what actions, specifically? I’ve been living in a self-imposed psychological prison for a few years now, fantasizing about jailbreak. It’s time to figure out what the first few steps of jailbreak actually looks like now.