Tall Poppy Syndrome

I got a surge of inspiration to write about my school life.. so here goes..

I consider myself a maverick throughout my school days. Doing things that are out of the ordinary.

If there were two things I could change about the Singapore education system, 1) remove the conformist idealogy and 2) remove the one-chance system. Those who've been through Singapore's education system would know what i mean. I've realised that 1) if you are different, ppl will mock at you and ostracise you simply for not conforming to what the culture of that place expects and 2) singapore's education system, and i would say singapore itself, offers you only ONE chance. cock that up, and you're a goner. Want to become a doctor? Cock up your pri 4 streaming, go to EM3, and kiss that dream goodbye. You cock up your Os? Yes, you can retake it but more than likely you can only consider going to Poly and not JC as you'll be overaged by then.

Same thing with life isn't it? In a moment of weakness, you get caught shoplifting / other petty crime and sit in jail for a week or two. in future.. Wanna apply for job/scholarship? There's this declaration "Have you ever been charged yada yada in a court of law?"?

In fact, i believe that in those application forms, you have to tick all 'No's in order to get it. One 'Yes' and the form is headed for the rejects pile regardless of how shining the rest of the application is.

I'm bloody cynical ain't I? Get what i mean?

Back to school life.

Yes, those who know me from my sec school days know that i VOLUNTEERED to be class chairperson in sec 3. Why did i do that? I don't remember anymore. What I do remember was that there were numerous attempts to oust me from the post, and I was lamblasted on freevote.com, mIRC and other places as well (back then there was a rash of school voting sites on freevote.com like who is the worst teacher is or what. I think the management of freevote.com had since tightened up on such things.)

If there was one word I could delete from our Asian vocabularies, it is this word "BEH HIAO BAI". Hokkien for "don't want face." I feel that Asians are too concerned about this four-letter word called FACE. In the name of FACE, ppl who will otherwise achieve great things will just sit back and live their average lives, for the sake of saving FACE, for the fear of losing FACE.

To me this is KIASEE (Fear of dying) mentality. Personally of all negative attributes, i cannot stand KIASEE the most. Fear of dying. Fear of taking risks. As the old proverb says, nothing ventured, nothing gained. You think entrepreuners like Sim Wong Hoo and Elim Chew didn't take risks? But see where they are now? How about those who stuck to the prescribed path and obtained Master or PhD?

Back to my chairperson days in sec3. Right from the start many people in the class did not co-operate with me. At the end of every month there would be a class contact time (meeting) ... and they would want to oust me from the post. Finally in May this was done.

That year i was nominated for student councillor though but did not get past the interview.

In the end in junior college I was elected to the 26th Students' Council.

That day, when I saw my name in the elects' list, the ghosts died in my life.

The ghost of my 5-month term as class chairperson which ended in an acrimonious removal of the post and non-cooperation from my classmates for very much the rest of my two years with them.

The ghost of my unsuccessful shot to become a Student Councillor at the end of sec 3.

The ghost of the times when i was running for council in JC, and those from my secondary school taunted me by saying that there's no one to vote for me and i would get zero votes.

Ok. I do not know the number of votes I got relative to the other council nominees. But the fact that I was elected goes to show that I at least got some votes, more in fact than those who failed to be elected.

Hurtful words can bring our spirits down. But the important thing is NOT to be affected by the opinions of others!

That's one thing I salute well known bloggers like MrMiyagi, mrbrown, xiaxue for.. they have their fair share of detractors but as far as i can see are not affected by them!

(as a side note, i was from the same school as xiaxue, but that's another story...)

My term in council was fraught with challenges by itself. I didn't have the fullest cooperation from my fellow councillors either. One called me 'too enthu.' HELLO? isn't this the students' council? aren't councillors supposed to be enthu? granted, i was not in Ex-Co, neither was i the head of any ad-hoc committee but i dare say i put in my 100 % when it came to council stuff.

I was also quite active after I graduated from JC, coming back for a lot of alumni events in the first 2 years after i graduated. after that, some disappointments in the present culture in my JC caused me to decide to withdraw and move on to the next stage of my life - Uni.

Do not expect me to be a conformist in uni. I will be as much a maverick as I was in my sec sch / JC days. Dislike me, lamblast me all you want, but I want to be remembered as someone who distinguished himself, no matter in a good or bad way, not as simply a face in the crowd, someone who just went along with the flow for fear of losing FACE.

I've learnt during my chairperson days that "It doesn't matter what others think of you; it only matters what you think of yourself."

SO TRUE.

Like the OCS yearbook said, the others are merely pace-setters. I quote verbatim: "But it is ultimately himself (the officer cadet) he comes up against. His name can be inscribed in the annals of SAFTI MI or engraved on the Sword of Honour."

Had I been graded combat-fit and been able to enter BMT, you can be damned sure that I would have put in my 101% and tried my very best to qualify for SISPEC or OCS. What the heck, NS you also cannot be different from the others. Instead of "BEH HIAO BAI", it is now "SPOIL MARKET". I think the only time when people want to be different is when they need to act during SIT test to go SISPEC or OCS.

I believe even in BMT, even if you want to be outstanding you would be labelled as "spoil market" and "er he sure want to suck up to PC so he can go OCS lah..." haiz! that's our culture lor...

Because in the SAF, people generally want to get away with doing less things than is their fair share. If one among them does everything that is required, superiors will generally expect everyone to do all their fair share. Hence people in the SAF generally don't take kindly to people who are over-enthusiastic about the things they are doing because NS is generally seen as an obligation, not a time to impress others.

During my NS tenure, I put in my best in everything I did... at least for the first year or so. But what do i gain?

"It doesn't matter what others think of you; it only matters what you think of yourself."

My entire post has come down to this: people dislike others who are different. Pastor Kong Hee calls this the "Tall Poppy Syndrome". Supposedly, in a field of poppies, all will be the same height except one or two which will be taller. The other poppies will try to grow in such a way that stifles the growth of this tall poppy.

Sounds familiar?

70, 80 years down the road, I want to look back and think I lived a fulfilling life. Not a submerged life all my 80+ years due to fear of losing FACE

Paradoxical right?

Fear of losing FACE results in you being just a FACE in the crowd.

But without this fear, you can become a FACE in history.

If Mr. Lee Kuan Yew was scared of losing FACE, Singapore would not be what it is today.

In fact, if Sir Stamford Raffles was scared of losing FACE, he would never have embarked on his journey to found Singapore. We would still be in China or something if Singapore had not opened as a free port.

Which famous person out there is not scared of losing FACE?

"People laugh at me because I am different, I laugh at you because you are all the SAME."

There will be only one Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, only one Sir Stamford Raffles, but there are millions of Ah Beng, Ah Lian and Ah Kow around. So what's the difference? You are just one of the poppies in the field.