To all the students mugging for O/A Levels right now: please listen to my story.
Last night, my mum and I had a heart-to-heart talk over some dabao-ed Teochew porridge. It’s rare for her to be so quiet, but she looked at me—now that I’m finally graduating—and just let it all out.
My mother is the quintessential “Ah Lian.” If you saw her in the 90s, she had the thin eyebrows, the bleached hair, and the attitude to match. She told me straight up: “Girl, ah, look at me. Don’t be like me. Last time I thought I was so ‘tok kong,’ skip school to go LAN shop and billiards with your father.”
She was only 18 when she got knocked up by some Ah Beng who promised her the world. Of course, the moment things got real, he “siam” (disappeared). He wasn’t some misunderstood hero; he was just a boy with a loud exhaust pipe and zero sense of responsibility.
Because she dropped out of secondary school, she had no qualifications. To put food on the table and pay for my kindergarten school fees, she spent years working in KTVs and pubs. If you think it’s glamorous, it’s not. She spent her youth dealing with “buaya” (crocodile) uncles, drunkards who would pick fights over nothing, and people who looked down on her the moment they heard her “Ah Lian-ish” accent. She saw the darkest side of Singapore’s nightlife just so I could have 10-year series books and new school shoes every year.
“I meet so many bad people so you don’t have to,” she told me, her voice cracking. “I wasted my life serving drinks to men who don’t even know my name. You have the chance to sit in an air-con office and be someone. Don’t let some ‘steady’ boy ruin your future before it even starts.”
It hit me like a truck. All those times I was “gian” to slack off or follow the wrong crowd, I never realized she was the one absorbing all the bad luck so I could have a clean slate.
It’s over now. She’s out of that life, and I’m grown up. But the lesson is clear: The “Beng/Lian” lifestyle might look cool and “garang” when you’re 16, but the “regret medicine” is very expensive. Study hard, not because the system says so, but because your parents might be fighting battles you know nothing about just to keep you out of the trenches.
I am never following her footsteps. I’m going to make her sacrifice worth it and repay her.