Adrianna Tanlol i have a community of 'fans' in a singapore subreddit who love to hate on my posts about my immigration journey
(not everyone... but some of them there tried to report me to ICE a few months ago. I found out later it was a public school teacher)
it's also funny coz somewhere in the middle people are wondering how i achieved any of my 'amazing' tech achievements with 'just' a political science degree
i would say it's because of it that i did any of those things
i was just talking about exactly this to my friend who is visiting:
sometimes when i talk about work, people in singapore have this overwhelming sense of 'i didn't do all the right things... how and why did i deserve any of the things that i got?
(to be clear, i did get an 'elite' and 'prestigious' education there but i didn't choose the 'right' things)
no one ever says it to my face but i know it comes down to:
- i didn't go to an ivy league or oxbridge school
- i didn't have a technical degree
- why did i always have access to work opportunities nobody else seems to have at a faster pace than my peers
i have lots of thoughts on this, but sometimes it gets to me, that i feel like i didn't 'deserve' any of these things because i'm not 'conventionally successful' by singapore standards
i think that singapore as a society has really valorized 'suffering'. it was an interesting motivational factor when we were 'a poor country' but now that we are not, personal suffering to get more and more things in the rat race is pretty much the spirit of what it means to be in singapore.
i always found myself out of place there because when i lived there, i don't think i 'suffered': i really enjoyed all the work i ever did, i have a good relationship with my family, i've always had good work life balance... and a lot of agency
i know now a lot of people there are in pain and very desperately acting out against a perceived lack of agency (from layoffs, offshoring, rising cost of living..)
i acknowledge that even there, i had privileges to have been able to make those choices.
but i also feel that the standard choices were never available to me anyway because i'm not neurotypical and i'm not heterosexual. literally finding opportunities outside of singapore has been something i have been fixated on since i was a teenager and i have planned my entire life around exactly that. so of course i'm good at it!
i think of how, even when i was in college doing that 'just a political science degree', i very quickly noped out of the rat race i was told i was supposed to be on.
get 3 internships in investment banking / commodities trading in a row! (i went to a school that initially had a liberal arts bent but later went full hog 'pipeline to finance')
i can't claim that i had deep clarity and sense of mission, i just knew it wasn't... me. it wasn't for me and it wasn't me. it felt inauthentic for me to pursue those tropes of success.
so i worked 3 jobs in college (yes during school), saved every dollar i had, and spent pretty much 4 months a year, for 4 years in a row, and after, in bangalore and chennai. i didn't have a 'goal' or something to 'win' or 'achieve' i just knew i had to do it.
ultimately that worked out better than any internship i could have ever done anyway.
many of my 'amazing job opportunities' in life have happened *directly* because of time spent in those places. everyone that i met and hung out with in bangalore and chennai and bangkok in the early 2000s are now tech leaders across the world. i wasn't 'a random person seeking a job' from them, i was 'someone they went on a trip with' or 'someone they had many cups of chai with'.
but i also knew that explaining any of that back then, and also today, would have just led to more outcries of 'you didn't do it the right way!' (and also a lot of racism)
bangalore and chennai were the first places i spent a lot of time in where i felt very much 'at home' with 'making things just because i can' and 'being surrounded by people who were not jealous, but who were collaborative'. that country, and those cities, have remained permanent fixtures in my life.
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK@skinnylatte I noticed this when I watched the news video of the young woman who rescued her dad's tyre garage after completing her degree and folk saying it wasn't the best use of her education - I think it was a business studies degree, she sorted out the issues with debt (due to having large stocks of high end alloys on credit) and the garage would be considered very high end here in England - where you are lucky to get anything other than a budget Chinese tyre straight from stock at short notice, let alone new alloy wheels *and* wheel refurbs!
@vfrmedia most chinese singaporeans are just good at being jealous of other people who have agency, not so good at actually doing anything about it
Solo la 🌍 salva a la 🌎Imposter syndrome is a heck of a drug, and the people who take advantage of it (notably parents and bosses) are real pieces of work.
Pretty sure that imposter syndrome plus "Puritan work ethic" drive 90% of the world's (most misguided) efforts.
Matt Hardy 3.11 for Workgroups@skinnylatte Tech built by people who have only studied tech tends to produce tech that's only fit for people who have studied tech. Good tech is built by people with diverse backgrounds. Best boss I ever had in tech graduated in Theatre and Dance.
jack@technicaladept @skinnylatte I think in general, it's easier for someone with the right insight/attitude/expertise to gain technical skills than the other way round
Lykso@skinnylatte It's wild to me how badly people want things to be regular and predictable.
🍉Tiempo 
@skinnylatte wat.... Wow
HumToTable@skinnylatte Whoa...that's some bullshit.
Nick@skinnylatte Jesus Christ, fuck those bastards.
paultrump has held a mirror up to society.
People, what a bunch of bastards
not you 2 obviously.
Eric Bono@amiserabilist @Nickiquote @skinnylatte
This needs to be a daily affirmation bot
Daisy 🪺🔪📚@skinnylatte Holy shit this is wild and awful. I'm so sorry.
Jay@skinnylatte I am sorry ... what. Are people that as in a certain section of indians like to say "that jobless?"?!
@jaym in hokkien we have a more colorful term. it's people who have 'no shit to shit after they eat'
Christy Marx Rambling Writer@skinnylatte
What shitheads.
What shitheads.
Angie@skinnylatte That absolutely bites. You keep doing you. Either they appreciate and accept it or they can move on.