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!