www.Go To The Mountain - Musings of a Potential Guru

We probably do not remember much, not until you were 5 years old or more. When you were in Kindergarten then Primary school. I still remembered the aroma of Milo the uncle made for us in kindergarten. Lots of memories from primary school but at that age we still have a very different mind. Secondary school was the age of youthful exuberance, of raging hormones and boundless energy while we discover our own identity. I know some of you are still searching for your identity. It was a time from late primary school till I just started work after NS that we lived in Toa Payoh where it was once a swamp land. It was some kind of satellite town in those days. It was our first new HDB flat and it was kind of exciting having visited friends and cousins who were already domiciled in one. Whenever I was around the old home town, I never failed to take a walk around and it was always nostalgic. Nostos is Greek for Return and algos is like yearning, so nostalgia is a "yearning to return...

When we were in school we can't wait to get out of school and go to work probably thinking that the working adults are having lots of fun. In lower secondary we can't wait to be in higher secondary if anything just so that the boys can wear pants instead of shorts. We say we are going to be 16 instead of saying 15. Then we look forward to be 21 because we saw folks being liberated or so they thought and they throw "function" (21st birthday bash). Soon you will realize that you are 39.99 and you will tell people you are not yet 40. Irony of life. Way before that your dad stop giving you pocket money and your first currency crisis started and till this day it has not ended. We are veterans. Battle-hardened. Today it is different. In the old days or if you were in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand or Malaysia you are alright. You lose your job in the city, you can go back to your mother in the village and eat off the land. Here, your mother will have to...