I am, as one might call it, an evolutionary dead end. This means that anyone who, for whatever strange reason, decides to use me as an inspiration to live their life, is asking for trouble.
Don't emulate my life. I made enough poor choices among those pitiful few that I have done well.
The first poor choice was to revere my teachers back in the day. There is nothing to revere about them---they are just [young] adults trying to make a living doing a job that involves them doing the same song and dance routine that recurs every year, while dealing with whatever politicking that occurs in the background, their responsibilities increasing, their salary dropping, and with each batch of students getting increasingly disrespectful.
The second poor choice was to spend so much time reading to amass book knowledge, instead of going out there and learning street smarts. All the book knowledge that I have learnt over time is steadily being eroded by the ever-increasing reach of this current generation of machine learning/artificial intelligence, where the indefatigable Machine is allowed free reign to slurp up all the digitsed human knowledge and then create a new walled garden where they rule supreme in the art of Knowing. As I get older, the skills that are increasingly less redundant over time are those that involve the coordination and coaxing of people to do things, i.e. street smarts or social/emotional intelligence, stuff that the so-called books of learning are sorely lacking.
The third poor choice was to go study overseas on a scholarship, instead of staying in SIN city and studying at one of the local universities. The overseas experience might be useful from the social/emotional intelligence point of view from the broadening of horizons with respect to the continual refinement of one's understanding of the human condition, but the stuff that is learnt there, and the friends that were made there are effectively useless when I'm not there.
Which brings me to the fourth poor choice---to return to SIN city and decide to stay here, for the sake of patriotism, and a sense of duty to repay the tax payers for supporting my education abroad via scholarships. Having not been in the local environment during the most important early years of one's professional life meant that I started off in greater isolation than one who has been studying at the local universities, and mingling with the very same people who are likely to be one's compatriots in the working world, thus developing that covetted ``network'' that allows one to thrive better.
Prestige is bullshit. Don't go Harvard because it is Harvard---go to Harvard only if the programme you are interested can only be found in Harvard. So, don't study overseas for the sake of ``prestige''---go overseas to study only if what you are interested it can only be found overseas, and not here.
I can go on, but I think the pattern is clear---there are many that will try to sell a vision to you. Know that the vision is just that: a vision only. Reality is often much different from what the vision holds, and more importantly, even for those who claim the title of ``master planner'' are unlikely to know that much more of the consequences of the vision that they are zealously selling. There are no gods among men---only One True God Above; anyone who claims to be a god among men is not just not a god, but also not a man, for that person is really a demonstration of the qualities that are more akin to that of the devil.
``MT, what's wrong?''
Response: What isn't?
There are some days I wished I were black-out drunk: all that happened this week are precisely the days for that, even though I have promised myself to never be that wasted again.
Not much else to write except for the need to vague-vent for a bit. Till the next update.
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