Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Daydreams

This is why I tried to write a business plan. I want to be my own boss of my parallel import sporting firm, importing football training systems and American basketball sporting goods, especially those Under Armour compression and basketball shoe lines. I even designed questions to support marketing and promotional decisions - this is why I did tons of surveys. it can be better refined.

I know my destiny will still be one of 'failure'. I know it. My father has dreams of being a geologist, crushed because of familial pressures for him to 'do anything', which happens to be his current line of work. 40 years later, same old story. But different twist - I have a condition he doesn't has.



My parents knew my plans and decried me as daydreaming. They said they are getting older, and they want me to stop whatever I want and just do what they want.
 
I would rather be unemployed as fuck (mind my words but I say what I mean) than to toil my time where I cannot give a middle finger salute under any dick shit situation that it is really needed. Don't accountants have to give a true and fair statement of financial accounts and affairs? (Well... even if you say whatever you want, while other people go 'money money money', 'fame fame fame' or 'dreams dreams dreams', I am still going 'family' and 'acceptance by in-group' as I can't get the first three.)

I have to honestly say, I would rather fail so that I can be a great intellectual with the shiny PhD from some research intensive university in Saudi or UAE, than to be a decent person in my parents' plan. Or...

I cannot fulfil my dream as a researcher in the Arts/Social Sciences especially in English or Geography or Sociology, because of... I cannot do Psychology because I was literally forced to withdraw out of someone else's wishes, even though I chose Psychology. I am forced to abort job search and business plan writing and I have to do something I know I can never be great at.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Not In My Back Yard - Aspies not welcome in their homeland

I dare to say Singaporean Aspies are not welcome in our homeland. We are just like snakes, to be driven out by some certain Saint. As an Aspie myself, I think Aspies may be considered pests or parasites of our society, for some reasons.  But I do know the ones causing our suffering are definitely mistreating others like us, and therefore, sinister, to say the least.




We all want to bring the best out of whatever abilities we have and minimize the costs of our failures, just as any other rational human beings.

Being identified as an Aspie does not make us stupid, vulnerable or incapable to ourselves. It is the way other people perceive our characteristics, and link them with our conditions, that make us stupid, vulnerable or incapable.

However, let us be clear about it - Aspies are perceived as incapable, and it is our human nature not to be associated with such people, and it happens that we have the traits that make their conditions a hindrance to their lives (i.e. defining Aspies as Aspies).

So this means we try to make our achievements public while we try to hide our autism conditions, while we promote about what we can do for society. This means we can help our community only in secret, so that we do not cannibalize our chances of success.

Please be clear in what do you want, friends.

Do you want to be identified as an Aspie? Are you so fearful of that because that already sort of happened in your life?

Or you want to be identified as, say, a great artist, who moves and shakes the world with some masterpiece that the world identifies with?

I am sure for all of us, the answer will be latter.

If you don't want to be identified as an Aspie, and you just want to live your own life as 'you', then just live you in your own personal space. At least the Internet is vast enough for you to create many alter egos, don't you?

If you know what you want to be in your life, then work not for preventing being an Aspie, but work for the person that you truly want to be, and I am sure it has no 'autism' label. A few autism groups I know have the mechanism to isolate the autism label from the others, so that you could bring your views to autism - and then, moving on, you could go on be your true selves completely without autism label through another alter ego.


From my observations with a handful of Aspies from Hong Kong, the discrimination against Hong Kong-born Aspies in Hong Kong is definitely much more than the discrimination against Singapore-born Aspies in Singapore. Plus, for people like me, we have no other homeland we can call our own - not China, through the Bandung Declaration that we have to declare loyalty to our host nations, not our 'host nations' where we may be discriminated when we are not immigrants, and certainly not the land we call Singapore, where we are second class citizens in the land we are born and bred.

Ironically, given the perception of America and Britain that they are 'free' lands - when people with autism in America and Britain are also suffering in their own way through lack of opportunities in a really competitive environment, it is more likely that we Aspie Singaporeans choose to be third class citizens in these countries, doubly discriminated as people of both disability and color.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

My experience with Fluoxetine/anti-depressants

Many years ago, I started taking Fluoxetine to control my depression and anxiety disorders. I got anorexia and constant headaches. I stopped medication after a year due to such effects. 

Thereafter, I stopped medication, and there were withdrawal effects. I did not have good sleep and I often get nightmares. My appetite still had not recovered. 




They affected my performance so adversely. I completed a degree which I had a low GPA, and I did not hold a job for the past six months. I am heading nowhere. The only place I can move ahead is doing another degree with less time pressures. I also consciously know I am virtually unemployable, so why not just do what I like?

I worry that people with autism may have a dim future. If he is thinking of higher education, let us be realistic, he has limited options. 

I hope he has no interest, or being pushed, to pursue a career in the financial service sector. I remember being pushed to pursue a career in this sector. 

I majored in accounting in University. My autism and anxiety issues, coupled with the after-effects of medication, made me unsuitable for a career in Accounting.

I prefer studying Geography, and I enjoy explaining spatial relationships between different places. But my parents (rightfully) pointed out I have grade C in 'A' Levels for H2 Geography, despite my A grade in the Preliminary Examinations for the subject. 

I believe I can do much better if I am given the opportunity to retake the examination papers. My struggle against Fluoxetine gave me no other option, other than to keep doing something I enjoyed doing for a long time.