Beyond a hundred

This is not normal.

I haven't got a PhD yet, so I can write this without the sham of hindsight. I have hit a hundred, but it is more luck than not, and only after years of trying, and failing.

To quote a fellow PhD friend who got married recently: "It just felt really anti-climatic".

I'm writing this from the point of view of an 'Asian' - whatever that term used to describe an entire population of the largest continent even means. This is written in English - my second language if you will - though I concede how this language is not good with translating nuances from other cultures, neither in writing nor in verbal tone.

I'm writing this as someone who picked the 'right' country to weather out the global pandemic amongst other English speaking nations. Though it came at a cost, of not being physically connected to my partner, who had her career trajectory sacrificed in no small part due to unprecedented circumstances - fundamentally from political protectionism.

I'm writing this as an 'advantaged' first-born male, who grew up during the golden era of a rich country now in economic tatters. At just two years younger, my sister was not as lucky, fight as she might to get her Masters, the chance disintegrated from one traumatizing case of racism - one that the country's majority has no appetite to face.

Yes, we are a minority, more discriminated against than indigenous people and the most under-represented in Parliament. This is not news to me, nor to anyone in the Asian community. Every continent I've been to, from South to North America, to parts of Central Europe and Southeast Asia, we (Chinese, Indians, etc) are a hard-working bunch, respectful of the predominant culture (e.g. by quickly picking up the local language), quietly accepting of laws written by people of the land.

It is not that we are not good with democracy, it's just that we can do the math and figure out that our numbers are not worth the fight. For what are we, but visitors from a far-flung Middle-ish Kingdom that decided to venture across the horizon? Maybe I'm romanticizing or being a revisionist, but we are inherently traders by nature, giving as we take and vice versa, gifts come with unspoken conditions, favours need be returned.

So we can amass as much wealth as we know how, pick up honours and awards as we see fit, but in the end, we know that it has to be returned, good fortune is to be shared. The tallest of leaves still fall eventually, to the roots from which it came. This communal theme is not unique to Asian cultures, but we are perhaps more hyper-aware, and karma insists that we have as many lives as possible to see the balance through.

If I could chart the journey to my first hundred, it would be like a Keeling Curve towards the end, zig-zagging down and up.

Around late 2017/early 2018, I crossed the seventy mark for the first time, but it was a short-lived peak like bitcoin then, as I started sponsoring my sister's education and learned to treat my girlfriend nicely. Over the year, I juggled three jobs including a PhD and received news of my paternal grandmother's passing, it was a tough time to say the least.

Amazingly, I crossed eighty-five in early 2019, but that tumbled down to sixty-five as I opted to cover half of my sister's Masters first year programme. Soon after, I leaped half way arcross the world, leaving expensive New Zealand behind for an exchange in Europe that was only four months, but it felt like forever and a dream.

Late 2019, I came back, found a reasonably cheap flat close to uni, got back into my comfy restaurant gig and a tutoring job, the perks of knowing good bosses. The stock market helped too, I crossed ninety, ninety-five, and actually hit a hundred after Chinese New Year 2020.

But it was very short-lived, because we all knew what happened after.

Yeah, I paid for my sister's final year of Masters tuition, which dropped things to eighty. In hindsight, that was very well timed, because a global pandemic was declared a month after, and things fell to seventy - maybe a fifteen to twenty percent drop, or a throwback to 2017.

By then though, big numbers were just that, figures on a screen. A ticker number representing money seemed meaningless in comparison to a rising chart counting people - individual lives affected by a virus, souls lost from a world struggling with a new reality.

June 2020, it recovered to eighty, just as New Zealand emerged fully from lockdown. From August to October, eighty-five, the world still seemingly frozen and wary of opening borders. December 2020, a hundred was struck, but how long will it last this time?

Am I privileged? Do I know privilege? Those are irrelevant questions.

As my grandma knows too well, health is of the utmost importance, everything else is secondary. As my mother told me before, people shouldn't/can't be too well off, or they will not appreciate.

Or to put it in Americanized terms:

You can become wealthy on minimum wage — provided you don’t have: children or other dependents, ongoing medical conditions, bad credit, a disability, face a natural disaster, are abused by a partner, get sued, have relatives in poverty who need your help, face addiction, get deported, have student debt, struggle with mental health, have unstable work, deal with fraud or identity theft, have a complicated relationship with money, or are one of the 40% of low income Americans who lost their jobs due to a global pandemic.

~Emma Pattee in Why I Joined, Then Left, The FIRE Movement

There are first world problems, and there are world first problems.

Yes, I can realize, sympathize and emphatize with your problem, be it mental or climatic, because those I can relate to.

But I will turn a deaf ear, not entertain, and outright ignore any privileged majority's meaningless arguments for overhyped scarce scraps that are self-induced.

There are those that can afford to sit on a comfy pile and wait things out, and there are those that have to constantly paddle to keep their head above water.

Can I survive without privilege? How do I use my privilege to better the whole of society? Answer these, solve these, and bring the world up to be at ease.