I'm just vaguely pissed that life seems so much different than it was for those generations before us.

When I was young, my grandfather would tell me about his career, how he went to Malaysia to pick up some skills from a relative in the construction industry, came back to Singapore and managed to carve out a job for himself (sorry for the sketchiness of the details, my memory fails me). And I'd nod along, as young kids are wont to do, cause I didn't know any better. But now, what really strikes me, and which is something I respect my grandparents for, is how they were able to so successfully raise their 4 children through their hard work and determination.

Yet increasingly, I get the impression that that's just not sufficient anymore. Perhaps it's because of late, (and by that I mean the past few years) my parents, and most especially my father, have been trying to impress upon us the importance of investing, of "growing" one's money. And as I see them taking up loans to make the aforementioned investments, as they offhandedly joke about how us siblings may have to take up the remaining debt once we start working, all I can think is: "When did all this become necessary? When did hard, honest work stop being enough to raise and ensure a good life for your family?"

I'm not questioning my parents' intentions. I know that they only want the best for us, and that they think it's the best way to achieve it, and that they just think that that's the best way to achieve it. But the message that sends couldn't be any clearer: All that you do in school won't be enough. Even if you work hard all your life, so long as you're working "stupid", you won't make enough money.

Now, I'm not that materialistic a person, I don't hanker after a lifestyle of excessive excess. But it's pretty much an undeniable fact that money greases the rails of life, makes things so much easier. I'm not so much concerned with my life, but that of my family. (assuming I have one in the future) I don't want them to have to worry about or have their aspirations be limited by monetary concerns. And now, achieving that seems quite a remote possibility without forcing myself to develop some investor sense, and be willing to gear, leverage and whatnot, profiting from someone else's loss; all things which I inherently know I'm not cut out to do.

But whatever. Maybe my expectations are simply overly high. I have no idea what reality is like, afterall.

The traditional kampung games thing after school today was vaguely amusing. 5 stones with small pointy rocks, ice cream stick battling, and I got head-shotted during Bola Rambut. Heh you should be able to tell how much I actually learned from my ability (or lack thereof) to recall most of the names of the games :D