Getting Emotional...

One of the things that is pretty strong in our culture is that parents would sacrifice their "lives" to make sure that their kids get the best in life and get as far as possible. In return the children would take care of the parents when they get old and would ensure that they have a careless retirement.

Coming from a relatively poor family, my parents made lots and lots of sacrifices for us to have proper education and especially that I can finish my university studies. But not only my parents but my grandparents and the whole family. My parents and we kids were working all day long to get a proper life and proper education. It was very tough for them and for us kids as well. I know that my mother has so many health issues now mainly because of the heavy work she needed to do but she was not used to (like farming).

After getting on my own feet (starting to earn money), it was pretty much a strong decision from my side that I will need to give back to my parents as much as possible and make sure that I do lots of things to make their lives easier at least now.

The first objective for me was to make sure that they have a comfortable house and that they don’t lack anything from the house. My and my brother chipped in and helped them to get all these done.

Another big issue was always in our family the lack of a good car. I remember that since we were very young, we had the shittiest cars or no cars at all. Because my parents never had enough money, they always made lots of compromises and bought a cheap and shitty car that was not functioning well most of the times. Though their quality improved over the time, there was always a compromise on choosing the car and there always were some inconveniences.

I am really proud to say that now we achieved the second objective as my parents bought a new car which will help my father in doing his work and also they can use it to go and visit my grandmother and take care of her. And hopefully they will also use it to go on holidays sometimes. Me and my brother managed to help them financially (this time I am the main financer) and it feels good that I can do and afford this. My parents are very very happy about it and I saw my father as happy as a small kid when he gets his desired Christmas present. As the commercial would say in this case: “Parent’s happiness: priceless”

There is one more thing on my list, which is a dream holiday for them. I know that since the communism fall till recent years when we managed to be on our own (roughly 15 years) they did not have any holiday or any trip, except to go to my grandparent’s place to visit them on weekend or to visit my sister from time to time for a couple of days. Therefore I want to get them a month of travel and holiday around the world. When they were young they travelled a lot inside the country, they were camping and climbing mountains. Now they do smaller trips here and there in the weekends. But I want them to travel in few countries and see the world. Their effort made it possible to see so many countries and want to share this wonder with them.

Maybe is a coincidence, maybe not, but in the same day on which my parents bought the car, I was in a situation where I remembered one decision I made last year about whether I go down this road of staying in Singapore (and making some money that would enable me to help my parents as well) or whether I go and pursue a path that would not necessarily allow that but would be also good for me as an individual.

It was one of those decisions when you know that whatever you have decided, you make a compromise and will irrevocably change your life. And with all decisions like this you always think after that whether you took the right decisions, whether how would my life be now if I would have opted the other way around. Whether it was worth making that sacrifice. Don't have the answer to that question, but at least is a good feeling that the objectives for which I took that decision have been already partially fullfilled.