It was a heavy morning, almost everyone was at the edge of tearing and I could see how lost my sister was, and the blankness on her boyfriend and my mum’s faces. Sheryl was, however trying to pull off a very strong front for me. She was the only encouragement for me to go to China. It was a difficult morning for me to leave, looking at my mother, sister and Sheryl tearing and choking when I finally have to bid farewell to go China. I didn’t want to show my tears to them. I am feeling equally lost, going to new unfamiliar places, and not knowing what to expect. The feeling was heavily tense and I felt nervous probably still shaken by the food poisoning a week ago.
It has been more than 2 years since I first left Singapore for Guangzhou, China. There were joy, tears and laughter. I remember how lost I was when I first reached Guangzhou Airport; struggling with lots of luggage, trying to pretend that I know where I am going and with countless strangers coming up to you asking if you needed a car, mobile sim cards, it was a huge mess.
Thinking that what happened at the arrival was only as bad as it can get, just bring more disappointment. Work was crazy, there was almost no system at all (maybe there is,I am just a little upset), and everything is about having someone to be liable so that the next person bear no responsibilities to it. Learning the technicalities of manufacturing was tough; everything is in Chinese and most of the time you get slightly different answers from different operators and supervisors, so much for being an exact science.
Relationships were huge complex web of relationships, entangling in more relationships, intertwining with friendship, it just very complex, words, gestures, body language. There is no one single way to deal with these complexities and no one does it correctly all the time. I know of a person who likes to speak in riddles so that he could flip stories in any way possible just to show that he knows what he is talking about, but the downside of this action was that nobody really trusts him anyway, literally nobody.
It was really fun before some close friends started leaving, probably for the same reason. Before you even know I am one of the more senior guys around in the department, never expected that though. I probably left for the same reason as well, some things are just hard to change, and some people probably never will. Although I have some regrets about some of my actions like bringing Sheryl over only to come back in 10 months, and probably wasting a good part of my life in China, missing out my families in their problems and activities, but I want to believe that all these are just blessings in disguises. There probably isn’t a right or wrong answer in life but a matter of your perception of them. Nonetheless I love my wife, and I felt that the time spent in China was memorable, and probably family just got closer since I came back.
All is not lost, for every misfortune to happen there must a brighter passage ahead. I have seen it in my life and I want to believe in it.
I will break the entanglement and be more positive in life from here on.