For some reason word has gotten out that I'm now ratchet AF, to the point where even my ex is begging me to fly to London over spring break so I can teach him how to party. I'm obviously not ratchet, I'm still the same old good kid I've always been, though I guess I do go clubbing now - if only because I used to listen to clubbing music when I studied for A-levels so the music just makes me want to... I dunno, apply myself harder to life?? 

There are many things that get on my nerves, but one that never fails to rile me up is when Singaporeans get whiny and keyboard warrior-ey on blaming the government and complaining about how hard they work and how unfair it is that they don't all earn a baseline salary of $10k a month for doing nothing at all. When you speak to them with hard facts and attempt to show them that, no, complaining against the government is not in fact being a productive member of society and doesn't warrant you any higher pay (surprise!) they stick their fingers into their ears and go "NA NA NA I CANT HEAR YOU PAP BITCH"

Yes, I have been called "PAP bitch". This was when I wrote an editorial to the newspaper when I was 14. Yes, these fine upstanding citizens of Singapore called a 14-year-old child a PAP bitch. Sure, that kind of sucked emotionally, but it also gave me a driving force to prove them wrong by being incredibly successful in life.

(Am I denying that I've been privileged? No, I'm not; I'm saying that I do work objectively very hard and that has played a huge role in getting me where I am today. As has my privilege.)

When I was 18, I interned at a law firm. I worked with an associate fresh out of law school who would roll into work later than I did, dress sloppier than I did, and tried to push off most of his work to me. One day, as I was proofreading legal documents for him, he moseyed over and leaned on my cubicle divider and asked me: "Victoria, why do you dress like a partner and work as hard as a partner even though you're just an intern? You're making all of us look bad."

I think he meant it as a joke, but I looked him in the eye and said, "I dress and work for the part I want to become."

He never spoke to me again after that.

Falling for someone is fun; letting go of someone less so.

Maybe it's a sign that I'm not yet ready to be in a relationship that my first instinct was to want to blurt out, "I can change to make it work." I strongly believe that with hard work you can adapt to anything, but maybe that is not something that one should apply to relationships, and it's something that I think I'm starting to understand.

Being single for the first time in, oh, I don't know, 3 years, has been amazingly freeing. I laugh louder, I don't feel guilty about giving in to my secret desires to work on the weekends, and I've been so focused on becoming the best possible version of myself, and trusting that the best possible version of myself will eventually bring the best possible partner into my life. All the same, it's hard not to strategize and think to myself, "how can I become a person more like the kind of person XX likes?"

And I know that's destructive.

What would I give up about myself to be accepted and loved? Previously, there were so many things I would have given up - time spent with family, time spent with friends, religious expression, work... Work is a huge one too, because of the stereotype that no one wants to date a banker chick. There are nights where I lie awake and stare at the ceiling and replay in my mind what my associate said to me when he found out that I was newly single over the summer: "Was it a banking breakup?"

Because honestly, very few people would willingly spend their lives with someone who works 80-100h a week, goes in to work on weekends, and might have to cancel dates at the last minute for work. Could I give that up for a relationship? I don't know if I could. I honestly love what I do - I geek out over making EBITDA a little more accurate, and shifting the logos on a logo splash to make sure that everything is beautiful and in tip-top shape, and I'm truly happiest in an empty office at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon.

And maybe that makes me weird.

And maybe no one could love someone weird like that.

But I think the first step is loving myself in spite of - or BECAUSE OF - that. And so even if everyone looks at me weird, and no one wants to date this banker chick, I'll have at least one fan. And I think, unfortunately, I'm not yet secure enough in my self-image and self-worth that I would even briefly consider giving this up - and so I'm not yet secure enough for a healthy relationship.

(Actually, the letting go part of this post has nothing to do with a banking breakup. Completely different issue - it's just that the insecurities took over for a little bit and the workaholicism has always been my deepest insecurity about not being loved, hence the thought dump on it.)

But yeah. Maybe finding the right relationship isn't so much about becoming the perfect girlfriend and checking all the boxes - something which I've been conditioned to do a lot (becoming the perfect X and fulfilling all the conditions for it I mean; I'm definitely far from being the perfect girlfriend in any way) - but more about becoming the true version of yourself and calling forth someone who matches you perfectly in that regard and just feels right.

The first quarter my freshman year of college, this happened to me.

Someone I met through a mutual friend asked me to go to a party with him, and he seemed nice, so I agreed. I didn't know anyone else at the party, and I was still that shy kid trying to get accustomed to how loud America was, and so I stuck close to him the whole night. He introduced me to other people as his girlfriend, and told me it was just for ease of reference to his friends. I didn't want to alienate the only person I knew in the room so I shrugged and went along with it. I was dressed pretty that night - if he wanted to inflate his ego in front of his friends I was okay with that.

It was a cold night and I was still thin-skinned from the heat and humidity of Singapore. I patted myself on the back for layering on tons of layers beneath my dress - I had literally dug out every single piece of clothing that wouldn't show under my long-sleeved dress, and was wearing about 2 vests and a leotard strategically to keep warm. Still, it was cold, and he gave me his jacket. We went out into the garden of the house party and walked around, and he asked if he could kiss me. I laughed and said he'd had too much to drink, and that he knew I had a boyfriend. He dropped it and we went back to the party.

At the party, he took my hand. I suddenly realized he'd introduced me to everyone there as his girlfriend, and to everyone, he just seemed like a nice, caring guy who was taking care of his girlfriend. I started becoming anxious because I didn't know anyone else there, and I didn't know if anyone would believe me or help me if things became more uncomfortable. The night went on, and finally he decided to leave the party - we'd arranged to Uber to the party together, and Uber back after, and I had no other way of getting home myself so I had to wait for him (this was when Uber was still a novelty). As we were standing together waiting for the Uber under the night sky, he leaned over and asked, "so, about that kiss..." This time, he didn't wait for an answer.

I was scared, I was anxious, and I didn't feel like I could have said no anyway - what if I said no, and he flipped shit, and left me stranded in the middle of nowhere? So I didn't push him off me. The Uber came; we got in, and I was so thankful that there was a 3rd party there, because surely he wouldn't try to kiss me again in front of someone else, right? I had 5 minutes of anxiously staring out the window and wondering where we were when he kissed me again, and tried to reach up my skirt. This time, I pushed his hand away from down there. He interpreted my "don't..." as coy teasing, and begged: "please? Just let me touch it?" and reached up my skirt again, trying to find the band of my underwear so he could pull it down. I had never been more thankful that I was wearing a leotard.

We finally reached my place, and he asked if he could come in with me. "Uh, haha, um, no, I have a final tomorrow," I said.

"So if you didn't have a final, you'd let me come home with you?" he asked. I just laughed weakly in response. Thankfully, he left it at that and went home.

I went back to my room. It was midnight and I was so sleepy, but couldn't sleep due to the adrenaline coursing through my body. I crawled under the covers and kept shivering. I wanted to tell someone but I didn't know who I could tell. I kept asking myself what I could have done different to prevent this - maybe I shouldn't have dressed up prettily? Maybe I should have been more assertive about saying no and meaning it. Maybe I shouldn't have trusted him.

But that's the thing. He WAS a nice guy. I don't know if he knew how scared I was, or how I wasn't able to consent to anything - because guys are taught that coyness is a come-on in girls: "No means yes," they tell them in school. They see that in the media - James Bond forcing himself on women, who only protest until his lips touch theirs, and then they melt into puddles of feminine affection, and they learn that to get a girl to love you, you just have to kiss them until they do - no matter if they struggle or seem less than comfortable; hold the kiss long enough and they'll eventually be all yours.

That's why seeing Trump get elected was terrifying for me. Not only because it's a slap in the face to hard work (and that's another thing we can talk about another time), but because it sends the message to young, impressionable, and otherwise nice guys that it's okay to talk about grabbing women by the pussy. Even if they protest. Even if they shrink away and say no. Because once you've grabbed them by the pussy and asserted your dominance over them, they melt into puddles and you too can marry an Eastern European supermodel. You can do all of that, and still become President.

We're seeing it come out in many people. For some, it's always lurked near the surface, and this has just provided them with all the social acceptance that they need to let it out in public. But it's those "nice guys" that I worry about. The ones who DO want to do right by women, but have been shaped by society to think that it's perfectly fine to treat women in this way. We reinforce this when we elect people like Trump. We reinforce this when we publish Brock Turner's All-American swimmer photo and let him get away with 3 months in jail and call it "20 minutes of action".

That night, I shivered under the quilt, sleepless. I didn't tell my then-boyfriend what had happened. I didn't know what to say to him. Instead, I picked up my phone and texted my two best friends - "omg, I went to a party last night and got sooo drunk and made out with the cutest guy." I thought if I could pretend that I wanted it all along, I wouldn't become one of Those Girls who got assaulted. I thought I could reclaim my independence and autonomy as a woman.

It's been a long time since that day, and I've come to terms with it a lot. That's not to say that it hasn't impacted me. For a long time, I viewed every guy with trepidation - and the whole "mmm, you seem nice, but so did he" still lurks in the back of my mind from time to time. I still get unreasonably upset and angered sometimes when someone brings up something that reminds me of that incident - for example, when one of my close male friends (thankfully, my relationships with the male friends I had prior to this incident haven't been affected - though all subsequent ones have) came over to stay in my room for Thanksgiving, and someone said, "Well, just know that he's a guy, sleeping in your room, and if anything happens it's your fault," I nearly crashed the car I was driving at the time in fear and rage because all the blame I felt that night in freshman year came flooding back.

But what can we do now? We can rage against the system, we can rage against the man who the rest of this nation has elected President. But none of that is helpful, and I still don't have all the answers. I can barely fix myself - let alone prescribe policies to fix the rest of the nation. All I can see are baby steps forward - making sure the guys I interact with know enough to treat women properly, and making sure that any sons and daughters I may have in the future will both understand the same, and hopefully pass on that knowledge to their friends. And now that I know what it's like to be in an uncomfortable situation, I'm always on the lookout for other girls - they say we move in packs, and I want to be "the pack" for other girls who are experiencing less-than-comfortable situations like I once was.

Girls, we only have each other. In tumultuous times like these, please keep safe, and please keep each other safe. We are truly stronger together.

To the boy whom I let get under my skin:

Over drinks, I sat across from you and let you insult everything about my life, meekly expressing my inner rage through ever-tightening smiles and pointed looks away when you tried to rib me for a response. After each time you denigrated my life, you said, "Ha, I'm just messing with you," as though that completely excused your insolence. I gritted my teeth and forced a tight smile - not wanting to be branded an "aggressive bitch" who "can't take a joke" - but I regret that now; I should never have sat there and let you presumptuously act as though you knew who I was as a person based on your tiny collection of stereotypes. Most of all, I should never have let you shake my self-confidence, or let you get under my skin.

You suggested that I was in some way unworthy because I chose not to go to a bulge-bracket bank, and instead chose a boutique. You asked if it was because I was rejected everywhere else. Fuck you. I chose where I went to because the people I met there GENUINELY cared, and because I felt like it was a place where I could grow and really take responsibility for projects, instead of being just a cog in a giant machine.

You said Stanford kids didn't know how to hustle, and therefore somehow were less deserving of the banking positions they got compared to others, who had to pound the pavement begging for work. Let me tell you this - I came here, on my own, without any connections in the States. I pounded the pavement. I begged people to teach me how to get into banking. I set aside all shame - hustled so hard to build up my own network here, and learned how to do it all without the benefit of cultural knowledge, or preexisting networks from friends/family.

You said all international kids were rich, and when I told you my dad worked as an engineer in his small business, you asked me which multinational corporation he ran. My family brought me up in a solidly middle class environment - my mother brought me to work with her on the weekends because there was no one to take care of me at home. I grew up feeling like offices on Saturdays were my home. My father struggled for 19 years running his own business, often working 3 jobs at a time. When other families were bonding over walks in the park, I sat at home helping out with his business - helping him stick tape onto thousands of widgets just so we could meet a deadline.

You said my accent was kind of "annoying but cute" and complained about how you only ever got to meet "FOBs" and finance chicks, of which I was both. To that, I quote Sofia Vergara in Modern Family: "Do you know how frustrating it is... to have people laugh in my face because I'm struggling to find the words? Do you know how smart I am in Spanish?" I've experienced people deliberately slow down and enunciate and speak in pidgin English to me just because my accent is unfamiliar. Over the years, I shed my native accent, trying to drawl and sound as Californian as possible so that people would finally acknowledge my contributions - which have remained exactly the same over the years, just in a different accent. And suddenly, now that I'm drawling it out and punctuating everything with "yeah, no" and "like" and "duuuude", I'm intelligent and educated. What fucking gives?

Am I proud of being a FOB? Hell yes I am - if that means I was strong enough to come here to a new country and face the trials and tribulations of moving and settling into an unfamiliar and new environment all on my own. You quickly tried to backpedal and said I didn't really count as a FOB, because I could speak English, but you know what? Yes, I'm FOBby and I'm proud of it. Being a FOB makes me strong - and it gave me the opportunity to overcome so much that you didn't even know about when you tried to judge me and paint me as some manic pixie dream girl. So, fuck you. Fuck all your premature judgments. I don't apologize for any of these experiences - I'm not sorry I chose to work where I did; I'm not sorry I hustled harder than you know; I'm not sorry I grew up always in fear of not having enough money; I'm not sorry you had to strain and use a little more effort than normal to understand me. I AM, however, sorry, that I let your comments get under my skin and diminish my view of myself - but no longer.

Caught up with two of my closest friends from JC today and we sat and chatted for 5 hours straight over copious amounts of sashimi and amazing bubble tea.

Today, I also discovered what it means to really love someone - I was reading a passage on love and relationships on the train journey to lunch, and I was struggling to grasp what it meant. We're all taught to think that love is some kind of all-consuming passion made up of a series of cutesy gestures of attraction, and for Type A people (ahem, like me), there's a special tendency to want to run headlong into relationships to prove that we, too, are likable and not social outcasts.

But that's not the kind of love I understood today. The kind of love I felt today was the kind of love I had for a friend who'd seen me through my formative years in JC, and a kind of pride in how they'd turned out to be. It's a love you can feel despite not having a starring role in their future (though I'd be content with Best Supporting Actor, hehe) and perhaps that's a more selfless kind of love.

Either way, said friend told me about their journey of self-discovery after studying abroad, and told me something about their identity that couldn't have been easy to admit at all. I'm so, so proud of them for discovering it, and so honored that they were willing to share it with me, and after they told me, my face literally split into the biggest shit-eating grin ever, and it felt like I was lit up from inside with happiness that kept bubbling over. It wasn't even my discovery, or even my business, but I guess that is what it's like to love someone (in a very platonic way) - their happiness is better shared.

:)

What an absolutely terrifying and enlightening day - I was at a Buddhist conference for youths and students and was happily bantering with Mum and Pa on Whatsapp about the ongoing National Day Rally speech where apparently PM Lee still spoke appreciatively of Stanford (me: "wow, despite all the people who have gone there but broken their scholarship bonds?") and Block 71 in SF. And then suddenly, my mum texts me: "Omg, PM Lee collapsed during NDR"

My first thought was that it couldn't be real. I mean, I knew it had to be true on an intellectual level, because why would anyone joke about anything like that? But being halfway across the world and so removed from events back home, it felt like it just couldn't be happening. Like any stereotypical millennial, I opened FB to check for news back home, and amidst the barrage of cat photos and Joseph Schooling fever, there were the first few posts. People - both locally in Singapore and the Singaporean diaspora abroad - were sharing news and updates about the situation, and I was busy lapping up all the snippets I could find from various sources. Friends who had gone abroad were also texting me - trying to figure out if it was real and what exactly was going on. In some kind of twisted relay system, we conveyed the same bits of information - tweets; pictures; videos of the event; whatever we could find, really - around and around to soothe each other.

I had to slip out to pray, because 1. I was at a Buddhist camp and that's like literally the solution to everything at any kind of religious camp; and 2. personally, make myself feel a little less impotent for sitting so far away from home in a time of a very publicly televised national scare. I thought about my relationship with Singapore and what being away from my country means to me, and not for the first time, I was hit with a lot of frustration and confusion about how I could best contribute to the country that has given me so much, and how I could deal with the anti-nationalistic vitriol that tends to come up amongst Singaporeans every now and then.

It's definitely still a work in progress - I don't claim to have all the answers, and I don't know if I ever will. Call me a sap, perhaps, but when I was watching footage of the NDR just before PM Lee collapsed, it just struck me that he's gotten so old now. Obviously, not as much as some other world leaders have aged while in office, but here, in front of me, was a man who had given the better part of his life to serve a country and electorate that sometimes doesn't seem to appreciate his work or effort, and takes every opportunity they can to grumble. Yet, despite all of that, he continued to serve, even taking the time to ask guests at the NDR to enjoy the reception and APOLOGIZE for scaring everyone, and struggling to come back to finish up the speech even after he had to be escorted out for a checkup. And then you have me a couple of years back - fervently thanking the senior civil servants who interviewed me and saw that I clearly wouldn't be a good fit for the civil service due to my temperament, and happily trying to take my talents elsewhere (i.e. the private sector) rather than do what I saw as a thankless job.

Of course, that is the reason why PM Lee is our PM, and why I'm not - I still can't see myself as a political figurehead in the nation, but this incident - seeing how old PM Lee has gotten and realizing that it's going to be up to us soon to carry on the legacy of Singapore - has kind of given me a little kick in the ass and reminded me that my duty to the country is first and foremost. That doesn't mean I'm hustling back right after college - I am well aware of my value and I'm practically useless to the country right now with my limited experience and network. But while I had always felt like I could take it easy and kind of bumble along through life slowly developing my network and skills, and then coming back home "when I feel, y'know, ready", that's no longer an option for me. I'm going to throw myself into each day, working as hard as I can to become one of the most renowned female investors of all time - and using that experience to bring Singapore's financial market to the next level. (Mostly because I'm still a believer, unpopular as it may be, in the doctrine of trickle-down economics if benevolently applied.) I don't know how I'm going to get there, but today - the first day of the rest of my life - and each first day thereafter, there is no more time to waste.