(Pre-blog note: For those who don't speak Hokkien well/at all, 'sai kang' roughly translates to 'shit work' and is usually used to represent menial tasks or simply work that no one wants to do)
In my last post, I talked about one aspect of myself (being hyper) so I thought I'd use this opportunity to talk about another aspect of myself, being 'on'. A brief history lesson now, prior to coming to Singapore a few years ago I was pretty comfortable with drifting through life but the moment I came to Singapore I decided that I would turn over a new leaf to mark this new beginning. Thus, I hopped from the drifting end of the involvement spectrum all the way to the to the hyper involved end.
From my first year in Singapore all the back in Secondary 3 till now, I have volunteered/ran for/self-nominated myself for every committee position/key role/responsibility that I could get my hands on.
Trivia-break. Back in secondary school, my classmates nicknamed me 'Nitro' which was the result of some twisted train of logic which somehow went like 'enthusiatic --> enthu --> N2 --> Nitro' (surprisingly the name still managed to somehow capture the essence of who I was/am).
Anyhow, fastforward to present time. I'm currently in 4 clubs (one of which I currently president of >.<) and the dance choreographer for SoC's Rag Dance (Rag is sorta like a Chingay type parade, it'll take too long to explain in full). I'll be totally honest with you guys, never once have I wanted to run for the sake of filling my CV (though it does feel good when I look at my CV and say "Damn, it did a lot of shit"). I mean, it's kinda like working for the sake of the money, after a while you're just going to end up jaded and start hating your job. And that is why I've told myself that I'm doing all these jobs because I want to. That way I always have the resolve to see my work through.
I've come to the realisation that I'm sort of like a shark. A shark has to constantly swim in order to survive, much like myself. I constantly need to be doing something or else I start rotting. It's either I'm full out doing something or I'm full out nua-ing (like a tofu). I can't quite tell if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I have yet to find a middle gear between the two.
After all these years of being a sai kang warrior, I've discovered yet another rather important perk about being a sai kang warrior. I found out that the pre-working environment is the perfect place for all trial-and-error experiments regarding any responsibility-related. It's the perfect sandbox where we are allowed to screw up with (relatively) minimal repercussions. It's nearly impossible to not screw up the first time we do anything so why not try while the cost of trying is still small?
I'll end this blogpost with a thought that I was once told:-
Never call your work sai kang because if you call it sai kang, you're only degrading the work that you are doing. There is no such thing as sai kang because any work you do, no matter how insignificant it may seem, is still important - Patrick Loo
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