GROWING UP (Part 1)
October 3, 2018
I just had my last exam of my university life, and I cannot wait for this day to finally dawn upon me. If you’ve ever done management in industry you’ll probably be well aware that this module is teaching you stuff like “Is that what would happen if I act like a dick to my employees?” and “if I treat my employees like sweatshop workers do you think they will stay in this company?” in return for the awe moment of “damn I really have to care about worker’s rights you know”.
So what happens after university? You start work. And when you start work, this is it, you’re starting a monotonous life, and literally gone would be the days of binge watching Netflix and go to bed at 4am and wake up at 11am only to regret why the heck you didn’t go to bed earlier and you’ve missed out some morning lectures already and there comes the days of waking up at 7:30, go to work, get off work, go to the gym and sleep only for the cycle to repeat.
So now during this period of finishing my dissertation and preparing to work and start a new stage in life, instead of writing just one blog I’ve decided to make this into a little project: every 10 years I will write a blog about Growing Up so when I’m old and rich I can have my blog beaming up from my little wrist screen and I can reminisce the good o’ days and the journey that’s become of me.
So here it is, part one.
This part one is probably the most important growing up moment, the past 22 years have only prepared me for this day and the day onwards: the part where I’m finally saying good bye to education. When this day comes, when I’ve gotten out of university and step into the society as a proper working class, it is the stage my parents had been preparing me for; the stage where it’s time to leave the little incubator and into the society, where I finally start paying taxes and be a member of the working class.
Finding job is always the hard part, after submitting my application my heart just sank whenever I receive an email that starts with “Thank you for your application…” I was so used to it that I can even guess what the email would be saying from just the notification and I’d be like “Bollocks! Well there goes this company”, and me being me there are some cases where I screwed up a job interview, or in some cases the job recruiter screwed up the job description and the job ended up being a world different from what I had expected.
Until I finally got an email started with “We are pleased….”. Boy I was so happy, the whole job searching process has been so long and excruciating and tiring that I received the email I was screaming and jumping up and down like a kid when my mom gave me a Nintendo for Christmas, not that she ever did anyways, because if she did give me a Nintendo I would be screaming and jumping up and down like a kid and ended up getting a noise complaint from your upstairs neighbours.
So with jobs sorted the next step was to get myself sorted for driving. While you Brits wave your pink driving license around as if it was your birth right, I’ve realised now was the prime time to get my driving license before I start work and put that completely behind my back, and it doesn’t really make sense to be a civil engineer without a driving license too. In just a bit over 5 weeks I will be going from having my closest driving experience being at a go-kart course with Tunde and Dubai, to having a proper pink driving license.
My first lesson was unforgettable. The last time I got in the driver’s seat was a year before when I got in Shiv’s VW Lupo when I did not even dare to release the clutch. When I got in my instructor’s Ford Fiesta and that’s when I realised when I kept telling people “I’ve got an International A license in Gran Turismo 6 and I was a top 50 racer around the Nurburgring in my Nissan GTR HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO DRIVE A CLAPPED-OUT FORD FIESTA?”
So it turns out, it was nothing like driving a Nissan GTR.
For starters, the clutch was real, and you can’t just release the clutch JUST LIKE THAT. You have to hold it right at the “bait” or you’re getting a whiplash for sure, and going through roundabouts was like playing mind games with other drivers, but given that I had to get a driving license before I start working or else that’s my job offer gone I had to bite it through, with 3 2-hour lessons every week my whole dream of “I’m going to be cruising down the street in my 6-4” went to “I’m going down City Road at 4mph”. I’ve seen sloths moving quicker than my car.
The reason why I said “bait” instead of bite is that the instructor was from Glasgow, and he kept saying “holding it at the bait”, so I thought it was like a “bait” for the engine to catch up with the gears, and theat’s bean strouck wif me and I caren’t gat it outta me ‘ead. Louvely inenit? (That’s my pathetic attempt in typing out Glaswegian accent)
But who would have thought? Exactly 5 weeks after my first lesson, I passed my driving test! WITH 5 MINORS, with one in parking!!!!But I guess I can’t really fault that given I had only learnt how to park the damn car a day before the test. My instructor was pretty convinced I would fail the test and I would have to pay him for extra lessons, but that didn’t happen, the sugar daddy’s gone.
So within the space of one month, I went from mixing deadly vodka and cider and try to bullshit my way into nightclubs to getting a job, getting a driving license and getting myself ready for the lifetime membership of the Working Class People.
And now I’m out of university, instead of competing with your coursemates on “who’s the closest to get a first class?” or “how many girls did you get with last night?”, now I am having a competition with myself, with my own ambition and battering with my own laziness. I know what I want in life; it’s me setting my own checkpoint, my own benchmark, and achieve them one by one. This is my race now, the race where I set my own rules, and the race that I aim to win the yesterday-self.
**Ooh and if you’re thinking how long this essay’s taken me, I’m now on my flight back to Hong Kong while I started this blog 3 months ago. Yeah, this is going to be a long project.