Headaches and Heartaches

Another day spent at the fast food restaurant. Another day filled with facts and more facts about tax - Singapore Tax, that is. Damn those graduates* for not marrying (obviously I am not one of them – graduates, that is) and for being greedy (at least the Gahman believes so). And damn the Garment for being so desperate that they come out with new schemes such as “Working Mother’s child relief”, “Grandparent's Caregiver relief” etc.

“Money is the key to all doors (where does it end, I wonder)”, some said, but someone must have still under-estimated the impact of the schemes – that is making part-time students like me slave longer in the fast food restaurant, so where got time to go “Pah Tall” (a Hokkien slang meaning dating, nowadays nearly extinct) leh. Not that I am complaining, but I just think that it is unfair to us to have to take care of other’s problems, to wipe other people’s backside, so to speak...oops sorry… I think I have spoken too soon…it is eventually everybody’s problem. Of course, I would like to help…just leave me your wife’s handphone number. Now you see the problem? What too much studying can do to your brain? You suffer from headaches, dizziness (must be my age…) and heartaches. What heartaches, you ask? I prefer the term “lovesick” actually – meaning being sick of having nobody to love, especially when you see the loving teenage couples (look, open your eyes, it is open season for them with schools out), hand in hand (are they for real, or are they just playing games?), eyeballs to eyeballs, tenderly, of course. While, it took some getting used to; I am all calm and composed now, but still recovering from red eye. Hello?! Don’t they know that they are in the public eye?! You see what happen to the teenage girl from Woodlands, I think, who had a miscarriage, blacked out and threw the stillborn out of the window. Yet some 18 or 19 years old kids are even daring enough to declare themselves as virgins with boyfriends via the press, but who is kidding who? Ok, I admit I am carrying things much too far, further than the distance between my home and Woodlands, which is far enough. Hello?! Remember my red, red eye? Give me a break please.

Afternote: *Why graduates, you may ask? Do you know that Garment agencies used to have a scheme rewarding female employees educated up to only “O” level, to sterilise after certain number of births? And you remember how their matchmaking agencies (was it SDU and SDS?) was separated to cater to graduates and non-graduates? Yah, “Thou shalt not marry a graduate, if thou are not a graduate”; say, isn’t that written in some old bible (oops...no disrespect to any particular religion, I have plenty of friends of you-know-what faith)? And in recent memories, there was a propaganda in the various media about how brighter parents - like graduates - could produce brighter kids due to their superior genes (truly discriminating!). The rules have always been straight-forward, that is until recently when they grow desperate for babies and anything goes. Hey, no apologies required, not easy asking people to marry, I know. But it is payback time I guess and I am in the middle of it.