is topodium happy?

a survey that places singaporeans as the most unhappy lot in asia. as I tuned in to radio discussions and television debates on how happy singaporeans are, I pose the same question to myself.

I am not unhappy, thatz for sure.

I am happy for being competent at studies, at least that is almost all a singaporean youth with any meaningful purpose in life ever does until he steps into society with a piece of paper called degree. I thank the supreme being for granting me an above-average cognitive ability, riding out the waves of the treacherous academic pursuit that claims as many casualties - sending them to a condemned world starting from 10 - as elites, who are groomed for national leadership with sponsored studies at the world's best universities, even before they step out of their teenage. Me, I belong to the group deemed good, but still not good enough. Aha, this is where the reserved happiness stems from.

I am happy to have many good friends around me. People who ride the merry-go-round together during playtimes at 6; people who hang out at game shops playing guardian angels and bomberman on sega saturn, who enjoy playing basketball as much as relishing in the freedom post-PSLE at Yishun 10 LJS at 12; people who go thru the rebellious adolescence together, experimenting at the border of legality at 14; people who mug together tirelessly at 16; people who canoes as if there were no tomorrow at 18; people who are on the penultimate lap to graduation at 22. Every period of my life, I had good friends around me. But friends are probably as much cyclical and seasonal to me as anything else. I hold a tinge of regret for not holding on to the best friends from each part of my life, and sometimes I wonder how I managed not to.

I am happy to have a career mapped out for the next 5 years, but the bureaucratic environment where scholars reign supreme and the others slog to gain recognition irks me. You know, I don't believe they are as superior as they are made out to be.

Oh, I am certainly unhappy drawing blanks on the love front. And considering I am going back to a workplace almost barren of the fairer sex, this must be the most worrying aspect at this point in time. And I even went to France and back to no avail, haha. BUT, but I must qualify - I didn't try especially hard since the last breakup which was... hard to swallow and heart wrenching.

Sounds quite unhappy right? But nope, I am very at ease with things around me. That said, I would constantly set new targets for myself, and make their realisations the source of my new happiness. It's an unending cycle of expectations, but thatz because I foresee an extraordinary in the making. *winkz* Until then, I am a singaporean - not unhappy.