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bighengwrites · 5 years ago

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In the backseat of my father’s car

This is something that I started writing in 2014 and never really stopped adding to. It kind of grew over the years just like me and my dad’s relationship did.

It’s my dad’s birthday, and we have a couple of seas and a pandemic between us - so I wanted to share this little homage to one of my favourite people in the world.

In the backseat of my father’s car

In the backseat of my father's car, I am 8, in food stained clothes that my mother will lecture me about when we get home. I was taught first, to only get into cars of people that I know very well, and second, to always sit in the passenger seat - because the person driving was not a taxi driver (unless of course, they were - a taxi driver, that is). My father is the exception to this rule. The second I approach the door to the passenger seat, he will wave me away with a disapproving nod. Even when it feels silly to do so, even when it’s just the two of us, I will climb into the seat behind him and watch the world fly past the back of his head. He doesn't tell me why, and I don't ask. As with many other things in my life at this time (like not reading my books when we're eating or not drinking water when there is soup on the table), sitting in the backseat is one of my father's unquestionable rules.

In the backseat of my father's car, I am 13, being driven to a tennis lesson that I am determined not to go to. We are arguing about things that I not longer remember, while my younger (but infinitely wiser) sister remains quiet, watching me try to fight a battle that has already been lost. My mother always said that we fight so often because we are too similar: too stubborn, too hot-headed, too unyielding. As with most things, she is probably right, but both my father and I agree to completely ignore this. Heat collects behind my eyes, and I fold my arms, look out the window and mutter arguments beneath my breath. In my head, I am a conscientious objector, a martyr holding herself in the dignity of silence, but even I can't shake the shame of feeling like a child put in her place. And the rest of the trip is silent.

In the backseat of my father's car, I am 16, being driven to a date. The date is in a shopping mall, which is mortifying enough in itself without having to ask my father to drive me to it. The past week was spent deciding if I should lie to my parents, to spare myself the stress, to save them from ideas of hand-holding, lip locking, or whatever teenagers are meant to do when on dates in shopping malls. They find out (like they always do), and go through a checklist, a verbal form that I fill up and sign at the bottom: what do his parents do how many A's did he get in his exams what are his intentions are you going to be kidnapped and have your organs harvested. Back in the car, it is quiet, it is tense, it is unbelievably awkward. My father spurts out: "Look. Just friends OK?" I mumble something along the lines of yes in response, and make a mental note to let me kids date at whatever age they want.

In the backseat of my father's car, I am 17, (the memories accumulate as I get older), We are driving back from our hometown, which is not (and never will be) the same since my great-grandmother passed away. My sister is asleep next to me and I am slumped over, headphones in but expounding silence, watching the rest of the world zoom past in the gap between the driver and passenger seat. I hear my father speak in a voice softer than I'd ever heard, telling my mother about how his grandmother raised him. The same breakfast she used to buy for him everyday before he went to school, how she spoiled him for being the only son in the family. My father is not a sentimental man, these words aren't crafted or thought out, they tumble out of him like water, and my mother just listens. It is all he needs and wants. I realize, for the first time in my dramatic, messy youth that people would die for this kind of simple.

In the backseat of my father's car, I am 20, being driven to the airport. I'm being taken away from a home I've rediscovered for the first time at 90 km/hour, (though obviously, my father doesn't stick to the speed limit. No one else does, so why should he?) I have a shovel ready, prepared to dig out these re-grown roots for replanting yet again, though before long I will find a way to nurture them in myself. Without a word, he puts on an old Cantonese song, the same one our family sings along to on long drives home, constantly mispronouncing words and phrases at the top of our lungs. We never listen to it unless all four of us are there, which recently, is a rare occasion that always slips away too soon. I get the feeling that he's been waiting for the right moment to do it, I wonder what makes him decide that this very one, is it.

I am 22, being driven along the Scottish countryside, I am about to graduate and in a persistent state of not-at-home-and-maybe-never-will-be. My father and I are arguing about directions, whether to take a left on this road or the next one, and somewhere in the back of my mind I realize with a start, that I've been sitting in the passenger seat for two hours, and that I am in the process of winning an argument with my dad. There is a moment where I wonder if this is adulthood: Achieving petty teenage dreams like defeating your parents, without the fanfare that you imagined – the parade or the hormone-fuelled sense of justice. Or if it's just that time has worn down my father's rougher edges, such that they do not rub against mine quite so violently any more. But the truth, I think, is much simpler, holding no fundamental truths about the passage of time or age. I think that maybe for the first time, we are seeing each other as people, not just as a daughter to protect from failure and stress, and boys and universities that aren't good enough for me. Not just as a grumpy old man who has his after-golf-good-moods that I watch and wait for before asking for permission. But the people that are left over after we've outgrown the only roles we’ve ever played for each other.

My father is not a sentimental man, but he is a fully-fleshed person with fully-fleshed memories, anger and sadness that ebbs and pulses, with fully-fleshed stories that I'm hearing about every day, (the time he saw Fleetwood Mac live in concert, or when he lived above his uncle's Fish & Chip shop in London), and a fully-fleshed life that existed before me, without me (and sometimes, despite me). He is not a sentimental man, but he wakes up at 6:30 a.m. to make sure that our gas tanks are always full, and buys me and my sister breakfast before any of our exams, he sends me a text every goddamn time there is a sale at Esprit in One Utama, as if I’m waiting for him at home, instead of half the world away. Ends every phone call with "text us if anything's wrong or if you feel unsafe". Tells me to call my mom whenever she is lonely or upset. Watching – quiet as he always is, Sometimes unable to find the right words, but always showing with his actions

–

my father, and me in the backseat of his car.

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bighengwrites · 11 years ago

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Streamlined.

I consider myself a Malaysian student through and through.

I've been through every crook and nanny of the public school experience in my 11 years there. From the co-curricular activities that defined your social life to piecing together KHB projects (some people say that it’s a box, but I like to think of it as a de-constructed interpretation of modernist architecture), from running to the nearest shopping mall after school to sitting for SPM in 2012 - I've done it all.

There are currently a large range of disputes on issues within the education system: the implementation of PT3, the teaching of Mathematics and Science in Bahasa Malaysia and the English language proficiency among English teachers to name a few. These are all pressing issues that need to be discussed and solved, but I am not going to talk about them today.

I am here as a product of the Malaysian education system and I want to share a little bit about what it has done to me.

Let me paint you a picture of who I was in High School:

I was a science stream student who was convinced that she was an artist at heart. I devoured sappy poetry like my life depended on it, wrote for the national newspaper, sang in a national award winning choir- I was that teenager with lots of emotions who spent all her time finding ways to express it. I put most of my energy in cultivating my writing skills and joining drama and choir competitions, preparing for a road that would allow me to expressing myself artistically.

<;/div>. (Said soppy 15 year old me in the middle, in all my awkward teenage brace-faced glory. Photo credit: Timothy Yeo)

I never had any sort of passion for math or science. Back then, they seemed like extremely dry subjects that left no room for imagination and I felt stifled by them. I did it for two years anyway.

This might sound irrational, but I did it for the same reason many Malaysian High School students who have zero interest in science go into the science stream - because they don’t want to be looked down upon.

If you are familiar with the Malaysian government school system, you’re probably aware of the general stigma of students who enter the arts stream.

For some absurd reason, there is a certain standard that students need to achieve in their PMR examinations (taken in the middle of high school, during Form 3) in order to enter the science stream, but no academic requirements to enter the arts stream.

I do not object to having a pre-requirement to progress after PMR, but to put requirements on the science group and not on the arts effectively creates the blatantly incorrect idea that a person who goes into the science is more qualified, smarter even; and those who go into arts are only there because they’re grades didn't make the cut for the science stream.

As utterly nonsensical as this sounds, I guarantee you this stigma exists in every Malaysian public school. Having known some of the brightest and most talented straight A students who make the conscious decision to choose arts over science, I never once entertained this fallacy. However, many teachers did.

I come from a newly certified cluster school that has a pretty good reputation in the PJ area, and yet, there are teachers, certified educators that talk about their art-stream students as though they are mentally incapacitated second rate beings, some even admitting to giving more attention to their science stream students who apparently offer more promising results. It is so saddening that educators who play such a big role in a student’s life choose to use their influence to belittle instead of empowering. This, however, is a whole other rant entirely.

So, basically, the only reason I decided to go into the science stream was because I did not want to be taught half-heartedly. I sat through countless lab reports and classes, lamenting the rigidity of science subjects, utterly convinced that I was in no way a “science person”, constantly looking forward to the days where I could truly explore my interests and become the “arts person” I was destined to be.

And then, A-Levels happened.

Going into A-Levels, I decided on pursuing Economics and Sociology in university. Not exactly arts, but the more statistical humanities that would give me the applicational knowledge I needed to write. I would finally be able to write and learn and be free.

(The braces came off after high school, but the soppy-ness was there to stay.)

As the story goes, things didn't exactly turn out according to plan. I loved English literature and economics, as expected, but I also found myself falling more and more in love with physics and maths, something which, according to my track record, was definitely out of character. Before I knew it, I was spending hours doing extra research on theoretical physics and boring all my friends with my 20 minute long rants about quantum mechanics. I started craving the adrenaline rush of being able to solve calculus, even when a question would take 30 minutes of hair pulling to solve. It was a wonderful time to be in; I was absolutely intrigued by all these new things that I was learning, and finding out that I was pretty good at them as well.

All at once, I started questioning if I really was an arts person at all. If I wasn’t an arts person, the only logical conclusion was that I was actually a science person at heart. It was a reasoning that made sense to me, what with my growing love for physics and maths. During this time, I stumbled across this TEDx talk:

Call me an idealist but the idea of being one of the people to break the stereotype of engineering being a male-dominated career really appealed to me. I started reading books on product design and innovation in the manufacturing world, slowly being able to picture myself in it.

Then began the short, painful journey of me considering switching majors to Mechanical Engineering. Having already received all my university offers for Economics and Sociology, it was a huge decision to make. My parents were shocked into silence when I finally sat down and talked to them about it. My mom just couldn’t understand where this was coming from, I never once in my life shown any inclination to this field and she thought that she understood my passions and interests inside out. I always was the artsy kid.

After many months I painstakingly made my decision to stick with my original plan and pursue social sciences, partly because I realised that I would be lagging behind most of my contemporaries in terms of experience and skill if I were to pursue engineering, but mostly because I think that I can make a bigger impact on a global scale with writing and economic development.

Wanting to pursue Engineering might have been slightly reactionary to my struggles with English LIterature on some part, but it definitely is not misguided. To this very day, when I am 7 days away from starting the next chapter of my life pursuing social sciences, I still find myself so passionate about the idea of creation and using mathematical analysis to solve problems.

I am finally at the point of this extremely long story. The Malaysian education system is structured in a way where students are made to choose to be either “science students” or “art students”. Choosing one over the other definitely does not dictate the path they will take after high school but the segregation of these two fields of knowledge alone already creates the idea that a person is either one or the other. The American education system on the other hand, requires its students to pick one subject of each field, i.e. one science subject, math, social science, art, language and so on, which at a fundamental level makes the learning experience one that does not limit, but instead encourages diversity and allows its students to experience and explore knowledge of all categories. These schooling years are the most defining in a person’s life where their aspirations and passions are formed, this system pushes them to step out of their comfort zones and be exposed to a wider range of subjects so that their final career path is one taken by choice, not by default. There are definitely issues in the American schooling system, but this is the one aspect of it that I strongly agree upon.

Me defining myself as an arts student limited me from the alternate pathway I could have taken. I honestly feel extremely cheated from the amount of knowledge and joy I could have experienced if only I did not limit myself to those boundaries in my younger days. Some might say that this decision was my fault, but I believe that as a young, unmatured student, school would have had a large influence on that. I’ve talked to many friends and classmates about this, and many of them agree, so I don’t think that I am the only one affected by this.

This is my final message to all the students of Malaysia, whether you are just starting out in primary school, right smack in the insanity of secondary school, in college or even at the final stages of university; whether you are convinced that you have found your path in life or if you are still searching for your one true passion - do not limit yourself. For the arts students out there, science and math are not rigid subjects. You might have had bad experiences with them in school, but the world of math and science is more infinite, creative and ultimately, beautiful than you could ever imagine. When you truly look, you will find that there is artistry in the details and coherency of maths and science, and it will take your breath away. For science or mathematics students, do not close yourself up to the arts or humanities because they seem melodramatic and overly emotional. In the study of arts you will find structure and discipline that you would not expect. Open yourself to the artistic, more emotive aspect of the arts and it may just help fuel your research, enhance your creations and revolutionise your innovations. For those who find themselves in the humanities, you are in a unique blend of both, where you use scientific empirical methods to decipher inconsistent, somewhat emotionally driven data that involved emotive human beings. Remember to explore both extreme ends as well.

Human beings are contradictions. To try to streamline those paradoxes would be to whittle away at an existence, to make you less than what a person has the potential to be and to experience.

The way that we have been brought up, we have been told that we can only be one or the other: science stream or arts stream; good with math or good with words; expressive or calculative. I stand here today revoking that conception. I think that every person is all those things at once, in their different ways.

I am both emotional and steely; factual and abstract; both an arts and science person. I am a social science major who alternates between analysing poetry and taking online courses on special relativity. My plans for the future include writing on global issues and economic development and being involved in manufacturing and innovation, creating the tools of the future. I am living a life that is boundless in terms of what I love and what I can do, and I love it.

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