Many are you are going to think I am crazy, but it is safe to say there was more hate in my love-hate relationship with NYC, at least in the first four months of my time here. Partly because the New York City in my mind and the one I saw in reality were two vastly different visions. I resented how there could be such vast economic and social disparities, the one I see in my Brooklyn beat neighborhood and what little I saw on the Upper East Side.
But mainly because we have just been so busy, it's crazy. I hate the frantic pace life in the Big Apple. Maybe because of its position as America's financial capital, every relationship is so transactional here. But the picture in my head could still change, because I just recently discovered how therapeutic it is for me, to be around Greenwich Village more. In fact, it is likely to change - I just don't know by how much, yet.
AND THEN there was the whole Asian in America thing, how Americans tend to generalize where I come from. "Asian" is a term used to refer to people who are vaguely yellow-skinned, like the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans. And most people find it difficult to understand I am Singaporean-Chinese and don't have Mandarin as my "native" tongue. They also find it difficult to understand how I speak two languages, in their opinion, fluently.
Everything in race and ethnic relations class in my undergraduate sociology major, are just popping up everywhere for me. I get typecast because I get sent to cover recent Chinese immigrants just because I speak Mandarin. If I have to write one more gentrification-related story or an immigrant-related one, I will just explode.
A huge part of being a minority in this white-majority country is that it forces you to re-examine your ethnicity. I realized I have been seeing myself as a white boy all this while (mainly because I suspect, I watch too much American television and have been educated in Western philosophy). It's like here, I suddenly discover I am Chinese and have been grappling with it - for example, I have been youtubing Chinese music and television shows excessively. I used to do these things back in Singapore too, but here, it's a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Curiously though, while I am drawn to "Asia," I don't feel compelled to return to Singapore that soon - although a large part of this re-examining of my identity involved thinking long and hard about what it means to be Singaporean. When I dream of home, it's usually food-related. I miss the familiarity and convenience of home, but most of all, I miss my friends and church back home. I am still searching for what makes Singapore definitively home for me.
At the end of it, I want to reclaim my Chinese-ness, my Singaporean-ness - but on my terms, and not on the terms of the typical American worldview, or the PAP one that I decided to run away from, for a while at least. This could just be initial assimilation blues, but I am pretty sure I will find my way through this soon and be empowered by my unique cultural hybridity. This type of cultural essentialism, I want to remind myself, happens everywhere. I just need to get used to it and get over it, working the situation to my advantage.
But all the angst about democracy and the lack of a free press in Singapore has somewhat dissipated. Not in the sense that I don't care anymore, but being at the J-School has shown me that while these are necessary starting points, they cannot be the only things occupying our mind. Journalists are primarily reporters and writers, we need to get down to doing the dirty work and let our work speak for itself.
Besides, reporting in America and reporting in Singapore both comes with its own set of problems. I have no problems working in Singapore now, but I don't think I am quite done with living and working abroad yet. I want to try living in a Chinese-dominated environment for a bit after Columbia, so we'll see how that works out.
EMPLOYMENT opportunities being in short supply, the school encourages us to network excessively. It got to a point where I had enough of the lack of authenticity in relations that I decided I had enough. I wasn't going to get a job, ever, just by coldly changing name cards and exchanging fake emails.
The way I conducted myself with Will is the way for me. I maintained contact with him not because I wanted a job with him, but because I respected his work and want to learn from him. It may sound like I am being clever with my words, but it is a very crucial difference governing one's attitudes towards networking. You need to be real and authentic, and not be too much of a cold opportunist.
Consequently, it has been very hard to make real friends here. I potentially have a few of them here, but our tight schedules make it really tough to call. I will just have to wait and see how things turn out in the spring semester. The real test would come when we graduate, to see who will continue to keep in active contact.
ONE of the biggest breakthroughs though, is my epic realization that pursuing "greatness" is a futile exercise. If you see the people who were considered "great" in history, you will realize that they didn't start out wanting to be great - they merely went about being excellent at what they were doing. "Greatness" is an arbitrary label imposed by people when your work gets noticed, but it also means that the goal posts get shifted so often. If you keep trying to please other people, you will lose yourself in the process. Better to keep the focus on the quality of one's craft.
This was what happened when I got lost in the whole "new-media-is-important" rhetoric of the journalism school and the mad rush to get a job as well. I got really frustrated I was putting out applications just so that I could get a job, especially since I found out I really have no interest in reporting domestic issues in America. I perform best when I write about things that I care about. I don't know what yet, but I do know it's not in America.
WALKING outside the Museum of Modern Art a few weeks ago, it suddenly dawned upon me that I will look back on my time in NYC as the time I truly shed the baggage of my adolescence and become an adult. The pain of growing up, on hindsight, is something I came here wanting to do, so I should just suck it up and live. Besides, growing up does not mean going at it alone, without God in the picture.
It's halfway through my first-year here, and the plan is to try to do a second, specializing in business and economic reporting - but that is dependent on a full scholarship. I am glad to say right now though, there is more love equalizing the whole love-hate thing I have with the city. I think the key is to get out of my dingy little shoebox room, explore the city more and expand my social circle beyond the journalism school.
My Christmas wouldn't have been that miserable if I had done that earlier, because everybody except for some international students, left for home. Either that, or I shouldn't have been such a stingy bag and bought the ticket home for 2 weeks. I could have done with some gorging of Boon Tiong Kee chicken rice and the wantan mee at Clementi Hawker Centre.
New Year's Eve though was such a contrast because I had DG coming in from Boston. I hung out with him and his bunch of friends at an Asian bistro in Greenwich Village over dinner, drinks and maniacal dancing. It was nice and low key fun. I was just so happy to see him again after I hadn't time to hang out with him when I made that mad dash up to Boston the other time.
I KNOW this entry about the time since I moved to NYC is devoid of events, but more about things I have learnt - which is perhaps reflective of my time here so far. I suspect another list is due when I graduate May 20, so until then, thanks for ploughing through this three-parter.
Happy 2009!
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