A Filial Son, and a Good Singaporean goes on the tough road to Recognition and Success

Filial Piety has died a long road as our modern society eroded or inadventenely put it behind the back seat of a 'luxious car'.

Small family nucleus is a double-edged sword, greater attention than bigger families, not necessarily. Todays 'dog eat dog' society brought about by the COL and brought about by the Government..left little choice but for both parents to work to maintain a decent living standard with debts everywhere..in housing, in a car, in credit cards. the bane of one's life. Many live to die under their debts!

Children are left to the maids as 'after-care' nannies. If grandparents are around and still looking after the children, it will be God's blessing. But many married adults like to stay on their own and due to the social implication of life in a modern society..old parents are left to fend for themselves....with Khaw Boon Wan suggesting children sent their parents to Johore Bahru to stay..reason being cheaper, how gracious of our Health Minister?...Sad, sad, sad.

Gone were the days of running wild and free with the 'lalangs' and barefooted. Families were bigger with at least five, or six siblings. My family formed a football (soccer) team with my grandparents as Advisers, my Pa and Mom the captain and vice-captain. We grew up poor but happy and with the morality of what Filial Piety was.

We showed greatest respect to our elders, no matter who. We addressed the elders during dinner time, always eating together. Dinner was simple fair but so joyous. The joy of eating together as one big family unit. Gone were the days..Looking into this present context of family life...We dissipated north, south, east or west. the social norm of a modern 'heartless', incohesive society with the diminished value of a large family nucleus.

Chang Ze Xun, the youth in STraits Time's write today
(18.8.10) is extraordinary because of his maturity of thoughts cumulated with his mother's condition of life..'all works well' in such irony setting. But for all the happenings, if a youth is unable to access his inner emotional lock and unlock it and accept that life will always has its vicissitudes, he may not have achieved so much success today. His ability to accept his idiosyncratic life of truth unfolding before him, speaks tons of his detemination in life.

Ze Xun's filiality to his mother Mdm Ong Siew Kee is an act rarely seen in our modern family any more. There are still filial sons and daughters around but...but maybe can be counted in a few...Sigh !

We live to see our lives and others lives unfold into the success story to reach it to the National papers. But behind the facade of realism of life, S'pore as a first World country but with the deprived, the poor, the destitute, the jobless penniless old folks, the many homeless.. are all sidelined into oblivion...

We thank the government for producing a First World S'pore for so many Third world citizens. We are in the midst of 'alien foreigners' take-over. We may become the 'aliens' of the 'foreigner citizens'.. God bless !

The heartbreaking truth of advancement and the modern world of elitism.

Patrick Lee Song Juan