脚踏实地

Start of 2015 and my parents and I made a trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for a short getaway. Mum wanted to visit Europe but she didn’t get the chance to, and so we settled for someplace nearby – Vietnam. It was a simple trip, but one that I enjoyed a lot.

The trip to Ho Chi Minh made me relearn how I don’t need much material things to live, or be happy. The first day, we were walking back to our hotel and we came across a public square where children and youths were playing in the middle of it, and people were sitting and resting on the concrete ledges surrounding the square. We decided to join the people on the ledges for a quick rest, and to people-watch. And as we watched the school children playing, Mum commented, “See? You just need a ball.”

I thought Mum’s comment was very true; the students were standing in a large circle and kicking a sepak takraw-like ball around, and there you go – give a group of youths a ball, and they can create play, and be happy.

In London, everything is relatively so expensive, and I remember walking into the Toy Emporium and it’s filled with shelves of teddy bears, Barbie Dolls, robots, toys and more toys. There are electronic toys like remote-controlled helicopters, cars, more toys that make use of the cool technology… while some of the toys can be pretty cool and smartly designed, I found the place to be quite a huge Material World. When I first got to London, everything was such a pinch to me and I tried to stick to buying 2 pound lunches, naively thinking that it could get me by. I was wrong, and by the end of exchange, my last couple of days saw me eating out for both lunch and dinner, and as long as the meal was less than 10 pounds and reasonably priced for what I would be eating, I was willing to part with the money. And sometimes, thinking about how much I actually spent while I was there makes me shudder. Having been caught up in the many aspects of exchange in London, and having lived in a city where I had to remember PPP and the Big Mac Theory (not to convert prices back to SG dollars, but learn to value goods at their relative price levels in the country/city) and consciously factor these into my spending decisions, I think I forgot what it’s like to live simply.

But being in Vietnam, and meeting friends from the Yunnan trip a few days before (we had a comfortable dinner at the hawker centre and talked about trekking and Yunnan and all, and I realized I miss camping and trekking and pretty much down and dirty activities like that), helped remind me of simple joys in life.

Coming on this trip with my parents, I also saw, again, how my parents save money, by thinking twice, three times, whether they need an item. My parents have, and are continuing to teach me much about the value of thriftiness. They choose to live a humble life by saving on day-to-day living if they can, all for my siblings and I, and for the family. They believe that education is one of the best investments in a child, and would rather save up for that than spend on themselves. It is because of them that I have had the fortunate and privileged opportunity to go for exchange, and there is much that I can learn from them.

This getaway grounded me, and helped me re-learn the joys of living simply.

“Two things I ask of you, LORD;

do not refuse me before I die:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me;

give me neither poverty nor riches,

but give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you

and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’

Or I may become poor and steal,

and so dishonour the name of my God.”

– Proverbs 30:7-9

Papa’s first time using a selfie stick (and he was quite excited about it, haha!)

 

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam