Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Money to Burn

With the opening of more shops, Chadstone is currently the biggest shopping centre in the Southern Hemisphere. Judging from what I saw on TV, more International Brands have opened their doors there. Chadstone is usually not my cup of tea but Miu Miu is one store that I wish to at least have a look at from the outside when I next visit the place. Being a commoner does not stop me from appreciating fine fashion but the possibility of receiving a ‘Pretty Woman’ shopping experience does stop me from venturing into some of these ‘finer’ establishments these days. Anyway when the news covered the story about the new shops at Chadstone recently, a reporter asked a group of three (1 young man and 2 women) how much they have spent in the hours since the shops opened their doors and to my utter surprise the young man actually answered and the figure given was somewhere around $15,000! Okay, I am aware that there are people who shop like that, but most people are pretty private about such spending. While I endeavour to prove to some people that I am no Gold Digger, I do admit that I don’t mind having $15,000 to play with when I do go shopping. This got me thinking about the sky-rocketing costs of sending a child overseas to study. On top of school fees and boarding fees, there is also the pocket money to ‘cushion’ the child. In many cases, the pocket money is way higher than the school and boarding fees combined! Suddenly everything seems far more expensive than when I was at school. How did my Super Parents manage?

My Mum came home from China in early November. To anyone who remembers why she went there in the first place, her mission was a success. My cousin is getting married. His girlfriend will join him soon. My Mum also came home with a job offer for me! The full story is somewhat complicated and long so I will just simplify it here so readers do not end up all confused by all the characters involved. Anyway, someone had offered me (via my Mum) the opportunity to run a Kindergarten for him in HK. This includes setting up the school in a 4 storey high building this person owns and running it. I was blown away by the offer of course. Wow! I am just a nobody over here but over there someone is offering me this ‘too good to be true’ opportunity. As my Mum explained the offer over the phone, I kept telling myself over and over that I must be dreaming.

I totally agree that this is one golden opportunity. In fact, it is one hell of an opportunity to show some people that I do not have any ulterior motives to be with M and if everything goes well, we will be on our way to starting our own ‘school’ far sooner than the way things are going for us at the moment. It is also an opportunity to live in HK – a place where most people look like me. I can walk down the street there like a Brit walks down the street here. As long as I don’t open my mouth, I can pretend to be a local. Even if I do open my mouth, Hong Kong natives have asked me in the past as to when I left HK for the West. This meant that my Cantonese is ‘native’ enough to their liking. I will never get that kind of compliment from native English speakers for my crappy English. I certainly will never be ‘qualified’ enough to set up and run my own school here. They even made John Marsden jump over all sorts of hurdles to start Candlebark.

The job offer is just so attractive but it also seems to be too good to be true! Someone else made a similar offer once upon a time and I turned them down almost right away when I figured out why they needed someone like me. To me, a school is not simply a place one sets up so that one’s other half can assume the important role of the establishment’s founder and be paraded as a generous contributor to the welfare and education of little children. At best, such a person may just quietly enjoy the new role bestowed by the loving spouse but at worse she could stir up trouble in any decision making, despite a lack of know how in the field of education, because she has the power to hire and fire. Furthermore if we do sign up to this offer, it may also be hard for us to move on to our dream project ASAP because severing such ties may also affect other existing relationships. I may be wrong but judging from the information I had received, it looks like they are all for running a pretty big school while I, on the other hand have a dream of offering an alternative learning program in a small setting that offers an intimate service. The offer just seems too good and too big. I also doubted my ability in running a school in a foreign place governed by an education system that I am not very familiar with. In the end, I turned down the offer much to the disappointment of my Mum even though she tried to hide the fact. I felt absolutely rotten for not stepping up to it and even though I am less affected by others opinions of me nowadays; I spent a good few days wondering if anyone else heard of my decision. It saddens me immensely that despite the many opportunities and my so-called ‘world class education’, I have amounted to nothing to make my parents proud to this day. My parents are apparently proud of me but I can see that I have not given them the kind of glory that many people my age have achieved. M is apparently always proud of me too. He doesn’t think that this is the last opportunity heading our way. He could be right. Things are absolutely going crazy over there. People suddenly have so much money to burn; they are willing to pay ridiculous amounts for what I reckon to be pretty basic services!

No comments: