Dreams, interests...and ambitions

As grown-ups, I guess we don't go around asking friends or colleagues what their ambitions are . If you do, people would most likely laugh or stare at you. Either way, it won't be a pleasant point to continue a conversation. While a person might be very ambitious, a question about ambition may be quite irrelevant or rather out of context except in those job interviews where they would ask "Where do you see yourself in five years?"*.

As a child, we would be asked what we would like to do (be) when we grow up. It is a logical question since children have their future and a whole life in front of them. They are full of energy, they learn a lot quicker and have many opportunities to grab. And obviously, time is on their side. On the contrary, adults are well...I would not say that they are "gone case" even though some probably are. Suffice to say that adults have less time, less energy and less optimistic.

As a child, I remember I was a lot more inclined in arts. Drawing and painting were something I was very passionate about. In spare time, I would love to draw, most of them would be beautiful scenery. These are imaginary places, locations I have never been to before. I guess children in general have a lot of imaginations so it was quite natural for me to imagine those beautiful places especially beaches where I would always love to go.

Typical of those times, children in that small part of the world where I lived would love to draw a view by the beach with the sun shining and a flock of birds flying high above in the bright blue sky, or a scenery at a typical Malay "kampung" where a traditional wooden house would be drawn. To complete the piece, a coconut tree would almost always be in the picture!

While primary school children during those times were mostly taught to paint in coloured pencil, my paintings were mostly done in watercolour. I never had to buy any brushes or paints as there were always sufficient supplies of them at home - they were owned by my elder sisters who at that time were in secondary school. I think I must have owed it to them for there were always words of encouragement that must have helped nurtured my talent.

In hindsight, I don't think my drawings and paintings were very good at all but the constant encouragement must have boosted my confidence and developed the creative side in me. And I think that really matters for children. Words of encouragement build their confidence and take the fears away.

As I grow older, I still enjoyed the art classes eventhough I attended a school heavily biased in favour of science**. I learned quite a number of new skills, including paper-mache (which stink!), canting to produce batik (which I enjoyed very much) and various painting techniques (including one in which an old tooth brush was used!). I never got an A in arts and the art teacher once commented that my work was quite dirty.

When I was 16, I picked copper tooling as part of my extra-curricular activities. It wasn't very easy to master and requires quite a lot of hard work but it was another enjoyable activity nevertheless. I regretted I didn't buy my own design project - it was a bunch of imaginery flowers with some leafs around them - each student could opt to buy his own completed work if not the art work would be recycled for use as base material for next year's batch of students.

I didn't take arts as a major subject so I did't have to take an exam for it. There were not that many students taking arts anyway at the school it must be less than 10 people altogether. By then, my interest must have swung into something more promising.

I remembered my elder sister putting chemical engineering as one of her preference a few years earlier so I decided to put that same subject as my number one preference when I started applying for places in 1992 (my sister certainly had a great influence on me!).

On the other hand, my chemistry project on lycopodium (a native plant, available abundantly outside our school compound) and its healing properties, co-developed with a classmate and friend (original idea was all mine!) was selected as the top three projects that would represent the school at a national level science competition. It was a big boost to me as I was never a good achiever in chemistry let alone near the top! It was probably another big influence on my decision to take up what I later took up. The artistic side of me didn't want to give up easily either so architecture came as preference number 2!

By then, it was almost clearly charted that my university degree would be in science, and not arts. I tried not to leave arts completely though. At 17, when I was in some foreign land, despite taking pure science for all my subjects, I decided to take painting as one of my extra-curricular activities...

* I wonder whether they still ask this question these days as I didn't get this question in the subsequent interviews years later. I presume it is only reserved for those seeking their first job!I answered mine more than ten years ago during my first job interview. I don't think I turned out to be the same person described in my answer back in 1997 five years later but I got the job anyway!.

** I think it is quite unfortunate as far as developing talents are concerned to have a school heavily biased in favour of science, and vice versa. In the school I attended, the only arts subjects we have then were art and history. I opted out history when I was 16 as I was very keen in geography and we could only choose one between the two. In hindsight, I think literature and economy would prepare us "science stream" students better for the future.