learning in the most unusual places

One of the biggest scares perpetuated by my friends is that our ability to think will be worn down by the abysmal drudgery that National Service is supposedly going to be. While that argument does make sense to a certain degree and I have noticed some of my more intelligent friends coming down with bad cases of existentialist crises or the Stupids upon enlisting, I am pretty confident that this can be averted by being adaptable. (Enter old Chinese philosopher stroking his beard- "Be flexible like water, not stiff like board...")

While I'm currently rediscovering the intellectual joy that is to be found in books (having been misled by the bright and shiny lights of the interwebs), I must continue to acknowledge that some of the greatest things that I've learnt were all from experiences that might strike others as dull or monotonous. Let me share some of these lessons with you.

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Like the average poker player does, I liked to think that I was above average. I was doing rather well on Facebook's Texas Hold'Em Application, and I watched videos of the pros on YouTube and knew quite a few of them by name. When some friends in the local music scene invited me to play poker with them at one of their homes, I jumped at the chance, thinking I'd make a quick buck. I was so, so wrong.

I was playing fairly well, I thought. I'd won a couple of hands, and stayed out of many bad ones. I was disciplined and cool-headed. The game took a massive turn for me when I was committed to the pot with a Full House, and my opponent went all-in with more than my entire chip stack. Normally, under any circumstances, I would have played that hand- but I was convinced that the other guy had 4-of-a-kind (a highly improbable hand, only beaten by a straight flush- the rarest of them all). He didn't. At that point in time, I was absolutely, thoroughly convinced- but he told me afterwards how he had read me like a book and led me, like a lamb, into doing exactly what he wanted me to do. It was a very powerful learning experience, and something I will never forget. Two hands after that, I would lose all my money going aggressively all in with a good hand against a better hand, and when I bought in again after that, I lost my entire second buy-in going all-in with a very good hand against an even better hand. I lost about $20-30 that day, and at the highest point I stood to win $60+. It isn't a lot of money, to be honest, but the realization of just how vulnerable I actually was beyond my comfort zone was priceless.

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I used to work at Shangri-La Hotel as manual labour; I was one of the Banquet staff. There were loads and loads of part-timers, some much more regular than others. I could have (and should have) had an entire blog detailing the various experiences I had working there. There were so many lessons I had learnt. One thing that stands out for me was the friendship I had with a bartender. He was a short, fit Chinese guy- the sort of respectable old school 'Ah Beng', who reminded me of "Andrew" from "Growing Up". He had neat but somewhat long hair, and crude tattooes all over his hands, knuckles and neck... I imagine his whole body must have been covered with them. He was well mannered and honourable, and very, very likable. I would talk to him and eat lunch with him. He would never say much, but he clearly approved of my company and would wait for me when we had meals or smoke breaks. Once, this fat, slobbering and very annoying new part-timer barged in to join us at lunch without having been invited. He burped, laughed loudly and made a hell of a mess. Ah Beng snapped at him- "Study so far still behave like this!" The pig-boy snorted and said "ITE not very far what!", upon which Ah Beng revealed that he was a primary school dropout.

There came a time when me and Ah Beng and the rest of the fellas had been working together for some time and gotten used to each other, amidst the cyclic nature of the other part-timers. Once, me and Ah Beng were smoking when we managed to catch a breather between carrying tonnes of heavy stuff back and forth from the ballrooms to the storerooms. I was down to my last cigarette, and was smoking it right to the filter. Ah Beng slapped it out of my hand. "Don't smoke until that part lah, bad for you!". He then reached into his own pack and gave me two cigarettes and told me it was on him, and that I could repay the favour if he ever was in a pinch. That day, Ah Beng taught me more about generosity than any educated person I have ever met. To this day, I still have more respect for Ah Beng than many of my peers in Junior College and University. I still hope to bump into him some day so I can buy him a pack of cigarettes.

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