Turning 32 in Singapore

I turned 32. 2017 has been a fairly challenging year so far, different from the difficult year prior. While 2016 was a year of coming to terms with some changing values personally and politically, this year I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a professional. It's not the first time I have lived on my own and being independent is not a problem but in Singapore in particular, there have been stark observations and a whole lot of reflection.

Given the political climate back home in the Philippines, I have tried to keep up with the news. There are days when I think that my timing was bad, that this was not the time to accept taking a year and a half off to continue my studies. But at the same time, I'd been putting it off and before I knew it, ten years had passed since I graduated from university and stepped into the world.

I am currently doing my Master's degree in Education Management at NIE and while school has been fun, living in Singapore has been a singular, isolated life. Early this year, I began rather optimistically, hoping to find a vivid, social life either in or outside of school, fueled by woke conversation but that hasn't been the case. I hate to be hard on Singapore because it's not without its merits but when you kind of thrive on chaos, it's not the place to be.

My greatest takeaway and what I am most grateful for about living in Singapore for now, is that it's given me a lot of time to tighten my ways of thinking. I've never been one for rigid structure and I'm still not but this place has given me a chance to explore my introversion (disclaimer: I am solidly ENTP for those into MBTI and all thought catalogs with it), allowed me to ruminate very clearly and apply that in and improve my work ethic. That's about par for the age I'm in right now and I hope I am able to use it in action soon.