Final Draft

Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest countries was where I was born in. At first, I thought that money is available to you as long as you are a Singapore citizen. However, I was proved wrong as I slowly matured and experience life in Singapore.
I come from a very troubled family which always had trouble making ends meet. I have a father who is a serious alcoholic and gambler; I would say he is a burden to our family. He sets off early in the day, not to work but to look for friends to borrow him money, although the money would never be returned. And no, he does not spend it on our daily necessities but on bets and if he loses he would cause wreckage in the coffee-shop downstairs. If not, he would generously treat his gambling mates to a drink, but never have he brought money back to support the family.
He makes the house reek of alcohol, smell of tobacco, and his dirty laundry lying around as if someone’s going to clear the house up. My mother always comes home late at night, too worn out to even care about my father’s dirty habits. She works from daylight to midnight, making less than how much my father could spend in an hour. So to ensure that we can survive, my mother scrimped and saved as much as possible.
On weekends I would go to the market with my mother, walking alongside her I carried an excitement of what we were going to eat that night. So we approached the vegetable store, the women at the store seemed nervous to seeing us approaching. I assume that it was because mother would be bargaining the prices a lot until now that the stores do not want to do her business.
“Good morning, what can I ge.. get you today?” the lady at the store mumbled as mother was picking her vegetable according to the prices.
So, the bargaining starts. I stood curiously by the side and observed. Mother kept up and very convincing face while the store keeper looked very embarrassed. I found that very interesting so I tried. As mother was busy I sneaked to the butcher shop. And I exclaimed, “I want 10kilograms of chicken!”
Then the butcher looks around to see who just placed that order. He stretched his neck, and bent his back and he saw me smiling with my hands behind my back. He frowned, and then came my mother with a worried look. As always, we went home without any meat, just vegetables. When we reached the doorsteps we heard the loud noises of things being thrown around. Mother quickly opened the door to find father rummaging through all the drawers to find money. He stared in our direction with a fierce look, as if ready to take our lives. Then, he limped, half drunk, towards us then he slapped mother and demanded money to be given to him.
“You have money to buy food?! You should have money for me too!” he demanded from mother.
I ran out of the house in shock and in fright I squatted at the very corner of the corridor and cried. After what seemed like eternity, the door burst open and father ran out, I never bothered to look at him anymore. Instead, I jolted into the house to see if mother was alright. Her cheeks were swollen with pain and drenched from her tears. This was the life I had been leading ever since I was born.
I never let the fact that I am not wealthy to stop me from getting good results in school. Although my textbooks, my stationeries were second hand materials they were still usable. There was once where my classmates mock me of my stationeries. They called me a “dumpster kid” because all my stuff were not bought.
It started when I accidentally knocked into this “popular” boy who was running around at the corridor. He held a grudge for me throughout the year and gradually started calling me names. So from that day onwards I did not really make any friends in school, I was a lonely boy. But that was a somehow a good start to let me start focusing on studies because no one would ask me to play games with them.
Influenced from my childhood experiences, I would also bargain whenever I go to buy something. Since, I studied hard and achieved good results in school; I managed to get a well paid job which allows me to support both myself and my mother. Although I do not need to struggle to make ends meet, I still try my best to scrimp and save; money that I save monthly would then go to charities. This is one way that I would repay kindness to my mother who was always there for me. Being cautious of money has became part of my identity as money is not very easy to earn in Singapore with all that taxes applied to almost everything.