i say all this because today i rang von right in the middle of his workday and had a breakdown on him. we are growing apart from the people at home, i told him, who do not know what we do and how we live, who are complacent and safe and smug, and who despise us in spite of not understanding. and yet we have no means to explain, because even to explain means having to explain everything else that is taken for granted, and at the same time we are in no place to criticise, because we feel vaguely what we do isn't real work, and what they do, however plebian and distasteful they seem to us, is meaningful.

i remember this most clearly when i first lost my hearing, and went for to the ent clinic at mount e, and as i was sitting in the waiting area the nurse came out of the room and recognised me - she was called teresa samy and she had been in my primary school - only for a year - in upper primary i think - before her family moved and she transferred to a different school. she recognised me and i didn't recognise her - she recognised me because - well - people did.i won school prizes - english, chinese, maths, science, everything. i was the one who read the morning announcements and raised and lowered the flag at assemblies, represented the school in competitions, had school stories published in that ridiculous zaobao column. during chinese new year and teachers' day and other school celebrations people saw me dancing on stage, on track and field meets i was there, running on the house track team. i was seen - people knew who i was - but i never took care to know them. when you go to a neighbourhood school people live in the same new town. it's not the first time people hvae come up to me in the street and say hi we were from your primary school and i simply had no memory of them. it's not arrogance or callousness - neither would you have known everyone in rgs, except then people didn't know you either. it was never so staggeringly, impossibly one-sided. and why should i know them? our paths didn't cross. only three other people my year got into rgs and ri. most people went to okay schools: maris stella, cath high, singming school, and where are they now? they did their o's and some did their a's, others went to poly and got useful diplomas, possibly a few got university degrees too - they would not have got psc scholarships - they left school and found real jobs and did useful work like teresa samy - who had been in my class - but whom i had to go home and look up in a class photo. she was not as clever as i was in school, she didn't get the spotlight. but what was all that wasted on me for, for what was i? at that time i was not even in grad school - i didn't even know if i was going to get in anywhere - i was never so aware of my lack of any kind of occupational training - i had no real skills or ability or talent - at the very most i could give tuition or teach school. teresa samy was able to help me, but i couldn't help anyone, not even myself.

can you wonder at the contempt workers have for intellectuals? it's only because there are people producing grain and raising cattle and building houses and working in factories that i have things to eat and roofs to live under and clothes to wear. dare any of us hold them in contempt who make life possible for us because they couldn't pass their psle? and i can justify my work too, in a fashion, without necessarily appealing to the wretched old chestnut about moral or cultural work. but i know very well that every academic, especially in the humanities, fear, deep down, that what they do is not "real work."