Inspired by Jolene
——————-
Dear 16 Year Old Me,
I know how you’re feeling right now. Ann had just broken up with you for someone else and you’re swearing off all girls until at least after SPM. The truth is you learn two things in the near future. The first is that Ann tries to come back to you but you don’t take her back. And the second is that you DON’T keep your promise to swear off girls until after SPM.
That’s because at the end of this school year, you will go with Rayvin and Roy to Bukit Jambul Complex. There you will spend the day with these 3 other girls and one of them, you will fall in love with. Her name is Melissa. She will eventually be your girlfriend and give you two good years of her life. After that you will make a mistake that you will pay for. You’ll break up with her only to try to go back to her a few months later but she won’t take you back. Just like how you wouldn’t take Ann back (Funny how history repeats itself huh). You will be heartbroken and you won’t fully get over it for at least a couple of years.
So no you won’t end up with Melissa. Today both Melissa and Ann are happily married and it’s not to you.
In the next few years though you’ll be lucky enough to have a few more great girlfriends but you won’t end up with them either. I know what you’re looking for in a girl. You want a girl who is tall, sexy, classy, has a great ass and big boobs. Believe me when I say what you look for in a girl changes dramatically in the next 10 years of your life. In fact the girl you’ll be with 10 years later doesn’t look anything like what you imagine her to be now. She doesn’t have a big ass or abnormally big boobs, she is cute, quirky and she is one of the tiniest people you’ve ever met but I can guarantee you that she will make you laugh every day of your life and you will love her more than any of your other girlfriends.
I’ll tell you one more thing about her. She’s not from Penang. She’s from KL or more specifically Subang. I know at this point you have little knowledge of what Subang is. All you know is that Sunway Lagoon is there but I guarantee you this girl will spend many many days in the next 10 years telling you how big and great Subang is.
I know you’re stressed out with exams and all. I know you want to prove yourself to Dad. Well don’t be. You won’t do as well as you expected in SPM but you will make up for it in A-Levels and still go into a good university. I know you still don’t know what you want to grow up to be. Yes yes I know… when you were 6 years old you told Mum that you wanted to be a postman but now that you’re old enough to ride your own motorbike the appeal of riding around delivering mail doesn’t shine anymore right?
You really won’t know what you want to be until you hit university. Then you will think you want to be an investment banker but that’s only because everyone else around you there aspired to be one.
And also because they earned a lot of money! But when that happens to you, believe me when I say that’s not what you will end up doing.
I know this will be hard to believe but right after graduation you actually start an internet company. That internet company grows beyond your expectations and today hires over 90 employees not just in Malaysia but around Asia. You’ll also somehow end up being on the newspapers, magazines, radio and TV sometimes. You will travel a lot for work and everything else your fortune teller tells you will come true. It won’t be all fun and games though. You will get a lot of stress and go through difficult times. The weight of 90 of your colleagues depending on you for a job gets heavier each day.
People will tell you all sorts of things growing up. They will tell you that you will wish you were back in school again when you finally faced working life. That turns out to be not true. You don’t ever miss school or college life and ever want to go back to it. Not that it’s bad… but you just enjoy living a grown-up life more.
People also tell you that you have to be a millionaire by age 28 or you will never be successful. That also turns out to be not true. I’m turning 27 next month and I realize that success isn’t measured by money. It’s measured by happiness. You will learn that money satisfies… but it doesn’t make you happy. What makes you truly happy is doing what you love doing and having good people around you.
That being said, people in your time do predict some things that eventually do come true. They predict that everyone will eventually be able to video call one another. That turned out to be true. Mobile phones change significantly in the next 10 years. Take another good look at your Siemens that you’re using right now.
Well 10 years from now nobody will be using Siemens phones anymore.
The more popular phones won’t even have buttons on them and yet they’ll be able to do much more than even your computer can do today.
Technology grows more advance in the next 10 years but don’t worry. Many things remain the same. We still drive cars to get from one place to another. Our cars don’t fly. We still sleep on beds, we still watch TV (much less because there are other things to do but we still do), we still go to the cinemas to watch movies and we still go to shopping malls to window shop.
We still play computer games. I know you spend a lot of time playing Counter-strike and Starcraft now. I’ve got good and bad news for you.
The good news is that in my future we’re already playing Starcraft 2. It’s a lot cooler than the first installment.
The bad news is… It will only come another 10 years from now. So in the mean time hang tight and find other games to waste your time on.
You’d think that by the time you’re age 26 you’d stop playing games right? After all you hardly see a 27 year old at a cybercafe. Well in the future, the 16 year olds who were playing computer games grow older and they still keep playing. So do all your friends.
Your best friends change though. You don’t really hang out with the people from school anymore. Maybe it’s because you move away from Penang…. oh yeah forgot to tell you that. 10 years from now you don’t live in Penang anymore. You live in KL.
So anyway your best friends 10 years from now will be people you meet in university or in the outside working world. You don’t hang out too much with your secondary school friends anymore but you still make it a point to see Rayvin or Matt every now and then. The childhood friends that you keep in touch with a lot today though are your primary school friends from Sri Inai. You still see Eng Gin and Melvin quite a bit. Eng Gin is single but Melvin’s getting married this year.
The friends you haven’t met but should look out for will come in the next 5-10 years.
At college you will meet a bunch of good friends. Wilson, Andrew, Sin Thean and some others.
At University you will meet Hasan from Bahrain. You will also meet Ming who will eventually be your business partner.
And out in the working world you will meet some other friends… like Pierre, Joanne, Desmond and Kau Sern.
I guess what I’m trying to tell you from all this is that… there’s a lot to look forward to in the next 10 years of your life. I can’t give you any advice on what you should or shouldn’t do because you just have to go through life the way it’s meant to be. I’ve already spoiled it quite a bit for you by telling you what expect. I’ll make up for it with this little tip. Please tell Dad to buy shares in Google and Apple. They’ll be worth a lot more in 2011 than in 2001. In 2004 ask him to find this guy named Mark Zuckerberg in Harvard and invest in a site he’s starting called Facebook.
In any case, you will enjoy the next 10 years of your life. Much more than your past 10 years. So live well 16 year old me.
Don’t forget to slow down and smell the roses sometime. That’s what that Subang girl will tell you some 7 years from now.
——————
PS: Ok wait wait I just thought of something you shouldn’t do. 10 years from now you will sprain your ankle playing this thing called XBOX Kinect. Mum will tell you to go see a Chinese doctor. When that happens… DO NOT FUKING GO!!!
Sincerely,
26 Year Old You
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space