My Big Shift
I recently moved house after imposing on my brother and my sister-in-law for slightly more than a year. I put off buying a new place initially because I had read about how the property market usually lagged the stock market, and it was supposed to tank in the later part of 2009. But I forgot that economic conditions are dynamic and every recession is different. The one that we just came out of, which threatened to be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, elicited unprecedented responses from governments around the world. Over here in our island state, the government introduced the Jobs Credit System, which subsidised companies so that they need not retrench as many workers. This also meant that people can continue to service their housing loans and even buy more properties. So instead of tanking, the market actually went up in tandem with the recovery of the stock market.
So I had to decide in Sep 09 whether I should use some of my savings to buy a new place. This was tricky because the money could be used to invest in stocks which was seeing a tremendous rebound. Of course, if property prices rose some more, I would be buying on the upswing and not at the top. Thankfully, I went for the latter after some research and talking to some of my smarter friends, and lo and behold, the property market continued climbing in the last 3 months of 2009.
Anyways, this shift was my fourth if you consider my family's Choa Chu Kang (CCK) flat as the starting point. I shifted out of that place in late 2004 after I got married to move into a rental along Bukit Timah in the Shelford area. I later shifted to our marital home in the East in Aug 06 when it was finally ready. I subsequently vacated the place in Nov 08 when my marriage failed and went to stay with my brother and sister-in-law.
To understand why I called my latest move the big shift, you need to understand that part of my stuff were in storage at a warehouse when I left CCK because the rental place was a 2-bedder. After I moved into the Kembangan place, things were not so good on the home front and I never brought out my things from storage. And of course, they stayed in the warehouse during my sojourn with my brother's family in Woodlands. So, after 5 years, all my stuff finally came under the same roof with me. Of course, I wondered why I kept some stuff, which I credited to good old fashioned sentimentality. But there were others which highlighted key periods of my life when I was growing up and they brought back memories.
When you're at my age, you realise more and more than life is not about being successful, at least not in the material sense. It's about the people you meet and the difference you made to each other. At the end of the day, I'd be very sad if few people came to my funeral because my legacy is nothing more than the relationships that I've formed and nurtured along the way. For my faith, it's also very clear that we're here not to serve ourselves but to do our part to steward the people that God puts into our lives.
Anyways, this shift was my fourth if you consider my family's Choa Chu Kang (CCK) flat as the starting point. I shifted out of that place in late 2004 after I got married to move into a rental along Bukit Timah in the Shelford area. I later shifted to our marital home in the East in Aug 06 when it was finally ready. I subsequently vacated the place in Nov 08 when my marriage failed and went to stay with my brother and sister-in-law.
To understand why I called my latest move the big shift, you need to understand that part of my stuff were in storage at a warehouse when I left CCK because the rental place was a 2-bedder. After I moved into the Kembangan place, things were not so good on the home front and I never brought out my things from storage. And of course, they stayed in the warehouse during my sojourn with my brother's family in Woodlands. So, after 5 years, all my stuff finally came under the same roof with me. Of course, I wondered why I kept some stuff, which I credited to good old fashioned sentimentality. But there were others which highlighted key periods of my life when I was growing up and they brought back memories.
When you're at my age, you realise more and more than life is not about being successful, at least not in the material sense. It's about the people you meet and the difference you made to each other. At the end of the day, I'd be very sad if few people came to my funeral because my legacy is nothing more than the relationships that I've formed and nurtured along the way. For my faith, it's also very clear that we're here not to serve ourselves but to do our part to steward the people that God puts into our lives.
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