Post by Khoo Boon Han

WORKHORSE I still remember one Christmas holiday when I was four years old, a moment so clear it feels like yesterday. I was sitting in a bathtub at my aunt’s house while my late mum was bathing me. Without the sense of gratefulness I asked her: Why my cousins had remote-control cars while I only had a pencil box as present. Why was their house so big with a tub, their Christmas so bright and ours so simple? She looked at me with tired, sorrowful eyes and softly said, “I’m sorry, son. Both of us working hard ….we will get better and get there soon. It never get better. is just more and more work. Even now, I can still feel the guilt of that question. Guilt for not understanding how much she was already carrying. My parents were workhorses. They worked so hard for somebody else until their bodies could no longer keep up. Yet never once complain and just accept their fate. When I started building my business, many people began asking me the same question I once asked her: “Why do some people work so hard and still never seem to get their fair share?” Life is never fair. Hard work alone is never enough. Fairness doesn’t live in this world. Success takes more like timing, network, luck, and the courage to step out from herd and finally figure out how to work hard for yourself first. A light electrician can work 18 hours a day on a movie set but when the film becomes a box office hit, it’s the stars and producers who walk away with the glory and the most of the monies. Even when they sit there doing just nothing, the wealthy earns more interest form the bank that any workhorse can ever. That’s the world we life in. Unfair. Exploitative. Ruthless. Build for a few but powered by the many. I have no solutions to this problem. And that’s why I’ve made it my mission to get as many workhorses as I can out of that vicious cycle, for as long as I live. To get them to work for themselves first instead of expecting fairness. Because no one especially no mother should ever have to look at her child and apologise for not being enough. P.S a photo of my mum on my workdesk to remind me of all the sacrifice that workhorses has to go through just so the rich can get even more comfortable. Fuck the free world. Happy cny anyway. #kbhsays