Why I dare not ask you to invite your friends to read Coffee Times

Break away from your old circle and walk out a new path on your own.

“Invite your friends to read Coffee Times”

This was the original title Substack had proposed for this article.

Like for everyone else, Substack suggested for me to tell you why you should read Coffee Times. But unlike writers who have already done it, I didn’t know how, and I didn’t quite agree with the text proposed by Substack. So, it has stayed in my draft folder for the longest time.

“Thank you for reading Coffee Times — your support allows me to keep doing this work.” was the starting line that Substack had suggested, and it continued with, “If you enjoy Coffee Times, it would mean the world to me if you invited friends to subscribe and read with us. If you refer friends, you will receive benefits that give you special access to Coffee Times.”

Honestly, I have not reached the state to get you to refer a friend. I am embarrassed to admit I am still in the stage of trying to convince you to convert into a paid subscriber. I am so bad at the first stage that I am too ashamed to ask you for anything else.

Photo by Raphael Bernhart on Unsplash

I grew up in a rough neighbourhood filled with gang members, poor and illiterate people. From a young age, I learned to gamble even before I learned to write. Education was not a priority for survival in my neighbourhood. Learning to live among gangsters and gamblers was. In my world, we spoke Hokkien and greetings among peers were laced with vulgarity, profanity was a form of camaraderie, and the words we exchanged were far from polite.

I come from a poor Chinese family, and my parents didn’t speak a word of English. I might have been fortunate to go to school, but that didn’t help me to learn the language. English has always been my weakest subject, in school, at home, everywhere. Because in my world, I don’t need it. I didn’t pass English during my ‘O’ levels which was the reason why I couldn’t make it to junior college and the reason why I never made it to the ‘A’ levels.

Growing up in such a challenging environment has never been easy. I was destined to be handicapped even though I was physically abled. I was born to go astray, live a life of a gang member, and never to make it in life. That was my destiny, and I was prepared to accept it.

Photo by Moses Vega on Unsplash

In school, while the lessons were taught in English, beyond the classroom, everything else we could get by with Hokkien or Mandarin. I picked up smoking and gambling at the age of 14. I was pretty good at snooker too, hanging out at Snookerium every day and playing with gang members for money. I also gambled often. Some days I would win enough money to buy my friends’ meals, while other days, I had to borrow from them to fund my losses. By the age of 16, I had already mastered all that can be gambled. From blackjack to baccarat, Russian poker to mahjong. I know how to cheat my sisters off their pocket money to repay my debt, I know how to con my mom to fund my leisure expenditure, and I know how to trick my dad into giving me extra cash.

I was hopeless, and my dad knew it. He recognized the limitations of my surroundings and the detrimental impact they had on my personal growth. He yearned for me to have a brighter future, one where I could break free from the chains that bound me to the troubled neighbourhood. He knew if he didn’t do anything, I would have gotten a tattoo and stepped into a society that didn’t have much of a future. It would have been a very different life. For one, my body would be filled with tattoos, and I wouldn’t be writing.

When the time came for me to step into society, my dad offered me another path, one that had never crossed my mind. My dad had just received his retirement payout from his CPF. Instead of keeping the money for his retirement, he rather risks his future in exchange for his son to have a brighter one. He offered to sponsor me to England for my undergrad study with his retirement funds. My dad did not put any demands on me other than to do what I could. My mom, on the other hand, was pretty much against the idea. She didn’t trust her son was worth that investment, or to put it squarely, she didn’t believe one could craft a statue out of rotten wood.

My dad is a man of few words, and the only advice he had offered me was “路要自己走”—you have to walk your own path. For the first time, my dad has given me a purpose. To break away from the rotten circle that he was in and to walk out a new path on my own. That’s how a man who hardly spoke a word of good English ended up in the UK to study.

I met a good housemate during my time in England. She was a British-born Chinese, and we converse mostly in Cantonese. The first thing I remember her telling me after we became housemates was she couldn’t stand the way I spoke English. It wasn’t English; it was an unknown language filled with many English words. She took the time and effort to teach me simple grammar like ‘I do’, ‘you do’, ‘he does’, and ‘she does’. It was a humbling experience, to say the least, as I grappled with the basics that many had taken for granted. What you have learned in primary school, I have only just started to learn in university.

I started journaling, and with every painstaking step, I grew more confident in my ability to communicate and connect, realizing that it is never too late to acquire the essential tools that bridge the gaps between cultures and languages.

I have always been a late bloomer. Whatever I do, I am always behind the mainstream. What others can achieve at a young age, I often stumble upon them after numerous detours or enduring multiple failures. It's a peculiar path to walk, one that has tested my patience and resilience time and time again.

When Substack prompted me to write this article, I was at a loss. I do not know what to say. I was too embarrassed to reveal my miserable life and my uninteresting past. Yet somehow, I have managed to come this far on this personal development journey. I have slowly come to accept my imperfect life. I might have learned to shoplift before I learned to write. But my past doesn’t define my future. I have walked out a new path for myself, one that is filled with positive living and writing.

I have never taken the many detours and failures in my life negatively. In fact, they are what made my path unique. My writing focuses on personal development, and the stories that fuel my writing often come from my own experiences and my own failures. I write about the failures from my past and the dreams for my future, and I share my struggles as a common Joe and my endeavours as a wannabe writer.

So what is Coffee Times, and if you should subscribe? I think by now, you should have formed your own answer. My dad didn’t tell me to do what was right. He only reminded me that “路要自己走” you have to walk your own path and decide on your own.

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If my story resonates with you, it would mean the world to me if you upgrade your subscription, share my story or refer a friend. My journey has not been easy, and I appreciate every little help I can get.

Thank you for helping to get the word out about Coffee Times!