— Cassandra Chung
The Malaysian Insider/Loyarburok.com
December 21, 2013

DEC 21 — Just yesterday, I was speaking to my father on the phone. It had been a long time since the both of us had had a one-to-one talk ever since I came to university. Most of my Skype conversations home involved one-to-one talks with my sister, and if I was speaking to my father, it was usually in the presence of my mother, relatives or family friends. As I spoke to him, he mentioned the toll and electricity price hike. The few times in the past he told me about the petrol price hike and goods and services tax (GST) implementation, he had said it in a rather factual manner. My conversation with him over the phone seemed different this time. I could hear the stress in his voice and I must say, for him to fail at hiding his stress is a pretty big deal, because most of the time, he can effectively conceal it.

I come from a middle-class family. We live in a modest terrace house which took my father 11 years to completely pay off. We have enough money to own two imported cars but they aren’t BMWs or Mini Coopers. My family had sufficient money to send me to one of the cheaper private colleges to do my pre-university studies and to the United Kingdom to start and finish my degree, but not enough to give me an international secondary and primary education. I got a public school one with lots of tuition classes instead. My sister and I had a short stint of piano and dance lessons at some point of time in our lives. In comparison to a lot of other middle-class families, I would say we are doing alright. Some of my friends could never afford dance classes. I have a friend who had to defer his entry into one of the most prestigious universities in the world because of insufficient funds. Another one simply had to give up such an opportunity.

But I think like most other families with our financial standing, we are reaching our boiling point. Read the rest of this entry »