Everyone has to grow up. It's just that some of us are forced to grow up earlier than others.

Eventually everyone will have to move on, over the shell that might have kept us safe. It's just that some of us are forced to leave the shell earlier.

My father left my grandmother's hands when he was sixteen to the university in the capital. He told me stories of how he has wandered on his own. He jumped on a train without a ticket, traveled half the length of the country to see my mother at the middle of their 2-years separated when he was doing his graduate study. Before I left for Singapore at the age of 15, he told me that he never expected to let me leave his protection so early. I have never been the adventurous type like my father. I have never seen the difficulties of my parents, who had to raise pigs, planted tomatoes in our own house to add in more into the ration received from the government during the central planning time. My father would have stayed in the capital to teach in the university, but he chose to return to my mother to teach in high school. Because for him, his home is the most important. Everything I have received today is mostly from what my parents have done for our little home.