Today in LAW we touched on financial issues on the Older Persons. Terence started off writing the three words: $$, Families, Older Persons, and then asked us to bombard him with our first impressions, and whatever we can think off, onto the board, then link them to the three words.

Now, here's the interesting findings, most of us would put the words "burden" and "dependent" under "Older Persons" and "Sandwiched Generation" under "Families". Then he questions us, how many of us are financially independent, and how many of us actually fix broken appliances, pay the electricity bills and all these stuffs. So what he is basically trying to point out is that nowadays, it is normally the other way around, where those baby boomers, even up to perhaps 60, are the Sandwiched Generation. They are the ones who would take care of us as well as their parents.

So the next part of the tutorial, he made us divide our time spent into a pie chart. And categorize them, as well as rank them. So after much categorizations and etc, I ranked them, and calculated them, and for the next step, he asked us to think of two Older Person, one male, one female, and do the same thing. So then I compared my pie chart and their pie charts. One finding is that, generally, females tend to have more category, and thus look more interesting, and for the males, work and family tend to be the top most priority, yet the rank of work might be one of the lowest, simply that it's now their chores, their responsibility, their duty to work, thus compromising time to be spent with the other higher ranked priorities in life.

Then, there's a vast difference between our pie charts and theirs. We have lots more categories than them, at least I do, and work is one of the lowest rank as well as portion. So as usual, he asked us how do we think our 3 pie charts would differ in the next 5 years and 10 years. Probably, we see that the older males or even females would start to have more categories now, since their can focus more on whatever they had missed out like gathering back their friends, pursue hobbies and interests, upgrade personal skills, etc, and for us, sadly, our categories get lesser and lesser, and more time will be devoted to work. So yes, I do feel that social network is really important.

Social Network is defined as simply the belonging in some kind of group or club by a certain membership by labeling or religious practice. This would then lead to Social Integration, whereby it is defined as how close the group is, how high the sense of belonging, how much we feel as a part of the group, or how useful, how recognized. Then it is Social Capital, defined as the opportunities and benefits we reap from being part of the group.

He gave us a economist pov of overseas cip, which cost around a thousand for a person, thus lets say 50k per trip, doing probably amateur standards of work, for the self contentment of the students such that they would feel good about their effort put in, thus felt benefited. Also, these students are most likely to want to repeat the act if given chances, as they formed a certain type of bond. Yet practically, the 50k would be better optimized if the money was sent there, assuming it would be trusted and etc, and would minimize wasted expenses on aircrafts and other stuffs like that. This is interesting, because I personally am strongly against sending money, but rather go there and contribute my effort. It wouldnt shake my stand though, but yea this is sociology.

So he was sharing about job opportunities and stuffs like that.

Then the last thing is that he said that you wont know that you are lacking of Social Network until it is already lost. Which is really true, sometimes we are too focused into our "ranked" priorities and even those low ranked but its a "needed" kind of priorities, that we slowly lose our Social Network, only to realize and dawn upon it when we retire, when there is a transition to life stages, a disrupt in lifestyle. As for myself, I sort of understand the shrinking of the categories, and sort of hoped that somehow or another, the bonds we forged would be resistant to time. Ofcoz I know its rather impossible, but Im really grateful for facebook, for it will somehow keep us updated, and thus years down the road, we wont be too awkward.


Shela Solita: As we grow older, we'll come to realise that we have lesser and lesser friends. But on a positive note, at least we don't waste our time on those fake friends anymore.

Weilun Ng: Life's about love & friends, & $$$. Although friends won't be there for us forever but i am sure we can't live without friends. (:

Both are really nice quotes, but look, fake friends are meant to be there, if not our categories can be really boring, and our Social Network would be small, so as Social Capital, and life could be really mundane then. For myself, I even have a small category devoted to "Misc", means random strangers I meet like Bubble Tea Shop Aunties, Helpees, stall owners, customers, etc....