His mother ditched her boyfriend right after two years. By then, Lau “was quite rebellious”, he acknowledged.
He could later on perceive that she was worried about him being in a bunch. Things came to a head when he or she brought his team mates home and he or she kicked them out.
“My mindset was: If you don’t regard my friends, you don’t respect me. And because of that, I happened to run away from home, ” this individual recounted.
Today, he is at discomfort to acknowledge that will she “did try out her best . to provide the treatment that a son needs”.
STARTING ANEW IN BOYS’ TOWN
Lau’s mother needed help, nevertheless , so she applied for a Beyond Parent Control order, now known as a Family Guidance Order. Two weeks right after he ran abroad, the police nabbed him.
He had been sent to the Singapore Boys’ Home just before being transferred to Boys’ Town, a charity running a residential treatment home, where he remained for a year.
But after this individual was caught glue-sniffing, he was remanded to the Singapore Boys’ Home again. Whether or not he would remain generally there this time or return to residential care hinged on an interview he’d have with the Boys’ Town assistant movie director.
“I said, ‘Please ah , make sure you oh , take me personally back, ’” recalled Lau, who feared a lengthy placement within the Boys’ Home.
“That was the first time sharing a little bit of my personal story furthermore. That kind of handled him a bit. (I could) see a slight tear in his vision. ”
Lau returned to Boys’ Town and began anew. The associate director also supervised him closely plus sometimes invited him to help with some workplace paperwork, rewarding your pet with snacks plus toiletries.
“It was like (having) a father figure that I didn’t …” Lau said, pausing to find the right words, before ongoing, “… that link I didn’t feel before. ”
A STRING OF REJECTIONS, THEN A CHANCE
In his period at Boys’ Town, he got to provide a work connection with youth-oriented restaurant Eighteen Chefs. It motivated him to apply to a culinary organization after his Nationwide Service. But he or she was rejected.
“The course supervisor (said) my tattoos were too obvious, so it was quite difficult to take me (on), ” Lau recalled.
“I wasn’t angry at all, yet I was of course cantankerous. And I started wondering … why modern society is treating individuals like us such as this. ”
Then he decided to do his N levels as a private candidate. Yet he found studying for it to be “very boring” and had to “always force (himself)” to hit the books. He did not do well.
This individual remembers turning to his relatives for monetary support so he could take a diploma in a private school. Summing up their response, he said: “No one helped me lor . ”
He had been at a loss what to do till he sought out their former social employee, Gwen Koh. He or she was doing you are not selected work at the time, and he or she realised he could connect well with the at-risk youth he had been helping.
She pointed him towards social work, and he applied for ITE’s community care and social services course. But he was initially rejected due to his poor And level results.
Koh helped to plead his case, and the deputy director associated with health sciences on ITE College Eastern, Tay Wei Sern, gave him an opportunity to sit the entry test, which Lau passed.
At age twenty three, he enrolled on the ITE. He started away from driven to do well and to “prove others wrong”. His objectives “weren’t that high”, however , so he or she surprised himself by achieving a perfect grade-point average in his first semester.
“I noticed that, actually, I can study, ” he said.
Throughout the course, he maintained his perfect score, which usually got him into Nanyang Polytechnic. And in his final 12 months at polytechnic, he had a thought that by no means occurred to him before: “I’ve been doing so (well), perhaps you should just continue (at) NUS? ”
Whenever he started out in the ITE, what this individual wanted was “to pass and shift on”, he said. “I didn’t think … my end goal was to be in NUS.
“I didn’t believe I could get into NUS, but finally I got into NUS. ”
REFLECTIONS
Looking back on all the obstacles he has faced, Lau allowed himself the wry smile. “I think I was quite positive, ” he said. “When I fall, I just choose myself up and keep on going forward. ”
Perseverance matters, he or she added contemplatively as he folded his arms and gave more thought to what he has learnt. “But I think the most important one is interpersonal acceptance: You need people to support you, to supporter for you.
“I don’t know where I’d be … merely didn’t take the work to call the former social employee after four to five years. So I think interpersonal connections are important. ”
He has also thought about the different treatment he or she now gets, and exactly what it says in regards to the idea of success within Singapore.
“When I had been no one in the sense which i didn’t have certification at all … I was still treated normally by my number of friends from the exact same background, ” this individual said.
“When I slowly got great grades, awards (and) certificates, then a lot more people from most of walks of life started to come to me … (and) say things like, ‘Wow, congrats. ’”
He admitted to feeling a bit conflicted. “I’m never going to lie lah . When people praise me, Personally i think happy on the inside, ” he said. “It can be quite sad furthermore lah , because it appears like people are quite materialistic. ”
And it seems to him that he is usually “being labelled” when people laud him for achieveing “come so far” despite his background. “(In) my ITE days … people appreciated me as a person, and I find that more genuine, ” he said.
GIVING BACK
For the record, he does not believe he is successful however. “Not now as a fresh graduate. In the future, I can contribute a lot to the social work sector, ” he or she said.
He hopes, for example , to integrate technologies into social function. In his free time, they have been learning coding and user interface/user experience design therefore he can build applications that could help social workers and their particular clients in different configurations.
Lau is starting full-time work this month as a community social worker, a member of a team engaging along with residents in rental flats, especially children and youth.
They are no greenhorn, nevertheless. In his polytechnic days, he started a free tuition initiative, called Joyful Children Happy Long term, for lower-income young children.
It reached out to families in leasing flats and eventually joined Residents’ Committees (RC) as the tuition shifted from homes to RC centres — as many as eight centres at one phase.
Lau has also inspired youths who have read or even flipped through their self-published book entitled I Am Not A Label, I Am Gary. This traces his different life journeys, from his early days in order to his admission to NUS.
One of the things from experience that he would like to remind at-risk youth is “they’re not alone”.
And if there is anything at all his life offers taught him, it really is that anything is possible “with the right mindset and effort (and) the right social resources”.
“Because take a look at me — I possess so many tattoos, the N levels were so cui , therefore poor, so jialat . I’m still capable of being where I am today, ” he stated.
“Youths stomach to me and say that they want to be like me personally one day … I usually hope that one day time they’ll be better compared to me … And am believe that they can. But I always tell them, most significantly, you must tell your self that you can. ”