Happy Valentine's Day ! Keep working on yourself, ok ?

 

Sometimes, I ask myself why I keep doing Valentine's Day articles. Is it because some of my readers actually enjoy reading it?

So this year's Valentine's Day is a lot more challenging for me as I help my mum get used to living with us, so my day is filled with managing her medical appointments and preparing her medications. Simultaneously, I'm also adjusting my social life to this new reality, getting out and socialising only after I no longer have errands to run for my family. 

On Valentine's Day, the sadistic folks running this AI/Data Science training program sent me two assessment requests on Friday. I spent an hour taking an impromptu data science test, which was OK. The software engineering aptitude test would be a cakewalk, except I ended up taking one of the most complicated tests I had ever taken in my whole life. It was 20 questions for an hour, and interpreting a question alone could take up to 5 minutes. I ended up completing only 12 / 20 questions.

I came off with some newfound respect for professional conversion plans. If we want to stop looking at paper qualifications, companies need tough exams to determine who gets the job interview, and there's no better way than to not let anyone prepare for these tests. 

But that was not the end of my ordeal. I had to walk my students through a Tort Law exam and do the exam myself, as no one was willing to give me an answer key. The good thing about trying an exam that your students need to take is that it can uncover challenging issues that need deeper thinking, and I have to deal directly with issues like time management.

Only after everything was over could I contemplate what to write about for this year's Valentine's Day.

I don't have much to work with other than my observation that Valentine's Day is very low-key in polytechnics. There were some flower booths, but only the girls seemed interested. Guys avoided those places because they might have to pay for stuff. During my time in JC, there were loud song dedications to our various crushes and a great time to indulge in relationship scandals - which I enjoyed deeply.

Another piece of news is this one that went viral after a guy paid over a five-digit sum to a Vietnamese Bridal agency but could not get a Vietnamese wife. The agency owner argued that he vacillated most of the time and wasted much of the agency's time. The amount he spent on the agency could have at least gotten himself 200 shares of DBS, which is declaring bumper dividends this year. 

The common thread of these stories is why even bother expending so much energy on Valentine's Day when you can just keep working on yourself. 

Until my mum's hospitalization, I hung out at a clean Japanese K-lounge, which was way cheaper than places like Cash Studio. The owners are businesswomen who run clean businesses and just chat with clients. It would be nice if you could provide conversation to young single men. No specialised skill is needed - you just need compassion and empathy. I told the proprietor that they are in the therapy business - they can say common sense stuff that sometimes friends and family may not want to say to a guy.

In these establishments, I noticed a lot of young men complaining about singlehood. But I suspect they are not doing the right things - they like to fuss over young women, spend money on them, and turn into simps, but they don't seem to be getting any results. 

So, that leaves us with the problem of defining what it means to keep working on yourself?

It is to improve parts of our lives that are not directly about finding a mate.

Going to a gym and sculpting your body to look good to a mate is not working on yourself. But it might be if you build muscle to improve your health and extend your life. The two workouts differ from those of a physical training expert - one workout will enable you to wrestle a bear, and the other will attract bears to you.

Reading for self-improvement is another area, but it's more complicated as women put a decent premium on well-read guys.

Building up an investment portfolio is also an area where working on yourself, even if it's just to ensure that you can pay for food and transport without using your salary, will push up your ranks in attractiveness. 

Like the guys in Poly, folks are sensing that male attractiveness is status-based, and we guys are rated in a curve against other guys. So, instead of signalling our attractiveness with inconsequential gifts, it's better to work on ourselves and build up our status to make a better play for a mate in the future.

So this year, for Valentine's Day, my message is to work on yourself.