Dream of a Child - Now and then

1st Assumption : The following conversation takes place at one of the corners on this earth in the year 2006. An idea strucks a group of 3 childen in a manner similar to that of an asteroid hitting the earth. The use of the names below does not bear any resemblance to anyone.(dun believe?? click on their names to see for urselves..:p) Having said that, any similarity with the names is purely coincidental...ehem

Yi Ling : yo banana boy, what do u wanna be when u grow up ??
Kok Keong : emmmm....i wanna be a banana seller .....haha.. no lah....i wanna be
the best engineer on this mother earth when i grow up !!
Yi Ling : wah(x5)...wat an ambitious banana....anyway, i'm not any less-ambitious
than u leh...my dream is to be the first female engineer to win the Nobel
Prize ...
Jia Jin : u 2 are damn lame leh....ambitions like that ???ceh... easy lah....where got like me ??? i wanna become the chief engineer who'll be in charge of all the other engineers le....

2nd Assumption : Yi Ling is 3 years old, Kok Keong is 4 years old and Jia Jin is 3 months old (might be too young in reality to be able to tok like this, but heck...just an assumption k??)

Kids are known to have the intangible gift to point out the simplest sides of complicated matters which more often than not, go beyond the computational power of the adults. They do, they really do.......

On one hand, we can basically laugh and shrug off the conversation above as something cute but trivial between kids.... On the other hand, it actually reveals a complicated situation which is apparently deep-rooted in our society...

Just open your eyes and your ears to the kiasu world around u nowadays...... a kid as young as 3 years old can tell u that he/she wants to be an ENGINEER when he/she doesn't even know what it's all bout .... the parents might be proud to have such an ambitious son/daughter with the fabulous far-sightedness....but the way i see it, there's something wrong with this society....

When i was young, and to be precise, very young....

I dreamt of being a glamorous singer after listening to Andy Lau's songs ..
I dreamt of being an actor after watching a Jackie Chan's movie..
I dreamt of being a flying man after getting to know Superman
I dreamt of being the saviour of the earth after watching Indiana Jones...
I dreamt of being the '' Lao Fu Zhi'' after reading the comic...

U can definitely say that mass media had an impact on my dreams while i was young, but i dreamt of things a kid normally dreams of ..... i'm not saying that
being ambitious at a young age is a bane, but before the threshold or the so-called transitional period, it's weird for a child not to dream like a child..i suppose...

Queer but true, it's not difficult to see why this is happening around us.....
we have kids as young as 5 years old attending 3 or 4 tuition classes nowadays....
besides, they have to perform a lot of ''obligatory duties'' such as learning this and that (languages, maths, music bla bla bla) ....All these, coupled with the fact that they are always being brainwashed with the notion that ''u must become an engineer or a doctor to be successful'', have led us to where the society is...

I do not blame the parents for wanting the best for their children .... at times, under certain circumstances, choices are made even b4 u are aware of it ......
I'm just astonished to note the vast difference between the dream of a child, now and then.....