Then I went to class and he was not there.
Then I was like "Yes!"
Yes!
(PD) Hi!
Hello!
(PD) Have you ever been bullied before?
Wow.
Such a heavy question.
Yes I have.
I got bullied a couple of times.
But the biggest one that I remembered
is when I was in primary 3,
I was being bullied by this dude.
It's not some random dude.
It (was) my best friend's older brother who was in primary 5.
The bully was like calling me names.
And during recces he would steal my pocket money.
During that time I was little bit on the chubbier side,
so I did have to go for TAF (Trim and Fit) club during recces.
and I had to run.
So I didn't use the money.
But still, it's not nice having your money stolen.
Especially from your best friend's brother.
He was the only one who was tormenting me during that time.
And it came to a point where I was so miserable right,
that I had to skip school.
I lasted for a month.
Obviously the teachers will call every single day, you know right.
I don't know why.
But I had this skill where my voice was lower than normal.
And I pretended to be my father.
So whenever the teacher will call like "Hello! Blah blah blah..."
Then I'll be like "Hello..."
The bullying didn't stop until he graduated.
So I knew that it was a very toxic environment
and I took myself out of that equation.
And that best friend (was) also not my best friend anymore
because I mean they live in the same house!
How do I avoid being bullied?
When I was 14 years old, I actually had my first experience of cyber bullying.
At that point of time, there was this thing called 'Ask.FM'.
So when I went into secondary school,
I started becoming a lot more vocal.
And I started having this way of speaking.
which some people call it an accent,
some people call me pretentious.
But to me it's just enunciating my words and having proper pronunciation.
Because of that, people will come (to me) and say
"Oh, she's such a fake *bleep*."
"She's being so pretentious."
"Why do you have such an accent all the time?"
"You think you're some white girl is it?"
And I'm just here thinking, what...?
What's so weird with the way I spoke english?
Like I never understood.
But a lot of it came with-
Either they will touch on the way I speak english,
or they will call me straight up ugly.
So let me just read through some of the hate that I have gotten okay.
"You big *bleep* is it? Stewardess right?"
"You *bleep* working adult!"
"Want to kena whack on the street is it?"
I'm like huh?
I think a lot of it goes into people talking about my job as well.
They are like "Who hired you sia?"
"With your face you can become air stewardess is it?"
Yeah I still do get them, it's are very common nowadays.
And it used to hurt me a lot, like a lot.
It brought my down to a very dark path.
There were days where I will just sit down and cry.
But nowadays I just look at it and I laugh.
And I'm like, you know what,
I'm very proud of who I am.
I've gotten here because of all the struggles I've been through.
My struggles may not be the same as yours.
It may seem really tiny compared to what you have struggled (with).
And that's okay la.
My plate is my own plate.
Your plate (is) your own plate ah.
We don't share plate okay?
So in secondary school,
you don't really get to choose where you are seated.
So I was the only girl in the entire class who was stuck next to a guy.
This guy happened to be a bully.
He happened to be a really really obnoxious, loud-
You know the kind of guy that has to prove
that he is popular and he is funny
but actually he is not funny (and) he is not popular.
He always shouts in class.
"Eh Amanda, you're parents (are) divorced"
"Is it because your father doesn't want you?"
All this obnoxious behaviour from this guy really really made me hate school.
I really dreaded going to school and having to sit next to him.
After many months of hating school
and hating to have to sit next to him right,
he was actually caught by a teacher,
for having unsavoury content in his laptop.
And it was a school laptop.
By unsavoury content, I mean...
Porn!
And I still remember my friends were like
"Oh my god, the guy next to you got suspended eh."
"He got transferred to another class or another school is it?"
Then I was like "Really?"
Then I went to class and he was not there.
I was like "Yes!"
Yes!
I thank all the gods in the world.
So I wonder if he watches TSL.
If you do, not too late to say sorry.
But to be honest I don't really care la.
So this incident happened a couple of years ago
when I was working in the States.
I was an intern at this start up.
So about 4 months in, one of the managers left the company.
And they hired someone to replace his position.
And initially, I think she seemed quite okay.
I think one thing that a lot of people who come from bigger companies
are not used to in start ups is that
generally in start ups there aren't really like hierarchy levels there.
The employees are kind of treated all the same
in terms of whether you are like an intern, you're a manager,
they value all of your inputs quite a lot.
One of the things that they got this new manager to do,
for her onboarding was to check in with me
on how some of the tasks were being done.
So as I was running some of the tasks with her,
I started to realize that she wasn't very open I guess.
in (terms of) talking to me.
Everytime I tried to explain something to her,
she will always seems to kind of take it in
but (she was) also like not very happy.
And I really wasn't quite sure why.
Because to me I was just doing my job right.
This kind of attitude got worse and worse.
So it actually got to a point where she wouldn't
look at me in the eye when I'm talking to her.
She will send me very paggro (passive aggressive) messages on Slack.
In front of the rest of the team,
when let's say we were having team lunches together.
She will be very very nice to me.
So she will say "Oh look this is our Singaporean intern"
"and she's so great!"
"She's so capable!"
But then when it was just the 2 of us together,
she will like roll her eyes at me.
She will just be very very unhappy with me and I don't know why.
Things kind of got worse and worse over time.
And I remember, there was one day I just sat down in my office table right,
and I thought like, wow,
I flew all the way from Singapore to New York,
And then, this is what I have to deal with.
I got a little bit upset.
I went to the call room at the back to,
kind of take a breather, and then
I just broke down.
And at that point in time, I didn't really understand
why I was crying so much
or why it impacted me so much.
And I texted my supervisor, I said like
We really need to talk because I'm very upset
and I cannot understand my feelings.
When I was in primary school,
Because I was quite a chubby kid
So I get like fat shamed a lot.
When I went to secondary school, I was still a bit awkward.
and very insecure about my size.
So I guess that kind of showed weaknesses.
And I became a target for bullying in Secondary 1.
And it got quite bad
to the point where the whole class was bullying me.
They would throw the permanent marker across the room.
And then the pen would break right,
then the ink would splatter on my uniform.
And they were not sorry about it.
And they even hid a dead lizard on my table also.
When I freaked out, the whole class was just laughing.
There was really nobody there to help me.
And I only can depend on myself.
There was one point where I was friends with a group of people.
And then after awhile you know when there is communication break down,
like 2 of these particular friends of mine
decided to come together to create a fake Twitter account.
At that point in time, I still had Twitter.
Okay so the Twitter account was a particular name.
And there was a fake Twitter account that was going around
with the same name just that 2 of the alphabets were swapped.
So people really didn't know which one was the real account
because even on my own account I don't really post a lot of things.
Because I'm not really a Twitter person.
So I saw the account and it was really like trash talking
about myself and about others which I don't do.
Because why would I want to trash talk about myself on my own Twitter account.
Like hmm...
Who could be behind this?
And then I looked at the contents of it
and they were all really mean things that were being said about others.
So basically what this person or this group of people
or these 2 people were doing were
tweeting mean stuff, pretending to be me
so that others would hate on me.
Then I think that was when I realized,
Wow, people do go to such extremes just because of
conflict of interest or disagreement.
That's when I realized, okay you know what.
I am done with this.
Like people are trying to tarnish my name without reason.
And creating a fake account to-
to a point where (they're) trying to really tarnish my name la.
And I felt it was lame, so I deleted
my entire Twitter account.
You know it's funny because
How a simple act of just creating a fake account
was able to make me so scared to use social media.
And it does affect my mental health a little bit because
At that point in time I was still very young
I was still trying to build myself up.
I was so traumatized by it that I never downloaded Twitter
or use Twitter ever again in my life until now.
And it's been what, like 10 years?
It was 2 years ago.
It was not a very huge clique.
It was 6 of us in total.
I mean 5 of us so like-
4 of them decided to like one day fall out with me.
At first it was just a normal girls' problem.
But then it got very serious.
One day they just told me that they want to talk things out with me.
And they decided to tell me to sit in a circle.
Okay it's not really circle, it's like a square table.
So I was sat in the middle and
one of them suggested that they should
say what they don't like about me.
Afterwards, I went on a 2 months internship with them.
(The office location) is quite abandoned.
so there was only a few coffeeshops around.
So everyday I had to guess which coffeeshop they will be eating at.
Because they don't like to be in the same environment as me.
So in the end I chose to eat at a bus stop.
And then like-
(One day) I was seated on the ground,
they will just like step on my finger.
It was quite sad because,
I treated them as my closest friends at that point of time.
And then they will post nasty things about me on social media also.
They say (things) like, she's such a *bleep*.
She only talks shit about people.
I hope she like...
die.
They always say that they hope I'm not around.
That's they're favourite sentence.
(PD) What kind of lessons did you learn from this whole experience?
Because it's been 2 years plus
I just feel that-
It's just time heals la.
I mean now I'm still upset over it but
I won't say I'm sad as (I was) 2 years ago.
Initially, I didn't think this was bullying
but one thing I realize is that
bullying always comes in place where there is a power difference.
When someone who is in a higher position
knows that they have more authority over you.
And I guess they kind of use that fact to treat you in a way where
it makes you feel like less comfortable.
They want to use that to kind of get power or get respect in that sense.
As much as it really affected my mental health a lot.
And this has started from the age of 14, 13 years old.
so it's (been) about 9 to 10 years.
I tried my best to kind of just ignore it.
So sometimes you have to stand strong and face it.
You know, just look at it.
I don't know why anybody would consciously want to send hate.
I cannot fathom that idea.
But things happen.
People do things to hurt people.
But just know that, that doesn't determine your worth in any way.
I learned that it is very easy to bully someone.
It is so easy for you to start the bullying.
And it is easy for the bully to stop.
But for the victim of the bullying,
whatever that they experience may be carried on all the way till
the rest of their lives and you will never know.
Sometimes I feel that like you may not need to have someone
to really understand whatever you are going through exactly.
But just being able to talk to people
and surround yourself with people that makes you feel positive and happy.
It makes a lot of difference for you.
Peer support is really important.
But it doesn't come naturally or easily to everybody.
Because sometimes bullying is about somebody who is the aggressor,
trying to isolate everybody from you.
So it's very difficult for you to find good friends when you're in that situation.
But there are some platforms out there
like to provide emotional support, mental support during your tough times.
Today we have a very special guest!
This is she, Xue Ting!
Hi, my name is Xue Ting and I am a member of Feeling Better.
Okay so can you please tell us more about what YAC is?
So Youth Action Challenge is actually a challenge that
gathers individuals who are keen to improve the society.
My team consists of 5 members.
We actually have the same idea of helping people who are being bullied.
So we came together to get this project started.
Right, just nice today we are talking about bullying
and all the different experiences.
What exactly have you done to actually address the issue of bullying?
With your team.
Our (topic on) bullying focuses of cyber-bullying.
So we actually launched a website
that has different features and it acts as
a one stop spot for users to use.
In the website itself, it consists of different activities, resources
and also hot lines for users to call when they need immediate assistance.
What is the most prominent or your favourite feature of this website?
My favourite feature would be the mood indicator.
So every time when you log into the website, there will be a prompt
to indicate your mood on that day before you use our website.
And we also use that to personalize a user's experience.
Wow.
By helping them to go to certain resources when they are feeling sad or happy.
So how has YAC played a part in the entire creation of the website?
By joining YAC, it actually helps me
to turn my idea into a real life project.
We did not have the funds and resources to get started,
so YAC actually provided us with a fund.
For us to kick start out project.
So as Xue Ting mentioned, the website is still under prototype stage
where they are looking for more contributors
to better improve the website.
So if you do have any feedback, we welcome them!
And in turn we will be giving away prizes when you give us feedback.
More details will be on TSL's Instagram page!
So do keep a look out for it!
In all honesty, I'm really really touched
with whatever that you have been doing so far with your team.
Because I think mental health is something that we need to speak more about
especially bullying because sometimes the victims are silenced
and they don't have the outlet to express themselves.
So yes, mental health is very important.
If you want to check out more resources on mental health,
you can click the links below.
Wah she can be part of our crew already leh!
Thank you for watching this episode of Tell Me About It!
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And don't forget to ring the notification bell right over here.
And watch our other videos over there.
Over there.
Don't be a bully.
One action can cause a life time of damage.
*shooketh*
Wah!
Where did that come from?
Wow I'm actually amazed at my quote.