Who Is This Man I've Become?

I've just returned from my Christmas holiday in Genting with my students and some of their friends. It was a fun-filled 3 days of playing games, swimming and lots of eating and more importantly, a time of discovery. As with every trip I go on, I always make it a point to learn something new which I can then share with my students. This trip however, will go down as one good lesson I learnt about myself.

Genting is known as the City of Entertainment but if you stray off the righteous path... it can turn out to be the City of Temptation. It's turned out to be the case for me so far. On two occasions where I was waiting by myself, I was approached by a man who would discreetly ask me, "yao chien hai shi xiao jie?". My first response is always, "No" but curiosity somehow gets the better of me and I find myself asking, "How much?". For a single guy who's way above the legal age, it would seem all right to "try" this experience (maybe just once?) Afterall, among most guys, this is just one of those things that a guy would do. The question I kept asking myself was, "Am I like most guys?".

As that question continued to play on my mind, I brought myself face to face with another temptation - the one that this mountain-top resort is famous for. Again, for most people, this is just one of those things that anyone above legal age would do. My beliefs strongly oppose this practice but events in my life have shaped and reshaped my views towards the many 'sins' in this world, turning some of them into 'probably acceptable'. Maybe my views are right, maybe they're wrong; or maybe they're neither. Afterall, most people would say it's nothing wrong. Again, the question played on my mind, "Am I like most people?"

After living through one-third of my life, I would think that I knew myself better...

Who is this man I see staring back at me?