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Magic saved my life: youth volunteer

If you looked at 21-year-old Jonathan Ng today, you are unlikely to be able to guess the dramatic past he has had.

His gentle, soft-spoken demeanour, bespectacled, tattoo-free, pale-skinned and wiry frame says nothing of the countless bicycles he had stolen, the water bombs he and his friends pelted at parked cars, the fights he had strategised or the many cigarettes he had smoked throughout his secondary school years.

Ng had done all of that and more, he said, during a time in his wayward youth he is now working hard to move forward from.

When he was 12 and weeks away from taking his Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), Ng’s mother fell into depression, also suffering from insomnia and talking to him late at night, preventing him from being able to get enough rest. He ended up having to repeat his final year and his PSLE, after failing it the first time.

“Initially I was quite scared because I didn’t know what was happening, and I thought she was possessed, but my dad told me it was normal — how could it be?! — but I didn’t blame the circumstances; I just tried my best,” he told Yahoo Singapore in a recent interview. His mother recovered after about a month, though, he said, but that episode was just the beginning of her medical troubles.

Mother's health deteriorated


The following year, Ng’s mother was diagnosed with multiple cancers. The news hit Ng hard, because not only did he feel closer to her than to his “authoritarian-figure” father, she was also the only one who indulged him in a secret passion he had — for performing magic.

“You hardly see her spending on herself or the family, but she spent a lot more on me than either of my brothers (for my magic),” he said. “If I wanted this, she would just buy it; if I wanted a prop that cost a few thousand dollars, she would buy it without a thought, and I could see how much she loved me."

Ng said he naturally felt quite worried about his mother when she was diagnosed, and promised her he would do his best in secondary school.

However, he landed in bad company when he started at Unity Secondary School, and he soon became hooked on cigarettes. At his peak in Secondary 2 and 3, Ng said he smoked three full packs a day — as many as 60 sticks — and to save money, he would roll his own tobacco from packets and paper, he added.

Smoking was just one of a list of vices, though — out of “boredom” and “for fun”, he and his friends stole bicycles, played pranks on strangers and essentially spent their nights painting the town red. In one particular instance of mischief, he said they even brought out a pail of water bombs, wreaking havoc on vehicles in a multi-storey car park.

“The police caught us and we were quite shocked because they ambushed us with four vehicles,” he said with a laugh. “Thankfully I was quite lucky that I looked like a good boy, so the police officers told me I could go home.”

Ng was somehow able to not only avoid chalking up a police record throughout his teenage years, but also successfully kept his wrongdoings and smoking away from his family’s notice. He would brush his teeth, wash and spray his clothes promptly to ensure no one picked up on the smell, triggering surprise from his grandmother, who asked him why he was getting so image-conscious all of a sudden.

For him, though, his mischief was in part an escape from the problems his mother was facing — as her condition worsened, he became more and more stressed about needing to prepare himself mentally for her impending passing. Ng approached a counsellor, who encouraged him to volunteer his time in community service at the nearby Yew Tee community club.

A step in the right direction


“That was a step of faith, and a new beginning also,” he said. “It became really funny, though — in school I was a good student, while outside I was three different people: a grassroots volunteer, a mischievous guy and a son all at the same time. It got very tiring after awhile.”

It was only in Ng’s mother’s final days that he resolved to come clean with her and tell her the truth about what he had been doing with his life.

“I broke down and said sorry for everything… I just hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, and I could see that she was really, really happy," he said. “From that day, I told myself to kick out my bad habits. I told myself, hey, if I’m going to live my life (the way he had been), I’m really living a bad life. She (my mum) brought me up as a person of integrity and character, and I shouldn’t disappoint her.”

His mother’s death also came days after the shock passing of his best friend, which left him heartbroken.

“It happened on a very tiring week — we were close for many years and grew up together,” he said, recalling that he cried the whole day, after being told not to attend his friend’s funeral, and to focus on his mother instead. “We had just had a talk on the phone and agreed to meet up… he wanted to teach me a lot of things like guitar… he had a good future."

He then spent the subsequent months struggling to, and eventually succeeding in, quitting smoking.

“It took me quite a long while to actually kick the habit,” he said, sharing that it was only in putting himself through a flat-out ‘cold turkey’, and locking himself at home, that he managed to quit. “I slowly started losing contact with my ‘bad’ friends — they understood, though, and they told me I should do all this and not waste my time (with them).”

Things looked up for Ng until his N Level year — he had become active with a programme called the Youth Advolution for Health, and was even nominated to be an I-Quit ambassador, part of a government campaign to encourage smokers to quit. “It was a different experience, but through this I realised I had a platform to inspire and motivate others by sharing my story,” he said.

Word about him started getting round his extended family, who would ask him about his past. “It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though. I started to get close to them and also get to know more people. Many came to me and said I inspired them.”

It was that year, just weeks before his exams started, however, that Ng was hit by a double whammy of medical troubles — he dislocated his right knee, and a week after he was discharged, he was back in hospital with acute kidney failure.

Fortunately, his renal injury was treatable, and after a week and a half more, life went back to normal for him.

Ng did well in his N Levels — and that was also around the time he was approached by his mentors in magic to perform for a Christmas charity show for underprivileged families, the first time he would be using magic in community service.

“I wasn’t sure initially, but she (my mentor) encouraged me and said she didn’t mind helping me,” he said, sharing that he spent many months and late nights in her studio rehearsing for his act. “We eventually did a very good show, (performing) to more than 1,000 kids!”


Now, four years on, Ng says he has numerous younger youths whom he has taken under his wing. He has also made community service a running family trait — his father delivers lunch to needy families, his grandmother does counselling and he inspired his two younger brothers to volunteer the way he does currently.

“My goal is to train up one million leaders, to mentor them to become mentors of others,” he said. “I want them to focus on their dreams, but not to forget their families while at it."

Jonathan's story is brought to you in partnership with the Singaporean of the Day project. For more inspiring stories, visit their page here.