Épisodes

  • EP 9: My Dreams

    EP 9: My Dreams
    Feb 22 2023
    Hello and welcome to this episode. Life for modern-day women can be very tiring, and even more so as a career woman. We can be so caught up with what is happening around us, making sure everyone else is well looked after and cared for and then we lose ourselves in the process. When I was given this topic to talk about my dreams, I froze. I have been working for the past fifteen years in two very different industries and a mother for the past eleven years. I hardly have much breaks even in-between jobs because I would find my next career opportunity before I say goodbye to the previous job. Life has a way of getting to a woman, the work, the family, the children and then suddenly, like alot of women, I realised I forgot what my dreams were. Or did I have any dreams to begin with? It took a few days to recall what my dreams were. It hit me that I have probably kept my dreams in frozen storage all these while as life whizzes by.My first dream is to travel around the world. I remember I did not have my own passport until I was in university. My parents were making very low income that was hardly enough to cope with daily necessities and keeping three children in school. Although school fees were heavily subsidised by our Singapore Government, other school necessities such as stationary, school textbooks and assessment books were not. So traveling for leisure was never an option to us. I remember when I first told my mum I need to make a passport. It was for a school trip to look at a fishing village with my tutors and classmates to Kukup in Malaysia, fundamentally different from the city life I grew up in. My mum was shocked when she heard I need to make my passport and she jumped with her immediate response: are you going to elope with your boyfriend? In my heart I rolled my eyes from the front to back. It was really absurd. Now I was a rebellious kid back then, the more you don’t want me to do, the more I want to do it. I was determined to travel. So I made my own applications and got my passport. I dreamed of filling my passport pages with stamps from different customs around the world. And the traveling will not be only by flight. I dream of travelling by first class train on the Qinghai Tibel railway to a far-flung corner of the world or take all the scenic railway rides around Switzerland. I dream of traveling during the festive season, like going to the Christmas night market in Germany, experiencing the jostle, having food and drinks in the middle of winter. I dream of seeing sunrise over Ang Ko Wat on Easter morning to remind myself of rebirth and life is full of hope.You might ask me: but air travel is very common pre-Covid, flights are plentiful and why haven’t I done so? Because there was always something else that was prioritised over my traveling dreams that was always seen as frivolous. I remember during my internship year, most of my classmates traveled to Europe on a shoestring budget with whatever they made during internship. My three closest friends went to not one, not two but five European countries at one go to look at buildings, cities and worship architecture. I did not join them because five thousand dollars budget for five countries was out of my reach. It was easily five solid months of my income for my year out on internship. I wanted to save the money to fund my post-graduate study needs, like penknife, cardboard, glue, books, even my own food and drink. They say you only live once. But I was so afraid of having no money while back in school, I chose to live properly with food and drink and an occasional McDonald’s treat fo myself when back in school.But I do find comfort in visiting nearby destinations. I finally saw snow in YongPyong ski slope with my friends before I met my husband, my friends and I even went on a short trip to the de-militarised zone between North and South Korea. It was an eye-opening trip and I believe I still have much much more to see around the world.If you ask me now, do I ever regret not going to Europe during my internship year? Part of me says yes since that time other than that one study loan that was put on pause while I continue with my post graduate studies, I did not have other commitments like children, car and house mortgages. Till today I still haven’t made it to Europe to travel yet. The three years as the world battered with COVID-19, I looked back and I asked myself why haven’t I traveled more and further away. While the other part of me pulls me back to reality and reminds me of the need to afford daily expenses, savings for retirement, paying my loans, where to find the extra money to afford air tickets for three persons, accommodation for three persons, and many many other practical questions.Which is why today I am starting on my business journey with baby steps, to have a shot at making a passive income that can go towards helping to fuel the wanderlust dream in me since young. Which then brings me to another dream I had ...
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    10 min
  • EP 8: My Past Romances And What They Taught Me

    EP 8: My Past Romances And What They Taught Me
    Feb 15 2023
    Hello and welcome to this episode. Some of you in Singapore will recall the recent incident of a local busker that had gained much fame performing in open public space. He seemed to be on his way to stardom, gathering a big fan crowd and lots of hype on social media before his ex-girlfriend alleged his past wrong doings. This ignited sudden cancellations of his busking performances, fierce online debates and defences from his family and eventually his image took a hit.Past romances, whether long dating period or short whirlwind courting, do impact all of us in one way or another. Some of the luckier ones end up married and remain married, while some of us may have bad experiences, scarring us for life.I had my first date at seventeen. He was one year my senior and at that time I had not cared much about how I looked. I didn’t know how to dress up, I felt I was a plain jane and hardly stood out in appearances. My mother bought my clothes and it was usually what she thought looked nice, cheap and good for her budget as we were from low income family that time. My hairstyle was the same as Aaron Kwok’s, one of the four heavenly kings from Hong Kong pop music scene, centre parting, short to the ears level and shaved with a slope on the back of my neck. I wore big plastic rimmed glasses, hardly the concept of beauty by today’s standards.I was weak in my Physics during my upper secondary school days and wanted to look for help with my Physics homework. As finances were very tight in my family, getting private tuition was not an option. Somehow I ended up befriending one senior who was good in Physics and was willing to help me. And it was through this senior, I met my first ex-boyfriend, who was also good in Physics. Those were the days before technology of handphones and I remember we had long telephone chats late into the night using our house phone. Phone calls on Physics homework soon became dominated with other conversation topics and playful teasings.It wasn’t long before the seniors graduated and being in different schools limited our interactions to only long telephone conversations in the night to share about what happened in the day. Thankfully I finished my Secondary school education with grades that allowed me to enter the same junior college. With that we were reunited in the same school and he asked me to be his girlfriend. I was taken aback by the love interest from a guy, or even any guy, given my own self-image that time. So it was unsurprising that I agreed.With newfound freedom because I was now in junior college, hanging out together more often made me realised alot of differences we had. Fundamentally, my first ex-boyfriend had a different concept about money. His parents were not well-off, held low wage jobs and his dad was very old when they had children. But my boyfriend was blessed with a godfather that was quite well-off. His godfather owned a small store and the small business brought him a comfortable income. His godfather did not marry but had a sister with a condition that he had to take care of. Which was why his godfather had money to spare and dote on my first ex-boyfriend.My first ex-boyfriend would want the latest things in trend, be it Sega gaming machine or Nike Air basketball shoes that his favourite basketball player wore during the recent NBA games. All he had to do was ask for money from his godfather for his Nike shoes, his bag, his Sega gameset, whatever he wanted his godfather to sponsor and he was never disappointed him. To him money came so easily, he never bothered saving. He would just spend on things that made him happy. I remember I was envious but I never felt comfortable asking for money. Especially when I know my parents made very little and were often cash-strapped.In the first year I was dating my first ex-boyfriend, I often felt inadequate. He was a flirt, always comparing and measuring me against the other girls he knew around him. He would make remarks about how he cannot see my eyes because they are obstructed by my very thick glasses. He would comment about how his female ex-classmate’s breasts looked because she wore good maximiser bras, or I could look better if I applied makeup. I felt I was never pretty enough, never good enough in his eyes. He would cajole me into changing how I looked, because everything about me needed “improvement”. He would bring me to the optician so I could be prescribed contact lenses. He would say girls look better with long hair and psycho me to keep hair long. I remember a comment made by his best friend with whom sometimes we hang out together as a group of three. His best friend had told my ex-boyfriend if he doesn’t find me pretty, just breakup and find another new girlfriend that is prettier. The comment was very shocking to me because it made me feel like I was a commodity. Not happy, just change lah. There is no consideration for the bond in a relationship between two people, the feelings of the ...
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    12 min
  • EP 7: My Career Switches

    EP 7: My Career Switches
    Feb 8 2023
    Hello and welcome to this episode. As some of you listening in may be aware, Singapore is a small country and we have rapidly developed the country from a third-world country back in the 1960. Today we can count ourselves as a first-world country, with efficient public transport system, housing for both public and private sector. We have comparative medical infrastructure and healthcare system. Efforts are put in by our government to ensure core part of medical care is still accessible to the poor. Education is structured and nurture our young. I am often reminded how fortunate we are in Singapore to be taken care of, as I travel to some of the surrounding south-east asia region that are less developed.As I joined my first company after my post-graduate degree, I came to realise architecture is a sunset industry in Singapore. I was definitely late in the game, we already have pioneers in the architecture realm that have put forth master planning that shaped our country, put in-charge of key infrastructure works. These pioneers have worked hard and left the younger generations with works of monumental works. It was no surprise this is a cut-throat industry which is highly competitive among firms for the limited number of built projects in land-scarce Singapore. The hours were long, the clients were demanding and the authorities required projects to satisfy an ever-growing list of regulations. And I haven’t mentioned the legal liabilities this profession carries.As I work through the years in architecture as a consultant, there was always episodes where I experienced burn-out. The effect from working long hours snowballed as I took on bigger and more complex projects. Although I have alot to learn while I was working which kept me engaged, I was physically exhausted. It wasn’t something that could be erased if I took a couple of days off for mental wellness. But that short relief will soon be taken over by the punishing hours it wasn’t long before the exhaustion will set in again. Coupled with life experiences change, I got married, I had a new baby coming along, priorities shifted dramatically. It was no longer just about myself. It slowly dawned onto me I cannot throw my new family aside and bury myself face down into work, work and work only. What is work if it kept me away most of the time and when I come back everyone is already asleep and you don’t know what is happening to everyone in the family? Home is not a hotel like in my younger days when my mother used to complain that I only come home late into the night to bathe and sleep. Then in the day I disappear out of the door and not to be seen again until late. That repeat mode cannot be the way I choose to live my life with my family. I thought deep and hard, eventually convinced that there is the need to spend time to care for my family, to connect with them, to be there with my family.Besides, work is never smooth-sailing. We have our ups and downs in our work. There will be days we are seen doing our best delivering projects, handling everyone on the construction team with stellar outputs. On the other hand, there will be days of stress to deliver a project that is already way overdue, or we met with lots of challenges at work. These are days tensions rang high, when your client breathes down my neck constantly to meet certain deadlines. These deadlines were committed by them to their own bosses and they just stress me to deliver so that they could deliver. Coupled with limited time with stretched manpower resources that can help with the drawings, the submissions, the backend work and so on, sometimes I ask myself if my clients think I am seven-eleven. For those of you that may be unfamiliar, Seven-eleven is a chain convenience store that is open twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week. So I feel like being treated as if my client thinks design options and proposals of materials or response to any Buyer’s request is like them walking into a convenience store where the things are off the shelf to grab and go. But it doesn’t work like that in the backend. I need to speak to my other consultants to ensure the change can be carried out, I need to get my Contractor to assess it to objectively say it can be done with no implications on their end. At times we need to challenge each other a little to stretch possibilities based on the conditions at that moment, based on work progress at that point in time. Little steps of fact-finding that take time. Because it goes against my work principles to agree to do everything at no additional cost to anyone. I learn that this would be unfair. If changes take rework, changes take compromise, I think it is only fair to talk about it openly to discuss and validate and convince and then a decision can be made whether to go ahead or not.This was one of the key reasons I eventually left my first job. Because I did not feel that my boss at that time was administering the contract fairly to our ...
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    12 min
  • EP 6: First Experience In Full-Time Work

    EP 6: First Experience In Full-Time Work
    Feb 1 2023
    Hello and welcome to this episode. In the episode where I shared about how I picked up different jobs to help me make some allowance to fund my education. Right after I graduated from my degree, there was no escaping work in an architecture firm. In order to be qualified to sit for the professional exam in the future, if I choose to be one, I would need to complete an internship of a minimum duration of ten months. Of course to prevent people from job-hopping, the criteria set out for us then was that we had to spend a minimum tenure of five months in a firm as an intern in order to count towards our internship experience. And only upon satisfying the ten-month long internship then we meet the requisition to take up postgraduate architecture course.There are so many architecture firms big and small in Singapore. Where do I start from? I was feeling a little lost. But I had a good friend who was always very in touch with the local architecture scene. So he shared that he would go for a medium size firm that was up and coming, showed me some photos featuring their work in a magazine. The rationale was simple: if the firm is too small, the projects may likely be limited in scale and variety. Resources will be tighter and we may not see very much beyond the handful of small projects. We may also be expected to do a lot of hands-on work ourselves than we can bargain for as interns. If the firm is too large, we may only get to see or work on a very small part of a huge project and end up missing the big picture. The medium size firm will have some sort of structure and organisation of a firm while still seeing some reasonable scale and variety of project types.For lack of a better idea, I joined my friend in writing to apply for work as an intern for the medium size firm he introduced. We brought our school projects portfolio to the interview. It was very different from my previous little meet-ups with recruiters for my holiday temporary jobs, where I never knew who I would be working for or what company I was hired to work in until I turned up for work that day. This was really my first time at a formal interview speaking directly to my potential new boss and going through what I could do by showing my school project works, sharing whether I preferred to do design work or perhaps oversee site construction progress and for them to consider if I could be a good fit for the company.To my surprise, the architecture firm accepted both my friend and myself. So we started work.Through this experience, I learned it is important to identify the type of company you want to work in or switch to. I asked myself if I wanted to learn to do things hands-on and be intimately familiar with the trades of the industry. Or do I want to start with a broader perspective of how things are put together. It is important to be clear and begin with the end in mind as one considers prospective employers to work for.Because of our different zone of genius, my friend and I were placed in two different teams. My friend has a greater flair for design and creating aesthetically appealing graphics and was thus placed in a team that had more design work, pitching for projects for resorts in far-flung destinations like Maldives, dreaming up how holiday-makers would experience cuisine, immerse themselves in different experiences. Even the thought of being given a chance to work on an overseas resort as an intern sounded so sexy, in destinations at that point in time of our life we can only dream of. On the other hand, I was more of a person who could collaborate with people to get work done. I was able to try to connect to different personalities and people from different background, so I was tasked with overseeing construction of houses at site, in-charge of keeping an eye to create a place where people can call home. I liked going to sites, solving details to make them work when things on a two-dimensional drawing simply cannot inform the tradesmen on how to make it work in reality. We would detail out through discussions and move things along. I had to figure out between all the drawings that do not tally what was the real intention of the look that the design wanted to achieve. Sometimes I may have to go back ot office to consult the original designer what was it they want to achieve in terms of look and I do my best to preserve and stay faithful to the design. There was a sense of accomplishment to see things on paper leap into a space that a person can walk through.On occasions, I do get pulled in to pull some overnighters to chip in for job pitches. It was tiring because in the daytime I would be out and about under the sun and walking around the site to look at work progress, to brainstorm and solve issues. Coming back in the later afternoon I had to do the paperworks for the contract administrative part of my work. So when job pitches come in, all hands on deck are busy and paperwork has to still carry on. This is when I would really ...
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    10 min
  • EP 5: How I Managed Full-Time Studies With Holiday Work

    EP 5: How I Managed Full-Time Studies With Holiday Work
    Jan 25 2023
    Hello and welcome to this episode. In my previous episode, I shared about how I experienced work for the first time during the six months break in-between college and waiting for my placement in the local university. It was a liberating experience to make your own money, to be able to afford to buy presents for loved ones, have a good meal at a fancier place as a student and no longer needed to ask for more money from my parents who were already stretched to their breaking points to make ends meet with their very low incomes.The other reality that made me continue to work during school holidays was the fact that architecture school was not cheap. Aside from the school fees which I borrowed using my father’s retirement funds through the Central Provident Fund, known as CPF which are like compulsory savings deducted from the salary, the rest was mostly up to me.I also discovered to my horror, design presentations are very common in architecture school and every single drawing material medium, every tool came with a hefty price tag. It was a time where there was no carousell app nor second hand market place for pre-loved tools. For example drawing blueprints on vellum paper required at least six pens each producing different thickness of lines. Even the paper itself was a eye-watering price per sheet of A1 or even as big as A0 size because the price of that paper itself was the equivalent of a good lunch in the campus canteen for students. Every student was required to buy a standard set of drawing tools, set squares, T-square, ink pens, clutch pencil, right down to kneadable erasers. Even before I start school proper, I have to invest a fortune to get started. There wasn’t much alternative as there is only one supplier in Singapore selling all these specialised art material and tools. I saw my savings took a hit just to prepare for the start of the semester. Some of which I never even seen before nor did I even know how to use them. I made up my mind I have to help myself and my parents by being able to partly afford this journey of architecture education. It was already tough and made even tougher by the lack of money.And so through the university years, I worked during the school breaks or weekends or even holidays at local farms. I was thankful I had a close friend who remembered I stayed near the Lim Chu Kang farm area at that time and thought I might like a job nearby to earn some quick bucks. There was no contract, I was introduced to some workers that ran the farm area and we verbally agreed to an hourly rate and I started work. There was no formal training, I just followed the old hands on the job. Our job was bringing people out to see and spread awareness of Singapore’s local farms in Lim Chu Kang. They would come from Community Centre groups of elderly and middle-aged aunties and uncles, organisations for the disabled, private corporate companies, public sectors office workers and so on. I learnt through on the job training from the senior farm guides there. I would listen to how they shared about each farm and their specialities, what they breed on the farm, what was interesting about the animals and we often encourage visitors to patronise the farm by purchasing their fresh produce. They could be goat milk, vegetable that were freshly harvested from the fields that morning, quail eggs, fresh fish for soup or even bull frogs for cooking into the oh-so-yummy frog porridge. The perks of the job was a chance to meet celebrities once in a while, for example a local deejay from the mandarin radio station. I even learnt a tip or two from them. For instance he told me to stand a little more prominently in front so that people could see me. Sometimes in the whirlwind of people and bustling activities around you, it is normal to get carried away and you forget you are addressing a big group while standing near a building column that obstructed some people’s view of you.Once we were done with the day’s work, we get paid in cash straight away. There was no deductibles, no strings attached. These handy cash meant I get injections of new funds to pay for something in school, whether it was for cardboards and glue to make building models, or printing huge A1 or A0-size glossy posters and I am truly blessed the universe gave me this help along the way to help fund my educational needs.I learned that if I was willing to try and not afraid to learn on the job, I definitely can get work done and I could also improve yourself along the way. Whether it is knowledge, whether it is overcoming my initial perception of farms being smelly and dirty or overcoming my fear of public speaking and hearing my voice out loud sharing the tour agenda with visitors, I most certainly can take baby steps along the way to learn and move towards building up my self-confidence. Looking back with hindsight, I certainly placed a great deal of stress on myself. The truth is actually most people visiting the farm was looking ...
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    10 min
  • EP 4: My First Income From Work During School Vacation

    EP 4: My First Income From Work During School Vacation
    Jan 18 2023
    Hello and welcome to this episode. The younger generation these days have an abundance of options on how to make money while still studying. Enabling technology such as smartphones and apps that can do live streaming has opened up a whole new landscape of making money during their spare times such as school holidays or before they enroll into an institute of higher education. Some teenagers even went on to become budding entrepreneurs, setting up their own online shops selling slimes, crystals and interesting knick knacks catering to the interest of their own age-group. I even saw on the news of a handful of successful young people who has gone on to chalk up seven thousand dollars of sales in a month doing their online sales business. They are really amazing in that aspect, creating their own income of doing what they like.Back when I was a teenager, work during the school holidays mostly referred to temp jobs, doing mundane admin tasks or ad-hoc seasonal work such as gift wrapping services during the Christmas shopping season, distributing flyers at the Central Business District during week days lunch hours or even being a cashier at the local supermarket chain. It generally meant an hourly rate of about $6 or $7 per hour as an administrative assistant in a temporary job in an airconditioned office.I recalled spending a relatively short time in my job search and I consider myself very blessed to find my first formal six months job at Singapore Polytechnic while I was waiting for University admission. It was for a temporary Publicity officer role at one of the engineering departments. The formal staff in that position had left after she studied part time to earn her higher accreditation and there was a void while they were looking for someone permanent. The environment was something familiar with what I was exposed to in school, with lecturers, admin staff, a school directors somewhat like the Principal of the school. It was considered safe, not too complicated and people who worked there behaved in a civil manner and were there to share knowledge. I inherited the office desk and space in which the former staff had shared with a senior lecturer who was away at lectures most of the time. This meant that as an eighteen year old temporary staff, I actually had the whole private office to myself mostly. There was loads of privacy during the working hours and it was impressive I had a desktop computer for work. This was such a far cry from the desktop I had at home which I had paid a friend to put together by buying computer parts. My challenge came from having to use an email for the first time. In my earlier episode I had shared about how I was a believer of learning and picking up skills. I was thankful I had enrolled into a basic class to learn how to use microsoft office and other basic computer programmes. It was still challenging because a course is a short duration to get you started, but applying it in real life for work is an entirely different concept for an eighteen year old that was very unfamiliar with using a computer. For example, attempting to login with my account and sign-in password using the Control, Alternate and Delete keys on the keyboard. I remember when I prepared my left index and middle fingers as well as my right index finger I will time my hands to press down the three keys at the same time, instead of holding down both the Control and Alternate keys and then tapping the Delete key. I probably look like Mr Bean trying to bring up the login window rather than a sophisticated skilled staff at the computer. Luckily all these embarrassing tactics were behind a closed door with no witness.Having a proper internet connection soon opened doors for me to get acquainted with my machine at work. Instead of dialing up the internet using a slow telephone line at home and having to wait for the dial tone to get connected and praying it stays connected, the internet connection at work was instantaneous and stable. Quickly getting over my fear, I started to pick up internet games like Yahoo mahjong and it was through these fun activities that I started to build up my confidence in using the computer. My ex-boyfriend then was enlisted into National Service, I had plenty of free time and freedom after working hours. Occasionally I stayed back late just to play games and chit chat online. I learnt how to speak to strangers onlines over internet games and generally had fun making friends with people from overseas. Having never traveled out of the country except to my grandmother’s place in Malaysia, hearing people talk to me from Houston and Toronto, while reading their description of what it is kind of like over there was so interesting.I made friends with the other administrative staff in the office and it was fun to have other adults to talk to besides my own parents. Every year the department holds an exhibition to showcase some of the school’s projects to industry partners. It was an ...
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    11 min
  • EP 3: My Studies

    EP 3: My Studies
    Jan 11 2023
    Hello and welcome to this episode. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed many people who lost their job during this period. They could be our friends, our family, people we know, sole breadwinners, loyal staff that were with their company for ten years, twenty years and counting. Through no fault of theirs, all these were driven by the sudden imbalance to the world’s demand during the pandemic. The world was suddenly divided into necessities and non-necessities. Suddenly the way we do things changed and the change occurred at an accelerated pace. People were let go from their former positions either because there was suddenly no demand, or the nature of the work changed to something that required more technology-related skills, or it was made redundant by technology.This showed a need to continue to keep up with the times, to learn and pick up skills that are relevant or needed moving forward. And it is not just techie skills, but soft-skills like leadership, collaborative skills and the ability to communicate cross-disciplines. I am a firm believer in learning and education. As a hobby, I picked up cooking and baking skills by surfing Pinterest, reading recipes and when the pandemic set in, for example, being able to cook different types of food did save us a pretty penny and we felt comforted we could still enjoy a variety of meals together as a family.Of course formal education is still necessary. It sets up a base to structured learning and in the times I grew up in, that was believed to translate into good jobs after we graduate. I remember one of my art lessons in Primary school was to draw “my ambition”: I recall I drew a nurse, holding a very big injection needle in one hand, dressed in a white clean uniform, complete with a cute white hat on top of the head.Coming from a poor background spurred me to study hard, exceeding my mum’s expectation to score well enough to apply for the Special Assistance Plan, otherwise known as SAP school after my primary school. I could tell she didn’t think too highly of me because of the Secondary school choices she made me fill in the application form before the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) results were released. I wanted to prove her wrong and I did made it to top five Secondary schools in Singapore at that time. I continued to work hard on my studies and made it to one of the top Junior Colleges in Singapore and triple science stream. With the newfound confidence in my ability to study, I gave myself permission to dream a bit bigger. I upgraded my dream job from a nurse to be a doctor. The impression of being a professional well-respected knowledgeable doctor and the first one to be a doctor in the family was a dream to me as a teenager.I lost focus on studying during my teenage years. Most of my Junior Collage classmates, even my best girl friend then, took on Special papers, which is called S papers in the school. I’d rather avoid more homework and additional classes after school hours and instead spend my time on other frivolous things in life, such as being with my boyfriend back then. I happened to watch Saving Private Ryan on television one day and after the first 10mins of the movie, there was a scene. I vaguely remember it was the scene of a fierce fight on the battlefield. A Medical Officer was running towards one of the fallen soldiers and in an anguished tone he was shouting towards the direction of the enemies, “God damned it. Give me a chance to save this one!” while his hands were working feverishly trying to stop the bleeding from the fallen soldier. It was in that moment, I asked if I was able to do that, to demonstrate that spirit of just wanting to save lives in critical moments. The rest of the movie went by with a blur, I couldn’t pay attention to what I was watching as my mind was creating my self-limited belief. I told myself:I don’t have the spirit of that M.O. in the war to save lives. It may sound incredulous now but that was a self-limiting story that was weaved from the inside of my mind that I gave myself to walk away from my dream of being a doctor. In hindsight, as I use my lens now and look back to my sixteen year old self, I can hear myself exclaiming so loud in my mind: why?! Why in the world did I come up with that belief that I cannot do it and walk away from my dream?!For the months that followed, I felt lost, I didn't know what I wanted to do in my life stuck in finishing my college years of triple Science. I lost focus studying, I didn’t pay enough attention in class. At worst I just passed my tests and exams. Eventually I passed with an average score in the GCE Cambridge A levels examinations and saw most of my JC classmates making it into medical school. I shunned most of my classmates who all did very well unsurprisingly because they are all smarter than me and put in alot more efforts. I just felt so inferior. Staring at my results, I’d thought “what next in my life”? I ...
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    11 min
  • EP 2: Money And Me

    EP 2: Money And Me
    Jan 4 2023
    Hello and welcome to this episode. Today I want to share how my concept of being rich has evolved throughout my life, with its roots in my low-income family background right until today, where I am a post-graduate with a career as a professional in one of the largest industry in Singapore.My earliest memory from young was my mum drilling into all her three children that our mission in life is to study very hard, do well in exams, get into university, graduate and find a good paying job. In our minds, that was the formula to reach my mum’s target for us and that is supposed to lead us to some “happily ever after’. It was a common notion in society to measure success with the 5Cs when I was young: having cash, owning a private condominium, having a high-flying career that earns me a good five-figure income every month, owning a flashy credit card and having a coveted membership in one of the most expensive country clubs in Singapore. I thought having made it in life was deeply intertwined with material things that I own.After I received my basic architecture degree, I wasted no time in getting an internship in one of the up and coming architecture practice. During the briefing just after our submission of our final year project, my heart sank in dismay when it was shared that the expected normal market rate of our allowance in the next ten months we would receive as an intern was eight hundred to one thousand Singapore dollars. Bearing in mind twenty percent of it will be automatically deducted from this pay towards my Central Provident Fund, also known as CPF which would be stowed away for my retirement. Coupled with the fact that most architectural practices are in town area, it implied pricier food options during lunch and long commute via public transport.I had to think of creative ways to stretch my dollars to last the month, cab fares to and fro my project sites that were undergoing construction and working late into the nights. Unfortunately for the construction industry and people working in the creative line, late nights rushing paperwork, competition submissions and project pitches to potential clients are common but we are not paid overtime. Sometimes we get time off, simply because we were too exhausted to function the next day. I had thought naively in my younger days that passion will sustain me throughout my career, but starting my internship, reality hit me. We were expected to dress professionally well as the lead of consultants, and we are constantly judged by our appearance, whether by the clients, Contractors or even sales person selling us kitchen appliance for use in our projects. I was a candle burning at both ends without enough money for my own use and savings and I was tired of all the overtime work where I wasn’t entitled to any extra compensation. There was no way I could even start paying off my student loan with my measly allowance. To satisfy the criteria of working as an intern in no more than 2 firms, each with a minimum tenure of five months, I knew I must act once the minimum tenure of five months was up in the firm. I knew I was a cheap labour compared to a full time staff but I was certain I was a good pair of hands. I demonstrated my willingness to learn the ropes and proved myself to be able to run projects with minimum supervision. I went up to my boss and asked for a pay raise. Or I would leave for another firm. I was quite confident I delivered value to the firm and that they would try to retain me. My bosses probably also thought it was a better bargain to give me a pay raise than go through the whole hiring process and pay more for a full time postgraduate that they have to train all over again anyway. So yes, I was given a fifty percent increment. Yes, that’s right, it’s probably the largest percentage of pay raise I ever received in my working professional life. While a fifty percent pay raise to one thousand and five hundred Singapore dollars might not be alot to many who are listening to me right now but it was an achievement to me as an intern.I owe it to me to stand up for myself and ask for what I wanted. From this I learned the idea of “Ask and thou shalt be given”. Because if you never ask for what you want, who will ever give it to you? This notion of asking for the amount of what you deserve continues to influence me throughout my career. I was never shy of asking for a pay that commensurates with what I am able to deliver.Fast forward to being freshly graduated after my Masters degree following the internship, I was thrust into the 2007 financial crisis with two student loans to pay off concurrently. It was an understatement to say my dreams of reaching the 5Cs quickly evaporated by the harsh realities of the job market within weeks. My industry was hit hard, projects dried up and hiring was tightened. I found work eventually in a small architecture practice. With an eye-watering starting pay, I worked out my numbers in an attempt to...
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    11 min