I've been getting this question too much these days, about whether I've found employment. Today, my supervisor for FYP even asked if my parents were giving me any pressure about it. Yeah, they are starting to worry that their kid is unemployable, he whom they spent thousands on to buy a degree.
You know what's the problem with all of that? I'm really not unemployed of my own choosing. Nobody wants to be that bum in the corner who can't find a job. You become the same as that retrenched middle aged uncle, or that elderly gent by the roadside somewhere who's picking cans. Soon I'm actually going to stop throwing away cans because I can sell them myself. Yeah, its a free market and I'm going to compete with you, garang guni man. I'll even stop throwing out my newspapers.
I'm so unemployed, I found a job as someone's photography assistant. The job description? Carrying stuff around. Don't need any photography knowledge, don't even need a brain, just need brawn. And it's like ad-hoc. Which means it pays enough for me to last till my next job, and no more.
I'm actually doing a bangla's job now. Reminds me of the time a few years back when I applied for a job as a mover in an art gallery. I spent a day trying to move a plastic model of a tyrannosaurus rex and putting bags of rocks at its base so it wouldn't topple over and you know, go all Jurassic Park on me, like drop on you and sink its claws into your back. Then some bangla worker tried to get my number. I mean, I know that you guys hold hands and shit, but seriously?
Or the time I worked as a factory packer for 3 months. All I did all day was sort metal components into plastic bags, and I carried huge boxes full of those same components around. Some days the components were oily and smelled really bad, and when I took the train home, people gave me a wide berth.
And every day I would listen to the auntie in the packing room muttering at the supervisor incoherently, probably cursing him but after 30 years it just became unintelligible gibbering. Or the uncle just going about the same work carefully, 7 days a week. One day I visited him at home, and realised he actually had a fully paid up for 4-room HDB flat in Punggol, two grown up kids, and his flat was actually nice. That was social mobility right there.
Of course, it's also kind of ridiculous that people are telling me that I'm picky. You're picking a job here, you're going to wake up to it for the next few months or years of your life, and you shouldn't be picky? Come on. You know how much a job you hate sucks? It doesn't just suck, it sucks the life out of you, and then you become this little miserable piece of crap that hates on your friends. And I think all that pent up frustration takes years from your life man. I'm not saying that you have to love your job, but at least you shouldn't hate it.
Well, my definition of picky is "don't want journalism job, don't want civil service job, and don't want insurance job." Is that very picky? Hardly, considering I'm not qualified for almost all the other jobs outside of that description, and I'm willing to do just about anything as long as the pay is decent. Unfortunately, the civil service employs about 70% of Singapore's workforce directly or indirectly, so that might explain why I can't find a job.
Whatever. I have a break. I'm going to rock it.