Not going anywhere fast or at all for that matter

Like most other days, i often make the mistake of using social media (ie facebook / linkedin) and i see how far my former uni mates are doing. obviously, they're doing a lot better than i am. much better in fact. i feel disgusted at where i am. i'm not even a fucking wage slave, i'm tied to a chair doing work i don't like for a pay that's.... it's not bad, but it's not great either and for what? a boss who's attempting to micromanage everything in malaysia from shanghai. i can sort of see why the previous batch of managers and executives left.

so, i'm going to rant because that's what blogs are for and if the powers that be decide to allow my friends, family or even people at work to find this then so fucking be it.

my dad wanted me to become a lawyer. not sure why he thinks its a great idea frankly. he probably wants someone to inherit his law firm though i am fairly certain and adamant that it'll not be me. i don't like reading legalese anymore than i like reading contracts. last time, i got fucked over by some singaporean bitch who thinks herself a great ad director because i did not have a solid hard copy contract that explicitly delineates what each party is supposed to do. i understand the importance of knowing how to read a contract. i understand that it is also important to learn the laws of a country. but that does not mean i need to become a lawyer to do so. i can't stand sitting in a room day after day, poring over books to find a chink in my opponent's case and argument in a way that he interprets the law. i mean don't get me wrong, i'm sure it makes for great tv otherwise we won't have lawyer flicks or even Phoenix Wright for that matter. but reality? i see my dad doing case after case and so far, only a few of his clients are really grateful for all he does. not that my dream industry has a lot of singing angels to be fair. but the point is that, really... i don't have that sort of mental fortitude needed to deal with both shitty clients, look at my opponents every argument for chinks and also have to study the laws. i'm not great at persuading people, i think i'm fairly certain in that too. i think the part that makes me even more upset is that it's a sterile office environment. for me? that's where my dreams go to die. i would rather self-immolate than sit inside an office.... the irony is not lost on me.

so, here i am. i sit in an office only to use facebook..... and twitter and instagram and emails and wordpress. social media, is the way to conquer the minds of the feeble. i myself, am occasionally feeble minded enough to partake in social media groups but not twitter though because for me sitting there reading about someone's thoughts every 2 minutes seems a bit of a drag. its a gigantic irony i find to do digital marketing. or marketing in general but i'll get to that in a bit. ok, previously i had fun in my office. i could go and do some design work. wasn't very good at it, just ask my former boss in the other department, but i did improve and then i decided i'd go help in the digital marketing side... seemed like a good idea at the time. the only upshot is that i'm reasonably comfortable on my chair and i'm not working directly with possibly the worst marketing manager this side of selangor. i mean... how bad does it have to be that one of the company's supplier's marketing manager sighs heavily and annoyedly at the mere mention of your name? how?

anyway... i do occasionally need to work with her. just... treat her with the same respect you'd give to your computer. no wait... i give my computers more respect... anyway just treat her like that colleague whom you need something from but secretly despise. you would think that working on social media is very entertaining and very relaxing. it isn't. i've had to deal with so many brain dead customers its a wonder that the nation's general IQ hasn't fallen. eg. i put up a poster on facebook telling people that my company has a new contest coming and here's how to join it. few seconds later, i get questions in the comments going: "how do i join?" let me be clear. i posted a poster that was of high resolution, reposted the instructions in the description box and had gone through the instructions with other managers several times to make sure that they were simple enough to understand. so, how mentally retardedly unobservant do you have to be not to know how to join? wait, it gets worse.

i hate doing customer service. unfortunately, this is one of the things that comes with doing social media, you will eventually need to open channels of communication with customers. if you even so much as blink wrongly, you'll get a tonne of backlash for it online. and for a company of company's size, it's something we simply cannot afford... also because it'll get me fired. its maddeningly difficult, especially if you're dealing with self-entitled fucking chinese 'aunties'...'specially the ones from puchong because they mostly think that we owe them free classes. i recently got some fucking cancer survivor who had unfortunately gotten a pack of flour with maggots inside them.... that isn't nice or is it very good. being professional, i sought to try and fix the situation. obviously everyone else in the company just followed policy.... the "cancer survivor" demanded compensation otherwise she would put out a public complaint.... see the problem is that she no longer has the receipt for the flour bag. my company needs the receipt so that we can check when she bought it and so that we can replace it. company policy states that if you've no receipt, you cannot swap the product. also the swap has to take place within 1 day for food stuffs and 3 days for non-foods. but i was prepared to override the rules because: a) the flour costs RM 2 and b) so that the "cancer survivor" bitch would shut up. boy, i got a big fucking slap on my face. "THANK YOU BUT NO THANK YOU, YOU THINK I WANT MORE OF YOUR MAGGOT FLOUR ISIT?!~ GOOD DAY!" love the fucking cancer survivor.... maybe don't go and make your photos public right? also, if you're so upset about the flour, stop baking, it isn't good for your lymph nodes sweety.

these are just some of the customer service stories from my end. retail customers can be some of the worst creatures on the planet. clearly, this is how you make a housefly look more benign.

let me get back to the marketing bit as promised earlier. so, ok. marketing at its bare basic is noise making, trumpeting and in a way, saber rattling. its noise making because you need to attract people to your product. what are your product's good points. you need to trumpet creatively to get people's attention.... and also so that you can get sufficient sales to cover the cost of the trumpet. it's saber rattling because you need to make more noise than your opponents.... that was just a random word that i found that might link to the general idea.... but maybe, just maybe, your marketing campaign is so effective it'll force your opponent to rethink his grand strategy... i have not been able to do that online yet, and with my current resources, i doubt i'll even make them cry... laugh maybe but not much else.

i do despise the necessary evil that is marketing. too little marketing and your good product will never get sold. too much marketing and to me that sort of becomes grasping at straws to figure what is exactly nice to say about your product. its very difficult to find something nice to say about your company's own chocolate when there are so many other similar quality chocolates out there already. then, you do have the nastier bits of marketing. massaging the truth so that your products are actually better sounding than they are. you can make it seem that your product has little to no down sides. that feels disingenious enough that i don't even want to be near marketing. fortunately, i have not yet had to do this, but the way things are going, i think it'll be a matter of time.

frankly? my company is not doing well and will not be doing well in the coming years. i have never understood the reason for the big boss maintaining the company. he's clearly done very well for himself in shanghai and will continue to do well. the other share holders and directors just appear to be tagging along for the ride.... as weird as it may seem. the big boss only comes to town once or twice a year, if we're unfortunate enough. he doesn't want to deal with his company's issues. there's a lot of compounded issues here that'll continue to fester in the company. just recently, another batch of managers left too, this time, seasoned retail outlet managers. this is similar to an army having all its platoon sergeants either being killed off or deserting the army; its not just bad for morale, it is indicative that there is something deeply wrong with the army if the rank and file are also choosing to leave. your issues at hq should not have such far reaching effects! obviously, this ties in with the marketing manager and the way things are handled. the new inventory management system is also linked to the financial management system and based on it, it appears to be causing more problems than it is solving. the system provider... who is incidentally the company's consultant too keeps pinning on human error.... which in turn has caused another senior finance executive to leave. this is not forgetting that on the purchasing side, they're either undermanned, mismanaged, misguided or all three. if the system is to be trusted then they're undermanned and mismanaged. however, if the system is indeed at fault, then they've been misguided. it gets fucking stupidly murky at this stage.

a lot of the issues here do not affect me directly, other than having to liase with purchasing to figure out which items i can put on sale... haven't tried liasing with them for that yet but i'm terribly worried about how it'll end.



i think if you want to look at the whole matter from a different perspective, you can look at me. so far, i've been raised reasonably strictly, but all this has done is prove that i have to score well in everything. this is also with regards to me not doing so well in college. i've made mistakes and have considered just ending the whole piece of shit i call my life over and over. i have since learned it would cause more problems for my family and have decided against it but this is fucking close to being torture.

i think there's a certain small masochistic pleasure i get when i see my former uni mates go about achieving their dreams and here i am in a fucking dump. actually, i like to make myself feel even lower in rank than garbage because i also recall i have little to no skill in anything i have ever done. i think i find it reassuring that even if i put in all my effort, gave my everything, sacrificed health, sanity and soul i still would not have gotten a distinction in anything. i would be that random, small oddball in the corner of the room... sort of like that shit stain that won't disapper but doesn't stink enough that you'd notice its there.

i feel rather resigned to my fate that i'm not destined for anything. i've tried fighting and i've just ended up in a dump. offices are where dreams go to die. i'm sincerely hoping all that its done is put my dreams in a coma. i don't quite feel it anymore. i'm 26, i can't pull all nighters as frequently or as regularly as i could. i certainly can't be hired by an animation or games studio anymore either. i have not had any fucking time to put together reel. i have no time to even practice animation. fucking hell, even my doodling has been affected. and for what? to go and do a series of fucking events nobody except the boss cares about? he's not even there! what does he fucking care if anyone turns up? i'm willing to bet we lose more money doing shitty events than we gain from them. maybe if the big boss can admit that he needs to be back in malaysia to sort things out, he might be able to fix things, but i doubt it. in his own words: "why the fuck do i hire you people? i should just replace you all with clerks!"

fucking do it you piece of shit! come on, do it. if you are as great as you claim to be, give me my 6 months of pay, i'll gladly fuck off so you can hire a 2 bit clerk to go and settle everything for you. you don't appreciate the effort we put in. all we get is a lousy thanks that feels more rote than students singing negaraku.

i need to get out of here. i have never been driven to blog before but i have now. my parents will hate me for this but fuck it. i am not made to live inside an office.

Waking up in Singapore

For a long time, I called Singapore home; that's about 5 years and give or take a few months. It wasn’t a difficult move from Malaysia. The plan was simple, I would leave Malaysia, hopefully for good, to go to study in Singapore and secure a permanent job there for a time. Singapore would be my stepping stone. It sort of was and wasn’t. But the thing is here, I could appreciate things others might have taken for granted a lot better.

To give context to what I mean, I have to give more of my background information. I was raised in a relatively strict family. My mum would be the whip or cane while my father was more lenient but not by that much in comparison. My mum frequently blew her top and my dad less so, though it was never any less scary. Almost everything in my life up to this point was directed and advised by my mum. Course, if I couldn’t take or understand certain things to my satisfaction, I would not do them or do them well. An example that my mum regularly brings up is my piano classes. I did not understand at the time why music was so important and never gave any time to practice and even if I did it was always begrudgingly and so as to not get scolded further. I never moved past beginner level, which was fine because piano classes were expensive and I didn’t appreciate the instrument when I was younger. My mum assumed because that as a child I would automatically go and learn a new subject and take to it. Music and learning piano was good for the brain, that was her understanding. Course, to me at the time, I didn’t want anything to do with it because it was time being taken away that I could waste on other things I preferred. It was only in college that I realized music would’ve been important to me more literally if I could actually use it in a project rather literally, rather than follow some expert’s theory that it would grow the brain in a more balanced manner. I still do not regret that decision not to pursue music at the time because I didn’t understand the importance.

Anyway, my household has always been very strict. As such, I grew up rather polite and friendly because if I was rude in any way, I would be scolded and punished for even the slightest thing. Sounds harsh but I appreciate the efforts my parents put in so that I would not grow into a little shit like most other children these days. For me, responsibility was more about doing something so I wouldn’t get scolded. I grew not to know how to appreciate positive feedback  because I very rarely ever received nice comments. As my ex so succintly put it, I was an emotional dwarf. I never knew how to react in a public situation because my mum would always take the lead and I would just follow. There were so many things in life I grew up expecting there to be certain rules and ways to do things simply because my mum would scold me if I didn’t do it “properly”. Of course, because of this I would get stuck in certain modes as I wouldn’t get scolded this way. Ridiculously enough, my mum would still scold me for being inflexible. Rather fortunately, I was very open to new ideas, which is why I frequently rebelled against everything and anything being forced onto me. This is the part of me that my mum hates but I feel she never understood or bothered to learn why.

In a way, my biggest act of rebellion was to badger my parents to send me to Singapore. Well, not so much badger, suggest. The act of badgering was to ask them to get me into an art college. I had to prove that doing animation was both profitable and good. I managed to sell my case to my mum though my dad had difficulty understanding it and always insisted I go to learn law which was a laugh because every time I stepped into his study room it was so choked full of law literature that I was always daunted by it. At any rate, my initial frolicking about in an art college was at The One Academy. That was an…. Interesting and necessary experience. From there I learned what to expect from an art school and what might make a good art school. After dropping out, I set about moping and looking for a new college. Eventually, I took up my mum’s suggestion and we took a trip down to Singapore to check out the offerings. I tried for Digipen but the requirements were a bit….high. I did however get a lead from there to try out at LASALLE. To this day, LASALLE has been my most important milestone, next to joining a certain baking retail company.

This started my actual learning phase. Learning about life, not just art and animation. The most important ingredient to this was the freedom from my parents. In Singapore, I could actually and finally be myself because I had breathing room. Don’t get me wrong, I will always be grateful for my parents near harsh upbringing and they did do it well. I didn’t turn out a piece of shit. However, it was in Singapore that I was able to finally learn how to socialize properly. I had to learn how to make decisions on my own and above all, actually live life the way I wanted to. My life will never be the life that my parents want it to be, which is fine because I’m happy even if my line would never be stable.

Singapore gave me my first girlfriend, subsequently ex. Being here also taught me how to appreciate my family more. My living was in stark constrast to some of the more, debilitatingly spoilt students and some of the most hard working students who were ferociously and proudly independent. I knew I had to strive to become even more independent. That materialized for only a short while. After graduating from LASALLE, there was the problem of work. One good thing about Singapore was how much of a slap in the face it gives you when it comes to grant repayment: you can have a degree but still wind up working as a road sweeper, just to pay off your grant and the Singaporean Ministry of Education won’t give a fuck about it.

This aspect of living in Singapore always rankled. The ideal situation would be that you apply what you learned in Singapore and actually contribute to your industry in Singapore, not work as a shop assistant at the arse end of the industry; selling accessories and merchandise that related to animation. Life is like that though. I eventually stopped work and had to leave Singapore as my passes expired and no one would hire a Malaysian when they had quotas of Singaporeans to fulfill. I have seen so many companies get their desired talents turned away because they needed more Singaporean talents…. In certain cases, Singaporean talents that realize that working actually involves work and run away after a single day, bringing everyone back to square one.

And so, here I am, on my way back to visit my brother in Singapore. He’ll have a much better chance than me because he’s in the business field and Singapore could always use more of those. I think the most important thing about Singapore was that it was safe enough that I could have enough freedom to learn more about myself and to figure out how to live life. A lot of my life growing up was very metered, very measured. I could never go and take an extensive risk without getting a chiding from my parents. I suppose my failure to get a first degree from LASALLE has continued to contribute to this issue. Growing up, I think I have never been allowed room to fail. Failure is important. It is living through and past failure that life shows you how not to do certain things. It is important because it is part of experimentation, to see what works. My parents never tolerate failure I feel. This is most likely the reason why I myself and afraid of failure. But now, pushing close to 26, I realize, I do need to fail or attempt to fail in the hopes that I do not. Because sitting here in a stupid office chair waiting for the right moment feels fucking dumb. I find it ironic that they themselves keep reminding me to try different things but all I see is them insisting their methods are correct. I know that they are, but they will never bring me the results I need: actual work in a creative field. They are thinking of stability. Stabilty means money, less stress and absolute boredom. A life of febrile servitude to a corporate being that cares not a whim for the individual employee. Now, that is not life, that is stagnation. That is the way to developing a mid-life crisis and I will not have any part of it.

Writing this now, I do believe it is time to just up and quit. Start afresh. Have actual goals that I know I can and must accomplish. My goals will be more of a loose series of guidelines and targets. But it matters not, long as I do not die in an office chair, I’m happy. So, thank you Singapore for the unexpected freedoms you’ve allowed me from my parents. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate my parents for doing the things they’ve done and in fact, love them for it, but I do value freedom just a bit more than the stiff rules they have set up for me in the past.