When all goes well, leaders preach grand, noble values and belief systems, alluding to how good leaders they appear to be.

When things go wrong, watch carefully if your leaders walk the talk.

So much for all the fancy corporate values, mission statements and ethical standards.

At the end of the day, self-interest more often than not comes before any other value. I call this the value of “ME”.

The price of not succumbing to mediocrity, of upholding the values of honesty and integrity? Having to go through ridicule and insinuations of incompetence.

One wonders how long an organization can survive when honest and upright employees are not rewarded but instead punished for their honesty and integrity. This would only encourage employees to sink into mediocrity and adopt the wrong values for fear of harming their own career stability.

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It’s probably time for me to do myself a favour and salvage what is left of my dignity.

Dignity ain’t worth much money, but I guess I can easily find jobs out there paying more than what I have now and where I will get more basic human respect and dignity accorded to me.

Kinda sad. I know there are many people around me in my organization who wish for me to grow and succeed for the good work that I do, however, power ultimately lies in the hands of the boss. No matter what everyone else says, if I’m not in the boss’ good books colleagues’ support, my competence, diligence and talent won’t get me anywhere.

Time to wake up to reality.

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I guess not. This place is so choke full of politics that a day without some form of office politics makes me feel as though something must be wrong.

Am I doing a good job? I would like to think so. My direct superior wouldn’t think so because I stand in her way of claiming credit and I make her feel insecure because I outshine her.

Should I play as  some of my friends tell me to – suck up, make the boss feel good, let her take credit, let her feel secure to secure my own position. Not entirely bad and does make sense – but should I, and would this really work out the way it is supposed to be, or would it only make things worse by making her feel that she is invincible and can bully me more?

Or should I be the hero to myself and fight all the way for what I believe in… I think the chances of roadkill is pretty high and I might not survive with an intact reputation at the end of the day though.

What shit did I get myself into for goodness’ sake. I could have been earning 5 grand a month working just as hard as I am now in an investment bank job, or I could be just lounging around waiting for entry to a PhD program commencing later in the year.

What the hell am I doing with my life, and what can I get out of all these politicking.

I am so freaking tired of these games. And they are not getting me anywhere  either. I wouldn’t mind as much if there is a clear end in sight. I feel like I’m navigating in the dark and I’m not making any progress at all.

Most people tell me that it is the same everywhere you go. I guess so. Every organization has its fair share of politics and only fools believe in not dealing with politics.

But, consider – I am being cornered. I have nobody to defend me, although I know there are people who would like to defend me but they have their own problems to deal with and there isn’t much they can do for me either.

How shitty can the situation get, and what should I do?

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Been busy the past few months, working hard, trying to make a difference in my own life, my loved ones’ lives, and my organization.

Thought I’d start blogging again because this helps me to keep my sanity by allowing me to vent my frustrations and share my thoughts to nobody in particular (or whoever still bothers to read my blog). Sometimes when nobody is interested in hearing my stories perhaps blogging about them will make me feel better.

I just came back from Japan recently – visted Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo during Sakura season! It was pink and white everywhere and the shopping was awesome. Was pretty expensive though – thank goodness I had award air tickets!

If some of my old readers are still here, you may be wondering if  this is the same mrbiao as the mrbiao of the past 5 years. The answer is yes and no. Yes – I am still the same person, but No – I am no longer as pessimisstic as I used to be.

In everything I do, I always think positively but still remain conservative and maintain a fair bit of pessimism to keep myself in check. It’s working for me so far. And it does help to have happy people around me – especially some of my colleagues who are the most fun people to work with. I can’t say the same for others though – there are of course people who create challenges for me but I see that as character-building for myself when I have to deal with their antics.

As one of the colleagues I respect the most always says, if villians don’t exist in the organization, then life would be boring. I tend to agree. And afterall, some of those villians probably see me as a villian in their eyes anyway so whose to say who is good and who is bad? At the end of the day, I guess as long as one has a clear conscience it’s good enough.

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Unfortunately I have kind of abandoned this blog for the past few months as I had been busy settling down with my new job.

I make it no secret that I love my new job – I love what I have been doing, what I will be doing next year, the challenges and opportunities given to me, and my colleagues who are mostly very nice people. I look forward to going to work each day and learning new things… so much so that now that my office is closed from Xmas till Jan 3, I feel kinda lost just sitting around at home – but I haven’t been wasting time as I bought some books to read over this period.

I read somewhere that the most important step towards success is to love your job. When you love your job, you tend to be more motivated to work, and thus move towards success. Also, when you love y0ur job and enjoy your work, your co-workers can sense your happiness and passion and it does help to make the workplace more comfortable when people react positively to your enthusiasm. I think this is quite true.

However, the industry I am in and my current job pays, sadly, a rather mediocre salary. Hence I am giving myself 1 year to move up the ladder – may sound ambitious, but I think I can do it through delivering results. I gave up job opportunities paying easily 50% more than what I am drawing now to do something I like, but I am not going to be contented with this forever – I want a better future and I am motivated towards career advancement.

I hope I did not make the wrong career choice in the first place.

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Getting used to working with my new colleagues who are mostly very nice people, getting used to having back-to-back meetings all day long.

The only things I have yet to get used to are the constraints of working in a corporate environment – for example, not being able to make decisions independently as I am used to doing while running my own businesses and being my own boss. I hate it that I have to ask permission to do everything. I hate it when I am not being trusted to meet vendors by myself, or when people insist that I copy them in every single email I send out to vendors. I hate the painful process of getting 7 signatures on a simple purchase requisition, and the feeling of being snubbed by some colleagues who think they are smarter than me in every way.

Besides these, I really love my job, I really do.

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I had initially wanted to get a high-paying job in an investment bank or in the government sector so that I can save as much as I can in the first few years of my career. Then, the plan is to get married, have children and save enough to take a masters degree overseas – where I will be able to get a new job and relocate away from Singapore.

I really have to re-think my plans now… not that much has changed but with my current salary, it might take longer to reach my goals. And it is not always about myself – I also have to think about my significant other… this morning HDB launched unsold flats for sale and the neighbourhood where my family got an en-bloc replacement flat in is available for selection… albeit at a price much, much higher than what we paid during the en-bloc exercise.

I called to tell her about it and she asked if we should apply for one… sigh. She knows I have plans to relocate and she is not opposing it, but looking at the way things are, I guess it’s a case of whether we should “resign to our fate” and get a HDB flat, or to hold out for a better tomorrow, whenever it may come.

Comments are welcome.

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The pay is not fantastic, but they are offering me more than what they have originally planned for, and I must say that it is definitely competitive with market rates outside the government and banking sectors. So I am happy with it and excited about starting work next month!

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The irony of it is that they know that the pay is low, probably not even enough to feed a family – they are the ones being unrealistic, not me. Welcome to Singapore, where graduates are expected to earn scarcely enough to feed or start a family.

This afternoon I had a very different interview experience at another company. Unfortunately, the pay being offered is very low again. However, there is a very strong focus on work-life balance in this particular organization – little OT required, plenty of benefits geared towards ensuring work-life balance. I pretty much like the idea of working in this organization… and the job seems to fit exactly what I am looking for. The only downside is the salary being offered. But I might just take the low pay for the benefits.

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About 4 months have passed since I started job hunting. My typical day is spent at the PC, scouring job portals and all the websites of all good companies I can think of for job listings. I am maybe identifying suitable jobs at the rate of 1 job a day, sending out maybe 4 or 5 CVs a week. Not a lot, but I think its pointless to send out CVs for jobs that I obviously know nuts about or am totally not qualified for.

More than 50 applications sent, 12 interviews attended, 1 more scheduled for next week, and countless rejects (and non-responses) – I’m getting used to it. Just received a phone call from Citibank to inform me that, after 5 interviews, they decided not to take me. Just my luck for having an interview with a pissed-off VP who just lost all the data on his laptop harddisk prior to my interview.

Post-mortem of my interviews tells me that out of the 8 unique roles I interviewed for, I probably screwed 2 of them. And of course I got screwed on the Citi one.  I think I also went for an interview where the interviewers gave me the feeling that they had already found the people they needed and were just interviewing me for procedural purposes (i.e. maybe they had to interview a certain number of candidates before they can officially select one). The rest were more of cases of lack of good fit between my background and the roles.

Actually I am a little perturbed about why some (many) companies send me rejection letters without even granting me interviews for their graduate roles – the only plausible reason I can think of is that these companies (i.e., consulting firms) usually would fill their full-time vacancies by offering their past interns first and in times of economic trouble like now, maybe all their full-time roles are taken up by ex-interns. Another reason is perhaps they looked at my degree major and then assumed that it has no relevance to the roles.

No problem at all – I’ll just keep looking. I know I have a good CV, well-written cover letters, strong academic credentials and track record of achievements. I fare reasonably well in interview skills (according to my own assessment and my friends’), and I’m not asking for the sky (seldom do they discuss remuneration during interviews anyway). It’s just my luck to graduate at a time like this when the job market is down.

I am keeping a list of all my job applications’ statuses as well as the companies on my ‘hitlist’ of company web sites to keep track of for job postings. I think being systematic is important to ensure I don’t miss out any good jobs and lose track of my applications.

I’ll be off to Bangkok for the long weekend – actually makes no difference to me whether its a long weekend (or weekend) or not since I’m just bumming around. Hope to return with better luck for this job hunt.

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