No mention how to deal with a govt that is BEST PAID and MOST LEEGALLY CORRUPT, but cannot deliver.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>There's always someone worse off
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>It's time to stop the self-pity and be thankful for what one has amid the gloom </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Bertha Henson, Associate Editor
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->
Who is not afraid of what the future brings? With pay cuts, retrenchments and a hiring freeze happening all around, how can anyone who hasn't got a job be assured of getting one?
And how can anyone lucky enough to have a job still think he deserves to keep it?
This is the gloomiest economic weather to cloud our shores, says this child of the 1985 recession.
Then, I was lucky enough to be young - and hence supposedly endowed with unlimited energy. I had emerged from the education system with an adequate, if not sparkling, degree (note though, that in those days, not that many had a tertiary education). I also had a long list of extra-curricular activities to my name, which marked me out as more than just a bookworm.
=> ECA: Running bitch?
Yes, I was lucky and I landed a job with this newspaper.
But what if I was retrenched today, a 40-something with a degree from more than two decades ago, a knowledge base that equipped me for my current job, but perhaps no other? What if I had mouths to feed, children to put through school and elderly parents to support?
The burden seems unbearable.
Standing in the queue at e2i - a train-and-place agency run by the labour movement in Bukit Merah - recently, I had an inkling of what it is like to be begging for a job these days. There to accompany someone - let's call him Mr A - to help him communicate and fill up forms, I experienced the awkward moment of poising the pen over the blank space for educational level. Not applicable, I wrote.
What should happen then but for the person on the other side of the desk to exclaim: 'Ha? How come you never go to school?'
It was, needless to say, an even more awkward moment for Mr A, who is on the wrong side of 50. He piped up and told the woman, who looked to be in her 30s, that it was not uncommon in the old days to not go to school. This was the era way before compulsory education, when it was deemed better to get into the workforce as early as possible.
On my part, I was incensed at her insensitive exclamation. But as it was, the two of us who were on the receiving end simply felt 'small'.
It didn't help that what followed was a spiel on being employable and not being fussy, when what a person desperate enough to enlist for help just wants is a job and not a lecture.
It's real tough today to be an older person with no educational qualifications (by the commission or omission of their parents rather than lack of intellect or effort), and have only known a life of manual labour. The world of words and computer skills has passed them by, leaving them with just their willpower, stamina and brawn - albeit with weakened muscles as the years go by - to make a living.
Amid the hullabaloo over academic grades, specialist schools and winning in international competitions for maths and science, it is easy to laud the whiz kids and forget their parents.
We put our money in the future and celebrate their achievements, ignoring sometimes that there are older folk in the picture who struggle to make ends meet so that their children can rise.
Employers always look for someone younger. They say so over the telephone, immediately dismissing the need for a face-to-face meeting after they ask for the age of the candidate.
Even when Mr A succeeds in securing a job interview and convinces the prospective employer that he is in no way decrepit or disabled, the salary negotiations that follow are enough to make a grown man cry.
While employers might rant and rave about fickle employees who work one day and leave the next, there are also workers who complain about being worked to the bone for paltry sums.
In this buyer's market, there is no need to hire, say, both a driver and a deliveryman. One person can do both jobs, or so some think, for the price of one. Except that this depends on whether one man can really do the job of two, or have to take twice as long to do it - for no extra pay.
'Quitters' or 'job hoppers', the epithets employers like to use on workers, including those they exploit, are easily replaced these days.
There is no shortage of labour, local or foreign, willing to step into the breach for a day or two, before deciding that the work is too back-breaking to go on doing.
Then the hiring starts again.
So there we were in the queue at e2i, listening to a spiel on how Mr A should market himself and be labelled 'employable'.
The speech, recited in rehearsed English, was spoken too quickly for even this journalist to follow and too highfalutin for Mr A to grasp.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, we were not alone in having to sacrifice our dignity on the altar of those who might be able to give jobs.
Ahead of the queue were two Malay brothers pleading in broken English for any kind of job at whatever pay. In another queue, a middle-aged man begged in Mandarin for a job as a security guard as he had three mouths to feed.
These are the people who compare with others what they get in Workfare benefits and GST credits.
These same people probably queue every weekend to buy 4D lottery tickets in the hope of a quick fix to their financial problems or who turn to loan sharks for cash as they want no one in the family to know of their financial straits.
=> Still no mention "Jobs for FTrash, NS for Sporns" after so much talking cock!
What does a middle-class, well-educated single like me know of their fears or their aspirations?
Frankly, not very much.
And this is a child of the 1985 recession. I used to think I had it bad when I had to search for jobs after graduating in the middle of a recession. I remember turning up my nose at a $900 a month job, and demanding more as my entitlement to the good life.
Thinking back, I wonder: How dare I? Even today, I grimace at the pay cuts we have to endure, and the prospect of a year of work without a bonus.
Then I think of those in the queue that day, willing to do any kind of work for a salary that wouldn't pay for the clothes I wear. It makes me feel ashamed. [email protected]
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>There's always someone worse off
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>It's time to stop the self-pity and be thankful for what one has amid the gloom </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Bertha Henson, Associate Editor
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->
Who is not afraid of what the future brings? With pay cuts, retrenchments and a hiring freeze happening all around, how can anyone who hasn't got a job be assured of getting one?
And how can anyone lucky enough to have a job still think he deserves to keep it?
This is the gloomiest economic weather to cloud our shores, says this child of the 1985 recession.
Then, I was lucky enough to be young - and hence supposedly endowed with unlimited energy. I had emerged from the education system with an adequate, if not sparkling, degree (note though, that in those days, not that many had a tertiary education). I also had a long list of extra-curricular activities to my name, which marked me out as more than just a bookworm.
=> ECA: Running bitch?
Yes, I was lucky and I landed a job with this newspaper.
But what if I was retrenched today, a 40-something with a degree from more than two decades ago, a knowledge base that equipped me for my current job, but perhaps no other? What if I had mouths to feed, children to put through school and elderly parents to support?
The burden seems unbearable.
Standing in the queue at e2i - a train-and-place agency run by the labour movement in Bukit Merah - recently, I had an inkling of what it is like to be begging for a job these days. There to accompany someone - let's call him Mr A - to help him communicate and fill up forms, I experienced the awkward moment of poising the pen over the blank space for educational level. Not applicable, I wrote.
What should happen then but for the person on the other side of the desk to exclaim: 'Ha? How come you never go to school?'
It was, needless to say, an even more awkward moment for Mr A, who is on the wrong side of 50. He piped up and told the woman, who looked to be in her 30s, that it was not uncommon in the old days to not go to school. This was the era way before compulsory education, when it was deemed better to get into the workforce as early as possible.
On my part, I was incensed at her insensitive exclamation. But as it was, the two of us who were on the receiving end simply felt 'small'.
It didn't help that what followed was a spiel on being employable and not being fussy, when what a person desperate enough to enlist for help just wants is a job and not a lecture.
It's real tough today to be an older person with no educational qualifications (by the commission or omission of their parents rather than lack of intellect or effort), and have only known a life of manual labour. The world of words and computer skills has passed them by, leaving them with just their willpower, stamina and brawn - albeit with weakened muscles as the years go by - to make a living.
Amid the hullabaloo over academic grades, specialist schools and winning in international competitions for maths and science, it is easy to laud the whiz kids and forget their parents.
We put our money in the future and celebrate their achievements, ignoring sometimes that there are older folk in the picture who struggle to make ends meet so that their children can rise.
Employers always look for someone younger. They say so over the telephone, immediately dismissing the need for a face-to-face meeting after they ask for the age of the candidate.
Even when Mr A succeeds in securing a job interview and convinces the prospective employer that he is in no way decrepit or disabled, the salary negotiations that follow are enough to make a grown man cry.
While employers might rant and rave about fickle employees who work one day and leave the next, there are also workers who complain about being worked to the bone for paltry sums.
In this buyer's market, there is no need to hire, say, both a driver and a deliveryman. One person can do both jobs, or so some think, for the price of one. Except that this depends on whether one man can really do the job of two, or have to take twice as long to do it - for no extra pay.
'Quitters' or 'job hoppers', the epithets employers like to use on workers, including those they exploit, are easily replaced these days.
There is no shortage of labour, local or foreign, willing to step into the breach for a day or two, before deciding that the work is too back-breaking to go on doing.
Then the hiring starts again.
So there we were in the queue at e2i, listening to a spiel on how Mr A should market himself and be labelled 'employable'.
The speech, recited in rehearsed English, was spoken too quickly for even this journalist to follow and too highfalutin for Mr A to grasp.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, we were not alone in having to sacrifice our dignity on the altar of those who might be able to give jobs.
Ahead of the queue were two Malay brothers pleading in broken English for any kind of job at whatever pay. In another queue, a middle-aged man begged in Mandarin for a job as a security guard as he had three mouths to feed.
These are the people who compare with others what they get in Workfare benefits and GST credits.
These same people probably queue every weekend to buy 4D lottery tickets in the hope of a quick fix to their financial problems or who turn to loan sharks for cash as they want no one in the family to know of their financial straits.
=> Still no mention "Jobs for FTrash, NS for Sporns" after so much talking cock!
What does a middle-class, well-educated single like me know of their fears or their aspirations?
Frankly, not very much.
And this is a child of the 1985 recession. I used to think I had it bad when I had to search for jobs after graduating in the middle of a recession. I remember turning up my nose at a $900 a month job, and demanding more as my entitlement to the good life.
Thinking back, I wonder: How dare I? Even today, I grimace at the pay cuts we have to endure, and the prospect of a year of work without a bonus.
Then I think of those in the queue that day, willing to do any kind of work for a salary that wouldn't pay for the clothes I wear. It makes me feel ashamed. [email protected]
