OK, enough of beating around the bush and let's get started!
First resignation of year 2021
It was not a bad job, really. I missed working with folks in Trinity Auto whereby they were looking forward for my effort in helping them to market/advertise their luxurious used cars. I wanna thank the boss and his wife (who interviewed and decided to employ me) for giving me the opportunity to do my best again in online marketing (after my attempt with Bikelah). Coworker were nice people and the management was doing their best to retain staff by having lots of celebration and post work party. Don't get me wrong, the boss is damn serious about his job that I heard how hard it was for him to start off with just a small used car office to current scale of business (with a huge fleets of luxurious used cars). They take good care of used car and offer good price for anyone who is willing to let go of his/her automobile and the boss made sure that buyer is getting a nice car from him despite it is an used car.
It was an eye opening experience for me to look at how big pile of cash notes it is when someone has to buy a car with more than RM 100,000+ in notes. It took an hour to calculate that pile of money, mind you. If anyone of you is looking to sell your car for extra cash or looking for quality used car (it does not have to be a luxury car), go check them out.
"So, why do you left the job?", you may ask.
Well, because I was offered another job that I have passion in, it is about cycling!
It is fun to work with your passion, until the boss thinks that I am a threat to the company
Well, not exactly, but it is more like "a great man cannot brook a rival" aka "there cannot be two tigers on a hill" equivalent in Chinese idiom. The owner of the famous foldable bicycles shop on Penang island actually cried when he handed me the dismissal letter after my resignation in April because I did the same when both of us agreed that we are passionate about bicycles but the way of developing business were way too divergent for him. Been the only executive staff in his shop, I guess I am not good enough for him when he had high hope on himself and me.
I got the business development executive vacancy at his shop from my friend who happened to know this job opening from the boss' wife. Happily thinking that I have broader job scope to test my skill sets in developing the bicycles, of course, I accepted the offer after the interview. The coworkers at previous used car shop were happy for me, too because they did know that cycling is my passion (justified by my commute to company by road bikes everyday).
All the best to you, PG Cycle Spot.
RM 5000 monthly as a Customer Service? When it sounds too good to be true, it is!
To be fair, the company do have a seemingly legit interview or intake process where I filled up lengthy intake form, did a typing speed test (waw, people still care about typing speed nowadays!) and there was a second interview by the person in charge of Dubai office where I would being working should I decided to fly back in April.
Why is it so fishy about this job that I decided to pull off the idea of taking it? Well, they are operating online casino business and despite much assurance provided by the recruiting company, I just didn't feel right about this job that I dreamt about being bullied by the hostel mate of Dubai workplace and I could not find much info about the company that I was going to work for. One particular thing that raised my red flag was that when I mentioned about specific work permit that is required by Dubai immigration department, the recruiters were avoiding the topic. In a nutshell, out of my consciousness, I decided to reject the offer that sounded too good to be true. If you can read Mandarin, I actually wrote about this experience in detail, in my Chinese blog.
This is not the only fraudulent experience this year, here comes the one that taught me well
Been bogged down with inability to get a proper job ever since I quitted counseling career/business, really got into me.
At first, I was quite suspicious about it and I googled about it. I could find any back then because I believed I belonged to the "first batch" or "pilot victim" of new scam campaign organized by those bad ass during this challenging COVID era.
From hindsight, I found myself to be appropriately fell into the Fraud Triangle whereby I was pressured to get a new job when my saving is slowly depleting and I saw the opportunity to get quick return as temporary income before I got a proper job. Like you may have expected, I lost my trading capital (roughly RM 21,000+). If you are interested about what and how the scam is executed, you could read similar case in Singapore and Shopee's official counterstatement here.
Thank God, I still left with cash to continue my life and my life saving is still intact. I would like to apologize for those who were involved during that 3 days of turbulent moment where I was asking for fund from them to continue on "the purchases" which may eventually ended up with illegal loan because I could no longer get any fund from persons I know but from the suspicious party who is running all this shows around. What a way to sell your loans, Ah Long!
"But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me." ~ 2 Corinthians 12:9
Yep, Lord, this is the reason why I disclosed this story for those who read this account of mine (and forgive me for not relying on you but too focus on my effort to sustain life back then). For every bad situation we faced, I believe there is something we could REALLY learn should we spend some time in reflecting after such episodes happened. Not that I trust people less but I am aware that there is such profession called social engineering (or commonly known as social hacking or scam) and it is actually a subdiscipline of cybersecurity whereby it no longer stays digital or online but it has gone hybrid (online + offline). I am still churning huge amount of data from this site and I recommend it if you are interested to know more about social engineering or get to know some simple steps to protect yourself in current chaotic situation.
How about experiencing life as full time food delivery rider?
Be your own boss and work anytime you want! Yes, the advertiser/food delivery companies are not wrong technically because the contract we signed was a service vendor contract whereby we are not their employee but service provider (aka slave workforce because there is no insurance and allowance provided in spite of our hard effort).
Don't get me wrong, it is not a bad job because I enjoyed traveling around Penang island, meeting various Penangite who treated me differently. It reminds me of attitude lesson in social psychology whereby people who would react differently on a job which is socially perceived as lowly job. However, when there is the option left for me and COVID was quite manageable back in June, it was a nice work life to travel around island and explore various undiscovered terrain on Penang island (I had an order which required me to deliver to a person on uncharted area on Google Map that I felt fortunate that the person actually picking up my call to verify the location).
With this experience gained, I am sure it helps me to empathize with fellow riders who had to stay with this job due to various reasons, too. I thank all those nice customers who tipped me on bad weather, talked with me, provided me an insurance agent job offer (which eventually I ignored because I don't think I wanna go back to sales oriented job again?), and treated me as if I am a COVID patient (which reminded me to be mindful that I might be bringing virus to someone's home).
Of course, I didn't give up on continuously looking for better job while I was delivering foods. Yes, it was a nice job but I want something that can develop further from current laboring effort. I wrote about this job in detail and you can check it out here.
Taking care of a bakery
If I would rate about the jobs that I had in year 2021 (have you lost count?), the worst one would be this one at a bakery chain (dare not mention it since the boss had a history to sue his ex-employee during one of the commercial dispute).
Firstly, I don't get the job I interviewed for (OK, maybe if you dispute that I should had be thankful for someone is willing to hire me on this tough time) but a rather vaguely described position which in the end, I was just a shop attendant (I actually interviewed for online marketing position). With no clear job description we mutually agreed on (no document was signed again during employment embarkment!), both employer and me cannot keep each other check on accountability and job expectation. That was why we are upset with each other when I had my own way to manage their commercial communication in WhatsApp (where the boss didn't brief me about it and asked me to handle it). I deleted messages about completed order but saved all previous customers' contact as part of CRM but both the husband and wife were unhappy about it. It is OK, you're the boss.
But I didn't expect them to criticized me personally when they blasted an email to my current employer (which was my potential employer back then). I think we should handle human resource communication professionally, and not disclosing it to non-relevant party. On top of that, the boss actually scouted info about me with my previous employer due to his bakery's proximity to the bicycles shop. Of course, I don't care about how an individual will run their due diligence on potential employee as long as it serves its purpose but when he kept shaming me on my faith values and entrepreneurship failure (counseling services) by boasting about his past ("that we are so poor that we only had money!") and current achievement, it made me wonder why I would want to serve a company like that.
If the only reason that keeps me on the job is because of higher pay as compare to previous job, I knew that I can find anyone as long as I could leave this toxic workplace. Hence, I found my current job.
Back to customer service and multinational company
My first job after bachelor graduation was with Expeditors (a freight forwarding MNC), and yes, I was a customer service agent who dealt with daily air freight loads of Free Trade Zones factories on Penang island. It was a good pay job back then where I got to received 19 months pay from 12 months work (yes, logistics are still very lucrative business). The reason I left the job was the amount of workload that I had to cover for irresponsible coworkers under the name of "team work" (ya, team lead of my team back then did not handle well).
Thank goodness, it is not the case for current job whereby each customer service agent handles his/her own workload allocated by AI and there is minimal competitiveness in work. I thank God for putting me in current job where I am happy with the pay, workload and coworker, though there is still much room of improvement to sustain this job.
That is not the only thing to be grateful for year 2021, but if you are aware about my frequent posting about its product update, you know that I am such a great fan of Clubhouse, a social audio platform.
So what is a social audio app? Another hype up social media platform?
Well, judging from the number of users left on this app, some may argue that it is indeed a hyped up app but we are actually seeing the raise of social audio platform when netizens are starting to be fatigue with visual oriented social media consumption.
Social audio is a subclass of social media that designates social media platforms that use audio as their primary channel of communication. This can include text messages, podcasts, tools for recording and editing audio in addition to virtual audio rooms (Wikipedia). In another words, it is a interactive podcast platform whereby an user is able to have 2 way conversation with another user in a shared session instead of one way communication found in typical podcast usage.
Why am I so grateful and committed in this social audio app? I was able to discuss various topics with people who are serious about certain topics (but please avoid politics Rooms as they usually ended up as yelling space which hurts your ears and soul) and I was able to rekindle my interest with photography as I listen to a Hong Konger photographer who shares in depth about famous photographers, history of photography and historical milestones of photography development weekly. He even prepares a slides for us to refer and doing this for free! I welcome you to join us if you are into photography and understand Cantonese.
The other reason of using this app is that it may be a good tool to practice speaking certain language with native speakers. There are numerous clubs in the app that serious language tutors are providing good tutorial in many common language pairs (such as Japanese-English-Chinese). I am thankful that I managed to practice my broken Japanese, Hakka and Cantonese with native speakers since I don't get to speak frequently in daily life (not to mention I am working from home!). To learn any language in natural approach, it is advisable to follow this sequence: listen → speak → read → write → translate.
Besides that I got learn about speaking properly with Malaysian-sure-knows uncle Raymond Goh who is still the midnight English news anchor ever since I was at my primary schools! Users get to know him more personally and get tips on how to speak professionally like him! Unfortunately, he is only managed to have sharing session randomly due to his work schedule for the time being but if you really wants to know more, come join us!
Behold, the Dan-Sya-Ri!
Declutter, in English if you are wondering what that is. Nope, I don't read or watch Japanese's endorsement material despite it is heavily depicted as Japanese idea among public perception. This year, I am lucky that I am able to liquidate (or turn something into cash) a lot of my physical stuff for those appreciate them, such as this pile of thing!
Not that I don't like Gunpla anymore, but I guess they are a waste if they cannot be displayed properly after they are built and I am thankful that I managed to get some commission work to build and buyers to buy my craft. I would like to come back to this hustle (not hobby because it can make money for me) someday in future when I have more time and money for it.
Oh, I donated my bed and extra TV for trishaw man who may appreciate it more than I do. Thank you Urban Life Volunteers for providing me this chance to declutter my room. Keep up the good work in helping those homeless trishaw men during this hard times.
It feels that when we are able to provide for others who may be in need for such blessing bestowed upon us, isn't it?
But don't impose this value to your loved one because it may turn into emotional blackmail like this case in Malaysia...
Lastly, I have another thing to be thankful for this year.
Finally, I am with Macintosh.
Amidst of all these hoo-ha that you have read so far, I am still able to buy an Apple computer. I don't consider that is a luxury purchase because I have elaborated my point in previous post about how RISC computers are going to replace those CISC computers in near future.
To begin with, it was not that I want to make a big purchase in this chaotic period of mine but my desktop PC broke down at the beginning of this year when I relied on it to execute most of my personal tasks and side hustles.
Given that I am not a content creator which requires to render heavy media and I hardly play games on computer, this M1 Apple Mac Mini does serve me well so far. Well, I still need to develop the habit to switch shortcut key from Windows (Windows button + relevant shortcut key) setup to Mac version (Command button + relevant shortcut key) while still physically hitting a Windows layout keyboard... Never too old to learn, since "a young idler, an old beggar" reminds me to keep learning.
So, what's in store for 2022?
Gonna ask from God, actually... Haha...
I pray to be more faithful, healthiness for me and whom I care, and should there is thing that I cannot change, I need to be patient to endure the hardship given that every challenge is arranged for us so that we can endure it (1 Corinthians 10:13).
For time being, my only plan is to raise my trading capital once again so that I can go back to my favorite trading marketplace and continue to see how commodity markets are going.
Oh, maybe I should take up data science course, too since its skill sets are much sort after by established companies. Not to mention that I am still not giving up on my Neo Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Chartered Financial Analyst exams and Parktool Professional Bike Mechanic course!
If you are still reading thus far, thank you for spending your time and do let me know how was your year 2021 been for you? You may also leave your comment so that I can improve my writeup through your valuable input. =)
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