| | The most frivolous mistake I committed in life would be that - following the mainstream crowd might not always be a good idea or a right decision. It was a huge regret I could never sleep well for over a year. I'd like to keep my story short.
I was a doing a Diploma in design in my early tertiary days, albeit having zero passion for design (or rather anything in life). My grades couldn't get me anywhere besides engineering but I chose not to proceed with it as Mathematics weren't my forte. I somehow conveniently ended up with my next available choice and it was none other than design. The next best thing you could have expected, I loathed my drawing blocks and the paint brushes because I felt unimportant and that I was not doing anything constructive. I managed to scrape through with zero passion and I was awarded with a useless piece of paper qualification - the Diploma. There came my next phase in life, compulsory national service - serving the military for two disgusting years. Instead of being out there carving a niche in my academia or career, I was out in the forest digging trenches, like the other unfortunate male citizens.
Being caught in a typical high powered Asian culture, the paper chase was deemed to be the only "right" thing to do for a better life. Two years of suffering in the military gone by just like that and I proceeded with the mainstream because it was considered the "wisest" thing to do - to pursue a bachelor's degree in university. That was the time I figured I was back on the right track and made the "right" decision so I ended up enrolling in a three-year Bachelor's Degree programme in Economics and Finance offered by an established and renowned Australian university. The thing in my mind was afterall, everybody was pursuing a university degree, it was the only right thing to do. It was a major switch for me, a total culture shock because instead of holding paint brushes and drawing blocks, I was back to my calculators and doing accounting once more. I started from scratch but never had issues with the examinations. I had so much fire in me and I worked hard even during my vacation breaks in established banks and government investment companies until I met my other half more than a year ago - who turned out to be a cabin crew for the best airline in the world.
Being with her meant I was exposed to everything of her job and before long, I knew everything about the industry inside out. It was right from the roster planning to the aircraft fleets, configurations, specifications, meal services and even the IATA country codes were behind my fingertips. I knew everything about their linked flights or turnaround flights, their 4-sector flights, their layovers, their residences, their staff numbers, their basic wages and allowances and just about everything a cabin crew should know.
This ceased the fire in me because I realised I was just about like the majority who blindly pursue a further education and I might either end up in the fresh graduate's unemployment statistics or end up getting a job with wages way inferior to that of a cabin crew, doing monotonous stuffs all day long with neverending overtimes. For a male in that airline, he could bag anything between three to five grand per month including allowances. The kind of money I see really screws my brain up all the time. A typical four-day Europe flight allowance would be equivalent to that of a month's wages for a bus captain here. The money keeps rolling in, right from the allowances to the gratuities and to the bonuses. You get to globe-trott all, enjoy the finest food and sights in life and you get to visit places people could only dream all their lives. An average salary of three to five grand per month is pretty good for those who don't even have a basic diploma I reckon.
The wise and thrifty ones would work for some five years, have an accumulated savings of a six-figure sum - the hundred grand mark. Some would purchase a private apartment and rent it out, quit flying and live on the yields from the rentals, brilliant isn't it? They eat good food all the time, branded bags and all they wouldn't mind splurging their entire allowance from a Europe flight just to get another costly designer bag from Milan. Their pictures are sprawled all over facebook from country A to Z. They lead the kind of high and glamourous life and this often makes me wonder, did I make the right decision of pursuing a university education?. The minority of brilliant ones joined the airlines after they graduated and they began their wondrous lives they could ever imagine of and some were hooked to the sweet wages and lifestyle they had difficulties in tendering their resignation even though they no longer had interests in their job. The more intelligent ones remained loyal to the airline and worked for them for their entire lives. I see the people in their mid-forties to fifties still in the airline as in-flight supervisors. I pretty much expect their basic and allowances to rake up an average of eight to nine grand per month, way too good for an uncle who only has GCE 'O' Levels qualification. I figured that would even make some pilots, the first officers that is, to be in the same situation as myself, which is to wonder why did they ever chose to painstakingly fly the aircraft and be held responsible for the many lives when a cabin crew's in-flight supervisors wages is nowhere inferior (except in annual bonuses).
The fire in me ceased but despite skipping 90 percent of the lectures and doing self-study all the time, I managed to breeze through my first two years of studies without much hassle with some couple of distinctions. I am struggling now, especially when I am at the maximum level of both macro and microeconomics, there's no better way to console myself and tell myself I would not die from the graphs. For all you know even if I graduated, I might be unemployed or even so employed, having minimum wages and maximum brain-spoiling plus daily overtimes, the crews on the other hand, having the best time in their lives and earning way more than me. I'm in my final year and my final phase and quitting was never an option because I have to finish up what I have started. I have plans when I graduate, probably becoming a cabin crew myself, or seek employment in the financial district in London because to live is to travel and I live to travel.
I feel really unsettled.
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| | Posted 7/11/2009 2:59 AM - 53 Views - 8 eProps - 4 comments
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