That familier feeling

It's been three weeks since I returned to Singapore.

Busy is not the word I will choose to describe how life has been since returning.

My three weeks have been filled with spending time with family and friends that I have not met up in quite some time.

The one question I get a lot from both family and friends is whether or not I am slowly adapting back to Singapore. Afterall, life in the Netherlands is slower paced than in our metropolitan society.

The answer I always give is yes. I never really lost touch with my Singaporean roots.
I still love the good old food and hawker fare that I can find easily and while I do go to bed hungry every night and I have had to withstand the sight of Boon Lay nasi lemak being consumed in front of me by my coursemates with healthier metabolism rates, I still can stomach a resistance towards the food around me.
Well, while I am sometimes sad that I restrict myself so much in terms of what I eat nowadays, the returns is that I can now fit into so many clothes!
The good thing about having a brother is that I am now about the same size as him and I can now freely wear any of his clothes. Essentially, my wardrobe just tripled and I did not have to spend a single cent!

Oh the perks of weight loss.
And not to mention my running: Perhaps I never really knew how much change occurred in me physically when I was in the Netherlands but back home, it really tells now.
Running in NTU last Wednesday made me feel alive, like I was when I was in junior college.
I pushed and pushed, but my body simply responded to my every whim and call.

I probably could lose even more weight if I wanted, but the one thing that is more important now is to maintain this weight. 创业容易，守业难.
The Chinese really said this line right, and I probably have seen too many occasions where people lose weight but six months down the road, they are right back where they started off.

So maintenance is the key for now.

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In recent times I found myself questioning myself why I chose to study this field of engineering which generally never pays well for fresh graduates.
I even went far enough to enroll myself in a networking sessions with global banks like Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Standard Chartered, Citi and Credit Suisse.
When the event occured, and despite me reading up on all the positions, I found myself devoid of questions to ask these bank representatives.
Perhaps I was never really interested in working in a bank, and while I agree that banking right now is really 'in' career choice, it is not a path that interests me currently and hence my feeling towards the event.

Not that other engineering graduates should not consider working in a bank. My take is that we have studied equally hard as the business students and so why should we not settle for their jobs when some of us might even be more analytical and shrewd when it comes to spotting market trends than the business graduates? Afterall, banks do mention explicitly that they hire anyone from any background so as long it is a good honour and the way I see it, it is definitely easier to get a good honours in a business degree than in an engineering degree.

It probably is a different ballgame altogether, but it is still a ball.
I was never really convinced that engineers would make good bankers but my auntie in Merrill did mention to me that half her office were all engineers who converted to working in a bank, simply because it paid better and their skills were up to the mark, so if you are good enough, why not?

Which brings me to the point that engineers in our part of the world are never paid enough.
In the Netherlands, I vaguely recall an aerospace engineer being paid as well as a lawyer, but sadly the context is far from being applicable here in Asia.

I once wondered cynically, what would happen if all the engineers in Singapore just walked out on their employers and decided to take an extended hiatus from work like their international counterparts?

Of course, that would never occur and I would not want it to, because Singapore's image is entirely built on the fact that we are a economy that runs like a smoothly oiled tranmission, ready for the next upgrade and capacity increase whenever required.

We're so American in working style and yet so British in the way we think.