And how many zeros would you like on your pay check?
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news-today.world | Hi guys. I am finally back from Barcelona - it is a city I have been to before but I always have a brilliant time in Spain. There's a theme that I would like to talk about but first, let me tell you why I was in Barcelona. I was attending the Global ABS conference and it was a gathering for anybody who was somebody in the capital debt markets world with attendees from all over the world. There was a packed programme over three days (Tuesday to Thursday), though the networking and partying started from the Monday onwards. The moment I got off the plane, I jumped in a taxi with my boss to the first networking event and it was in one of the most chic bars on the beach in the Barceloneta neighbourhood. Unlimited alcohol, the best Spanish Tapas money can buy and a lot of people who were either semi-drunk or quite drunk. Whilst I enjoy good food, I am always a little bit uncomfortable being in the company of drunk people as I am not a drinker at all and I like to separate work & play: in my mind, getting drunk and being relaxed is something you do with your friends, not whilst at an event representing your employer. Oh and as always, if you wanna see the photos/videos from this trip, you'll find them on my Instagram feed.
But that was just the first night, the partying went on every night we were at the event in Barcelona, with each big bank and law firm trying to outdo each other by getting the best venues - from rooftop bars to beachfront venues, everywhere you went, you saw bankers and lawyers with so much money partying in style. I usually bailed by about 9:30 pm or so because such events are just not my style, I remember one night sitting on the beach a short walk from the noisy bars and watching the sunset. I had far more fun just enjoying that little moment of peace on my own than at the bar earlier with all the bankers. I recently watched the film 'The Wolf of Wall Street' on the plane whilst on my way back from Hong Kong and the kind of excessive hedonism and extreme partying you see in that film is not some crazy fantasy that some Hollywood writer came up with - such is the world I inhibit now, if you think I am making a good living, there are guys who are earning a few million pounds with each deal they make and hence for them, they easily get to the stage where they are clearly making more money than they can spend in this lifetime. If they have children, then the children have a substantial inheritance to look forward to but if they don't have dependents (or if you expect them to make their own millions), then it's a question of spending all your wealth before you die on champagne, caviar, luxury hotels, private jets, yachts, diamonds and sports cars. Quite simply, they have so much money they don't know what to do with it - they keep spending but they are still so freaking rich as they keep making so much money. Yup, that's another world altogether.
So for my younger readers who have yet to enter the working world, let me try to break it down for you like this. I am going to measure this in terms of how much each person makes per month and at the event, you had the whole range. I am only going to go by the number of zeroes in each monthly paycheck. So at the venue (the CCIB Barcelona), you had staff who are doing menial tasks like cleaning the toilet, security, delivering the catering supplies and they are unskilled labourers who make about under a thousand euros a month (hence those making 3-figures a month). Then you have the slightly more skilled staff like those who are serving the delegates coming from all over the world and the default language they use is English, so typically you had young graduates who have are vastly over-qualified for their jobs, doing something as simple as helping delegates register and getting their delegate badges - really, you don't need a degree to do that, just a basic command of English. But you get the idea, people like that probably made between 1000 to 2000 euros a month for jobs like that, so we're now into 4-figures a month. I also met some young graduates from a company selling some kinda of market intelligence report that would probably be interesting for most of the people at the event, but it's the kind of thing I imagine that the company would probably get for their employees rather than what I would personally subscribe to. I imagine the better sales people there would make between 5000 to 8000 euros a month, but this is all dependent on their sales figures for the month.
Then we're into 5-figure territory where you either have experts who are highly skilled at what they do or you have salesmen who are extremely successful at earning loads of commissions and remember, we're still talking about what you earn in one month (and not a year). Once we move into the 6-figure territory, they are usually business owners who are running extremely profitable businesses or sales people who are again so good at selling their companies products they are making over 100,000 euros a month just in commissions alone - that's the kind of money they make in a month, so they all make over a million a year. Then there are those who make over a million a month, that's right, we're talking 7-figures in a month (not a year, a month, so they make over 8-figures in a year) and at that level, you're really talking about either business owners who have created a highly lucrative business churning out vast amounts of profits and they have assembled a highly skilled and efficient team who are great at what they do. Business owners do take on a lot of risk but they are the ones who do reap the biggest rewards when business is booming. So where am I on that scale? Well, that would be telling - I think I would get a lot of haters bombarding me with hate mail if I even gave a figure, but let's just say I am doing pretty well, thank you. I am a salesman who is good at sales and making an obscene amount each month in just commissions.
So easily, under that one roof in the CCIB, you had people who made anything from 3 to 7 figures a month and dare I say, some of the people putting in the longest hours and working the hardest are probably those at the bottom of the food chain doing the manual labour. I talked to loads of people at the event and I am going to share with you one unusual conversation I had: one of the young graduates working for a market intelligence company came up to me and chatted. He told me he was making around 5000 euros a month but would like to be making 50,000 euros a month, he then asked me point blank what I was making. And at first I was like, woah, that's kinda direct and quite a personal question: why do you want to know? We then talked a bit more and I realized, okay, this guy is ambitious and doesn't want to spend the rest of his 20s flogging market intelligence reports for a few thousand euros a month, he wants to move up the food chain and he wants to do so fast. I was actually impressed by his hunger, so I told him that I couldn't give him a job, he needs to pitch my boss - my boss is the guy who would be able to give him a chance and join our sales team. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed by his CV and skills - no foreign languages, mediocre university, not much work experience - but the fact that he had the chutzpah to come and approach me at an event like that was admirable to say the least. I believe in the principle of 'if you don't ask, you don't get' and he had nothing to lose by asking me for a job. I have put him in touch with my boss and wished him good luck.
In sharp contrast, I am going to tell you about a different conversation I had with my sister and mother last Sunday before I went to Barcelona. My sister remarked that I was already fluent in Spanish and should find communication easy in Barcelona, but I pointed out to her that there are two official languages in Barcelona: Catalan and Spanish and I was going to make every effort to speak Catalan whenever I could instead of defaulting to Spanish. My mother just rolled her eyes, I could tell she couldn't appreciate why I wanted to struggle on in Catalan when I could just speak Spanish with the locals. So I tried to explain to her that the region of Catalonia had declared independence from Spain, but their movement was crushed when the central Madrid government basically sent in the riot police and arrested scores of people in the independence movement - so there is a clear regional identity and many of the Catalan people are not just in favour of independence but have now a deep resentment towards the Madrid government. Indeed, I saw many signs in Barcelona which were written only in Catalan and English, with Spanish quite deliberately omitted. In light of this, I wanted to speak the local language Catalan as a sign of respect to the locals there mostly because I can do that (with a lot of effort, I did spend many hours studying Catalan). Now I know the issue of Catalonia's independence is a very complex one as not everyone in Catalonia are pro-independence and there are many allegations of corruption within the local government, but my stance is that the will of the people should be respected - hold a free and fair referendum, respect the result and that's exactly what we did with Scotland back in 2014.
But when I mentioned the independence movement in Catalonia to my mother, her first reaction was (and I quote), "aiyoh cannot lah! How can like that break away from Spain? Imagine if Yishun or Bedok suddenly decide to form their own country, then how?" It was the kind of knee-jerk reaction I had come to expect from my mother, but I was even more surprised when my sister simply agreed with her - not in a way that was simply trying to encourage my mother to speak up, but I actually thought she was genuinely against Catalonia trying to break away from Spain. Why was this the case? Why would someone from Singapore have an opinion either way on this issue? It was not like either of them actually knew that much about Spanish history or indeed about Catalonia - yet they felt entitled to have such a strong opinion on the issue they knew little about? I had assumed that the only default stance was to respect the will of the people living in Catalonia because if you're not from that part of the world, you don't get to have a say in the issue and that was why I was shocked at my mother and sister's reaction. But as I thought long and hard about it, it was pretty clear why people like them may feel that way and have that kind of default response.
This is the kind of response that typical PAP-supporters would have, basically they want to believe that their stance of merely accepting the PAP's authority without questioning whether or not they would be better off otherwise. They would be the kind of people who would look at the disappointed faces of WP supporters after each election and think, why do you put yourself through this, why do you try so hard only for the results to be crushing you like that at the end? My sister isn't even one of those pro-PAP supporters, she is just politically apathetic and her stance on the issue is a way to defend this kind of apathy (which is actually pretty common in Singapore). However, this goes way beyond simply accepting that you would rather not challenge the PAP's hold over Singaporean politics - this kind of attitude is actually really quite damaging. You see, if you accept that your current status (for example, the job you do and how much you earn) is acceptable and more importantly, that there is no point in trying to look for a better alternative, then you will simply default to becoming content and grateful for what you have and that mentality will stop you from going out there to look for something better than what you currently have.
My parents were very against the idea of me being ambitious - oh this started when I became good at gymnastics and they hated the idea of me taking part in competitions because there was the possibility that I couldn't win, thus I may end up disappointed despite having worked very hard for the competition. They saw sports as something you did for health reasons, but deemed the competitive nature of gymnastics to be hugely damaging. Likewise, they didn't want me to apply for a scholarship not because they didn't like the idea of me becoming a scholar, but they feared I would be disappointed if I didn't get the scholarship. Their idea of happiness was merely settling for a stable job where everything was predictable and routine and most importantly, you were spared any rude shocks or disappointment. I could see how their mentality impacted my sister, she had worked for only three companies all her life and opted for the safer, more predictable option of 'better the devil you know' when it came to employers. Some people just aren't as apt when it comes to adapting to new environments: for example, some kids find it really difficult to change schools whilst others have happily made friends with everyone in their new class within the first week. I don't take for granted the fact that I am blessed with the ability to adapt well to new circumstances quickly, that is a major factor in why I am good at sales.
That young man who came up to me and asked me for a job was a risk taker. He already had a pretty decent job and was making a respectable amount of money for a man his age - yet he was hungry for more and was willing to give up his current job. There was an element of gambling there: what if things don't work out in the new job, would he be able to go back to his old job? I doubt it. But good for him, one thing is for clear: if he never ever tried to aspire for anything more than his current job, if he had chosen to be content and grateful with his current job then guess what? He would never progress, he would still be doing the same job five, ten years from now and he would stagnate rather than progress. Why isn't he satisfied with his current job? Well, I am guessing that he has so much self-confidence and self-belief that he genuinely believes that he is capable of adding a zero or two to his monthly pay check and he is going to make that happen. Perhaps I wasn't the only person he approached at that event for a better job, if he had the balls to approach me, then he may have approached quite a few others he met at that event. Probably most of them would have turned him down but all he needs is one person to turn around and say okay young man, you've got the guts to ask for a job like that - I like that, come and work for me. Even if he doesn't end up working at my company, I have no doubt that he will find success one way or another with that attitude.
So in the case of my sister, she is a very intelligent, highly qualified professional in a well paid job, but there's a part of me that can't help but wander if she had been a bit more of a risk taker, she could have been so much more successful, maybe even added a zero or two to her current paycheck. Had she been held back because of the unhealthy influence my parents' attitude had on her? But there's another side to this mentality in Singapore which I have encountered through blogging: I have talked quite a lot about students trying to find short cuts when it comes to their education and I have pointed out the obvious - that the gatekeepers are not stupid, we know that students who end up doing a private degrees are not the same caliber as those who go to a good university. But I end up getting so much hate mail, like seriously, you wouldn't believe the amount of comments I have to delete because I don't want to engage the trolls. Why are people so angry with me? They accuse me of elitism because I am discriminating against students who end up in private universities rather than a good university. They accuse me looking down on people who don't make as much money as me and that's not even a fair accusation because that's not what I do at all. There are elitists out there - I am not one of them, however, I am extremely realistic about how you get ahead in the real world. I had after all come from a very working class family myself and had a tough childhood. You are not helping yourself if you throw a tantrum and accuse others of elitism: the pragmatic approach is to figure out how to make yourself acceptable to the elites in order to work with them, in order to earn as much as them.
I'm sure my Singaporean readers will remember the case of British expat Anton Casey who was hounded out of Singapore after he mouthed off on Facebook about taxi drivers and poor people. Yeah, what he did was very tasteless and he became public enemy number one in a very short space of time after his posts went viral. Of course it is easy to hate someone like Anton Casey, but one of the reasons why people got so angry with him was because they accused him of 'looking down on taxi drivers'. Now I would never do anything like that, though I do know of people who will. When I was in Barcelona, there was a cleaner making sure the toilet at the venue was always very clean and he was mopping up the piss on the floor around the urinal. Nobody even acknowledged he was human - to the rest of them, he was just invisible. I was the only one who greeted him and spoke to him when I was in the toilet, I didn't do it just to practice my Spanish - I suppose I kinda felt sorry for him as it was a pretty miserable job. Likewise, when we were going from one party to another in taxis, one of the bankers I met said some pretty awful things about Spain and the Spanish people, even though the taxi driver may have understood enough to be totally insulted - but that guy just didn't care even if the taxi driver could speak English, to him the taxi driver was invisible. I was embarrassed to have even been a fellow passenger with that guy in that taxi because I would always treat my taxi drivers in Spain with the utmost respect and speak to them politely in Spanish, of course. I can't make this any more clear: I do not look down on people who aren't as highly educated or not as rich and I despise those who do that.
No, what I do have a problem with are people who get overly defensive about their position in life: such as those with a degree from a private university, I only roll my eyes in disbelief when I hear them protest, "what is wrong with a degree from SIM?" I'll tell you what is wrong - there is this toxic mix of delusion and pride, that somehow nobody is allowed to even point out the obvious to them and that if anyone has the audacity to even try to explain the truth to them, then that's somehow so wrong because they only want to hear people sing praises about how brilliant they are (even if they are from SIM, yeah right). I am a realist, I believe that you reap what you sow and if you want to command the kind of respect that a doctor gets, then the only reasonable way to expect that is if you become a doctor. No you can't flunk out of school, end up with a poorly paid job and still demand that people give you the same amount of respect as a doctor or pay you as much as a hedge fund manager - employers will pay you what you are worth to them and not a penny more. It's not that I have a problem with people who aren't educated or have poorly paid jobs, maybe that's the best they can do in life and there's no point in kicking a man who is already down. I do have a problem with people who try to defend the kind of mindset which ultimately poisons the minds of so many young people with a deep degree of pessimism and destroys their future.
Look, I can be extremely nice to the guy mopping up the piss in the toilet, I can be super polite to my taxi driver in Barcelona but at the end of the day, my niceness and kindness isn't going to change the fact that I still have at least two zeros more than them on my monthly pay check. That's why when people say things like, "what is wrong with being a taxi driver? Are you looking down on taxi drivers?" I don't quite know how to respond because if you offered the taxi driver a job which came with a ten-fold increase in his earnings, how quickly do you think your taxi driver would say yes? How many taxi drivers would turn down the job offer because they would rather continue driving a taxi? The fact is whether I am polite or nasty to the taxi driver isn't going have any impact on how much he earns a month - however, if people become so extremely defensive about anyone judging them, then they do themselves a huge disservice when they go down the route of, "what is wrong with what I do? Are you looking down on people like me?" The fact is, even I am not that defensive about what I do - yes I earn a lot but I have just met plenty of people at that event in Barcelona who easily earn ten times what I make in a month. How are you ever going to aspire to achieve to more in life if you can't even answer a simple question like, "what is wrong with what I do?"
In fact, I can tell you plenty of things that are wrong with what I do and why it is a freaking miracle I am making this much money. I am just a salesman at the end of the day, I am extremely lucky to be in a great position to make a lot of money because I work for a company which has excellent products. They say a good workman never blames his tools but that doesn't really apply in the field of sales - even if you are a lousy salesman, you probably can get by if you have an excellent product with a great reputation. And by the same token, even the best salesman in the world would struggle to sell a terrible product. If for some reason I no longer have good products to sell, then I am stuffed and until I find another company with equally good products looking for a salesman. Yeah, so whilst I am in a pretty lucrative position right now, it is also a lot more precarious than you think because I don't know how to make those brilliant financial products that I am selling, I am completely dependent on my team to churn those out. I'm not like a brain surgeon who has real skills to command a high salary, I am completely dependent on my sales figures being high to keep making a lot of money. Furthermore, I work for a small company and we only have a limited range of products to sell. That's why I am investing a lot of my earnings into property (rather than splurging on luxuries) so when the party is over, I would at least still have a decent property portfolio worth several million pounds to depend on as a landlord. Market conditions can change suddenly and quickly so I don't know for how long more the party will continue, but I am going to keep making hay whilst the sun shines. Need I go on? There's plenty wrong with my job and unlike everyone else, I'm actually honest about it.
See? I am more than happy to tell you what is wrong with my job, because I am sure most of you would have realized that there's no perfect job out there. There is always something wrong with every single person's job out there - it's just a matter of whether or not they're honest enough to divulge that information or if they get defensive and want to give you the impression that they have no reason to look down on them. Being defensive is a knee-jerk reaction when someone thinks they are under attack and that's when they will give you loads of reasons why they thoroughly enjoy their job and how they work for such a good company but when I meet someone like that, I think, are you telling me all that to try to sell me that image that you're blissfully happy where you are, or are you trying to convince yourself that this is indeed the case and that you wouldn't be happier elsewhere? It doesn't take a genius to figure out the difference. But if you keep trying to convince yourself that you're happy in your job, that you have the best job in the world when really, you would much rather be doing something else for more money, then quite frankly, the only person you are lying to is yourself and that is the whole reason why I really dislike this attitude - it is so poisonous because it holds you back from asking for more out of life. That young man who asked me for a job wasn't defensive at all, he was hungry for more in life and I liked that.
So no, there's nothing wrong with taxi drivers or toilet cleaners if that's the best they can do, if being driving a taxi is the best job you can find with your abilities, then fair enough, good for you for working hard and doing a good job. What I have an issue with are people who are lazy, who have not even bothered trying to reach the maximum of their potential, who could be doing so much more with their lives but somehow keep finding excuses not to even consider that option. You should at least spend a moment contemplating what it would take to improve your current condition - maybe it is a price not worth paying or not one you're willing to pay for now, maybe it isn't exactly what you need right now but either way, at least go through the process of weighing out the pros and cons before arriving at a decision rather than simply saying, "what's wrong with what I do?" as a knee-jerk reaction. You see, if you become this defensive, then it's not the judgment of others that you have to worry about, hell no - that's actually far easier to deal with. No, you then become your very own worst enemy because this defensive attitude will stop you from challenging yourself, from maximizing your own worst enemy and the silliest part of it all, is that whilst people who say things like that are so worried about how others may look down on them, they're actually the ones looking down on themselves the most. I have met loads of incredibly successful people and the more successful they are, the less defensive they are when it comes to talking about the problems they encounter in their line of work. Conversely, it is those who have achieved the least who tend to be the most defensive and insecure: why be your own worst enemy when there are enough nasty people out there who are trying to bring you down?
Is there a balance to be struck? Can we feel grateful for the blessings in our lives without becoming so comfortable that we never ever try to improve our situation? Or is naked ambition something that needs to be tamed, because there is always something else that we can want out there, something else to chase for? A lot of where you stand on that scale depends on your personality, but what if like me, you were brought up by risk-averse parents who never ever pushed you very hard - then what? Are you realizing your full potential in an environment where you're encouraged to settle for the easier option all the time? How happy are you with the number of zeros on your pay check and would you be ready to defend your job if I could offer you a better job that pays ten times more than what you currently earn? Why are Singaporeans usually lacking that raw ambition and drive we have seen from people in other countries? Are you a settler or a maximizer? Let me know what you think please, do leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.
But that was just the first night, the partying went on every night we were at the event in Barcelona, with each big bank and law firm trying to outdo each other by getting the best venues - from rooftop bars to beachfront venues, everywhere you went, you saw bankers and lawyers with so much money partying in style. I usually bailed by about 9:30 pm or so because such events are just not my style, I remember one night sitting on the beach a short walk from the noisy bars and watching the sunset. I had far more fun just enjoying that little moment of peace on my own than at the bar earlier with all the bankers. I recently watched the film 'The Wolf of Wall Street' on the plane whilst on my way back from Hong Kong and the kind of excessive hedonism and extreme partying you see in that film is not some crazy fantasy that some Hollywood writer came up with - such is the world I inhibit now, if you think I am making a good living, there are guys who are earning a few million pounds with each deal they make and hence for them, they easily get to the stage where they are clearly making more money than they can spend in this lifetime. If they have children, then the children have a substantial inheritance to look forward to but if they don't have dependents (or if you expect them to make their own millions), then it's a question of spending all your wealth before you die on champagne, caviar, luxury hotels, private jets, yachts, diamonds and sports cars. Quite simply, they have so much money they don't know what to do with it - they keep spending but they are still so freaking rich as they keep making so much money. Yup, that's another world altogether.
So for my younger readers who have yet to enter the working world, let me try to break it down for you like this. I am going to measure this in terms of how much each person makes per month and at the event, you had the whole range. I am only going to go by the number of zeroes in each monthly paycheck. So at the venue (the CCIB Barcelona), you had staff who are doing menial tasks like cleaning the toilet, security, delivering the catering supplies and they are unskilled labourers who make about under a thousand euros a month (hence those making 3-figures a month). Then you have the slightly more skilled staff like those who are serving the delegates coming from all over the world and the default language they use is English, so typically you had young graduates who have are vastly over-qualified for their jobs, doing something as simple as helping delegates register and getting their delegate badges - really, you don't need a degree to do that, just a basic command of English. But you get the idea, people like that probably made between 1000 to 2000 euros a month for jobs like that, so we're now into 4-figures a month. I also met some young graduates from a company selling some kinda of market intelligence report that would probably be interesting for most of the people at the event, but it's the kind of thing I imagine that the company would probably get for their employees rather than what I would personally subscribe to. I imagine the better sales people there would make between 5000 to 8000 euros a month, but this is all dependent on their sales figures for the month.
Then we're into 5-figure territory where you either have experts who are highly skilled at what they do or you have salesmen who are extremely successful at earning loads of commissions and remember, we're still talking about what you earn in one month (and not a year). Once we move into the 6-figure territory, they are usually business owners who are running extremely profitable businesses or sales people who are again so good at selling their companies products they are making over 100,000 euros a month just in commissions alone - that's the kind of money they make in a month, so they all make over a million a year. Then there are those who make over a million a month, that's right, we're talking 7-figures in a month (not a year, a month, so they make over 8-figures in a year) and at that level, you're really talking about either business owners who have created a highly lucrative business churning out vast amounts of profits and they have assembled a highly skilled and efficient team who are great at what they do. Business owners do take on a lot of risk but they are the ones who do reap the biggest rewards when business is booming. So where am I on that scale? Well, that would be telling - I think I would get a lot of haters bombarding me with hate mail if I even gave a figure, but let's just say I am doing pretty well, thank you. I am a salesman who is good at sales and making an obscene amount each month in just commissions.
So easily, under that one roof in the CCIB, you had people who made anything from 3 to 7 figures a month and dare I say, some of the people putting in the longest hours and working the hardest are probably those at the bottom of the food chain doing the manual labour. I talked to loads of people at the event and I am going to share with you one unusual conversation I had: one of the young graduates working for a market intelligence company came up to me and chatted. He told me he was making around 5000 euros a month but would like to be making 50,000 euros a month, he then asked me point blank what I was making. And at first I was like, woah, that's kinda direct and quite a personal question: why do you want to know? We then talked a bit more and I realized, okay, this guy is ambitious and doesn't want to spend the rest of his 20s flogging market intelligence reports for a few thousand euros a month, he wants to move up the food chain and he wants to do so fast. I was actually impressed by his hunger, so I told him that I couldn't give him a job, he needs to pitch my boss - my boss is the guy who would be able to give him a chance and join our sales team. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed by his CV and skills - no foreign languages, mediocre university, not much work experience - but the fact that he had the chutzpah to come and approach me at an event like that was admirable to say the least. I believe in the principle of 'if you don't ask, you don't get' and he had nothing to lose by asking me for a job. I have put him in touch with my boss and wished him good luck.
In sharp contrast, I am going to tell you about a different conversation I had with my sister and mother last Sunday before I went to Barcelona. My sister remarked that I was already fluent in Spanish and should find communication easy in Barcelona, but I pointed out to her that there are two official languages in Barcelona: Catalan and Spanish and I was going to make every effort to speak Catalan whenever I could instead of defaulting to Spanish. My mother just rolled her eyes, I could tell she couldn't appreciate why I wanted to struggle on in Catalan when I could just speak Spanish with the locals. So I tried to explain to her that the region of Catalonia had declared independence from Spain, but their movement was crushed when the central Madrid government basically sent in the riot police and arrested scores of people in the independence movement - so there is a clear regional identity and many of the Catalan people are not just in favour of independence but have now a deep resentment towards the Madrid government. Indeed, I saw many signs in Barcelona which were written only in Catalan and English, with Spanish quite deliberately omitted. In light of this, I wanted to speak the local language Catalan as a sign of respect to the locals there mostly because I can do that (with a lot of effort, I did spend many hours studying Catalan). Now I know the issue of Catalonia's independence is a very complex one as not everyone in Catalonia are pro-independence and there are many allegations of corruption within the local government, but my stance is that the will of the people should be respected - hold a free and fair referendum, respect the result and that's exactly what we did with Scotland back in 2014.
But when I mentioned the independence movement in Catalonia to my mother, her first reaction was (and I quote), "aiyoh cannot lah! How can like that break away from Spain? Imagine if Yishun or Bedok suddenly decide to form their own country, then how?" It was the kind of knee-jerk reaction I had come to expect from my mother, but I was even more surprised when my sister simply agreed with her - not in a way that was simply trying to encourage my mother to speak up, but I actually thought she was genuinely against Catalonia trying to break away from Spain. Why was this the case? Why would someone from Singapore have an opinion either way on this issue? It was not like either of them actually knew that much about Spanish history or indeed about Catalonia - yet they felt entitled to have such a strong opinion on the issue they knew little about? I had assumed that the only default stance was to respect the will of the people living in Catalonia because if you're not from that part of the world, you don't get to have a say in the issue and that was why I was shocked at my mother and sister's reaction. But as I thought long and hard about it, it was pretty clear why people like them may feel that way and have that kind of default response.
This is the kind of response that typical PAP-supporters would have, basically they want to believe that their stance of merely accepting the PAP's authority without questioning whether or not they would be better off otherwise. They would be the kind of people who would look at the disappointed faces of WP supporters after each election and think, why do you put yourself through this, why do you try so hard only for the results to be crushing you like that at the end? My sister isn't even one of those pro-PAP supporters, she is just politically apathetic and her stance on the issue is a way to defend this kind of apathy (which is actually pretty common in Singapore). However, this goes way beyond simply accepting that you would rather not challenge the PAP's hold over Singaporean politics - this kind of attitude is actually really quite damaging. You see, if you accept that your current status (for example, the job you do and how much you earn) is acceptable and more importantly, that there is no point in trying to look for a better alternative, then you will simply default to becoming content and grateful for what you have and that mentality will stop you from going out there to look for something better than what you currently have.
My parents were very against the idea of me being ambitious - oh this started when I became good at gymnastics and they hated the idea of me taking part in competitions because there was the possibility that I couldn't win, thus I may end up disappointed despite having worked very hard for the competition. They saw sports as something you did for health reasons, but deemed the competitive nature of gymnastics to be hugely damaging. Likewise, they didn't want me to apply for a scholarship not because they didn't like the idea of me becoming a scholar, but they feared I would be disappointed if I didn't get the scholarship. Their idea of happiness was merely settling for a stable job where everything was predictable and routine and most importantly, you were spared any rude shocks or disappointment. I could see how their mentality impacted my sister, she had worked for only three companies all her life and opted for the safer, more predictable option of 'better the devil you know' when it came to employers. Some people just aren't as apt when it comes to adapting to new environments: for example, some kids find it really difficult to change schools whilst others have happily made friends with everyone in their new class within the first week. I don't take for granted the fact that I am blessed with the ability to adapt well to new circumstances quickly, that is a major factor in why I am good at sales.
That young man who came up to me and asked me for a job was a risk taker. He already had a pretty decent job and was making a respectable amount of money for a man his age - yet he was hungry for more and was willing to give up his current job. There was an element of gambling there: what if things don't work out in the new job, would he be able to go back to his old job? I doubt it. But good for him, one thing is for clear: if he never ever tried to aspire for anything more than his current job, if he had chosen to be content and grateful with his current job then guess what? He would never progress, he would still be doing the same job five, ten years from now and he would stagnate rather than progress. Why isn't he satisfied with his current job? Well, I am guessing that he has so much self-confidence and self-belief that he genuinely believes that he is capable of adding a zero or two to his monthly pay check and he is going to make that happen. Perhaps I wasn't the only person he approached at that event for a better job, if he had the balls to approach me, then he may have approached quite a few others he met at that event. Probably most of them would have turned him down but all he needs is one person to turn around and say okay young man, you've got the guts to ask for a job like that - I like that, come and work for me. Even if he doesn't end up working at my company, I have no doubt that he will find success one way or another with that attitude.
So in the case of my sister, she is a very intelligent, highly qualified professional in a well paid job, but there's a part of me that can't help but wander if she had been a bit more of a risk taker, she could have been so much more successful, maybe even added a zero or two to her current paycheck. Had she been held back because of the unhealthy influence my parents' attitude had on her? But there's another side to this mentality in Singapore which I have encountered through blogging: I have talked quite a lot about students trying to find short cuts when it comes to their education and I have pointed out the obvious - that the gatekeepers are not stupid, we know that students who end up doing a private degrees are not the same caliber as those who go to a good university. But I end up getting so much hate mail, like seriously, you wouldn't believe the amount of comments I have to delete because I don't want to engage the trolls. Why are people so angry with me? They accuse me of elitism because I am discriminating against students who end up in private universities rather than a good university. They accuse me looking down on people who don't make as much money as me and that's not even a fair accusation because that's not what I do at all. There are elitists out there - I am not one of them, however, I am extremely realistic about how you get ahead in the real world. I had after all come from a very working class family myself and had a tough childhood. You are not helping yourself if you throw a tantrum and accuse others of elitism: the pragmatic approach is to figure out how to make yourself acceptable to the elites in order to work with them, in order to earn as much as them.
I'm sure my Singaporean readers will remember the case of British expat Anton Casey who was hounded out of Singapore after he mouthed off on Facebook about taxi drivers and poor people. Yeah, what he did was very tasteless and he became public enemy number one in a very short space of time after his posts went viral. Of course it is easy to hate someone like Anton Casey, but one of the reasons why people got so angry with him was because they accused him of 'looking down on taxi drivers'. Now I would never do anything like that, though I do know of people who will. When I was in Barcelona, there was a cleaner making sure the toilet at the venue was always very clean and he was mopping up the piss on the floor around the urinal. Nobody even acknowledged he was human - to the rest of them, he was just invisible. I was the only one who greeted him and spoke to him when I was in the toilet, I didn't do it just to practice my Spanish - I suppose I kinda felt sorry for him as it was a pretty miserable job. Likewise, when we were going from one party to another in taxis, one of the bankers I met said some pretty awful things about Spain and the Spanish people, even though the taxi driver may have understood enough to be totally insulted - but that guy just didn't care even if the taxi driver could speak English, to him the taxi driver was invisible. I was embarrassed to have even been a fellow passenger with that guy in that taxi because I would always treat my taxi drivers in Spain with the utmost respect and speak to them politely in Spanish, of course. I can't make this any more clear: I do not look down on people who aren't as highly educated or not as rich and I despise those who do that.
No, what I do have a problem with are people who get overly defensive about their position in life: such as those with a degree from a private university, I only roll my eyes in disbelief when I hear them protest, "what is wrong with a degree from SIM?" I'll tell you what is wrong - there is this toxic mix of delusion and pride, that somehow nobody is allowed to even point out the obvious to them and that if anyone has the audacity to even try to explain the truth to them, then that's somehow so wrong because they only want to hear people sing praises about how brilliant they are (even if they are from SIM, yeah right). I am a realist, I believe that you reap what you sow and if you want to command the kind of respect that a doctor gets, then the only reasonable way to expect that is if you become a doctor. No you can't flunk out of school, end up with a poorly paid job and still demand that people give you the same amount of respect as a doctor or pay you as much as a hedge fund manager - employers will pay you what you are worth to them and not a penny more. It's not that I have a problem with people who aren't educated or have poorly paid jobs, maybe that's the best they can do in life and there's no point in kicking a man who is already down. I do have a problem with people who try to defend the kind of mindset which ultimately poisons the minds of so many young people with a deep degree of pessimism and destroys their future.
Look, I can be extremely nice to the guy mopping up the piss in the toilet, I can be super polite to my taxi driver in Barcelona but at the end of the day, my niceness and kindness isn't going to change the fact that I still have at least two zeros more than them on my monthly pay check. That's why when people say things like, "what is wrong with being a taxi driver? Are you looking down on taxi drivers?" I don't quite know how to respond because if you offered the taxi driver a job which came with a ten-fold increase in his earnings, how quickly do you think your taxi driver would say yes? How many taxi drivers would turn down the job offer because they would rather continue driving a taxi? The fact is whether I am polite or nasty to the taxi driver isn't going have any impact on how much he earns a month - however, if people become so extremely defensive about anyone judging them, then they do themselves a huge disservice when they go down the route of, "what is wrong with what I do? Are you looking down on people like me?" The fact is, even I am not that defensive about what I do - yes I earn a lot but I have just met plenty of people at that event in Barcelona who easily earn ten times what I make in a month. How are you ever going to aspire to achieve to more in life if you can't even answer a simple question like, "what is wrong with what I do?"
In fact, I can tell you plenty of things that are wrong with what I do and why it is a freaking miracle I am making this much money. I am just a salesman at the end of the day, I am extremely lucky to be in a great position to make a lot of money because I work for a company which has excellent products. They say a good workman never blames his tools but that doesn't really apply in the field of sales - even if you are a lousy salesman, you probably can get by if you have an excellent product with a great reputation. And by the same token, even the best salesman in the world would struggle to sell a terrible product. If for some reason I no longer have good products to sell, then I am stuffed and until I find another company with equally good products looking for a salesman. Yeah, so whilst I am in a pretty lucrative position right now, it is also a lot more precarious than you think because I don't know how to make those brilliant financial products that I am selling, I am completely dependent on my team to churn those out. I'm not like a brain surgeon who has real skills to command a high salary, I am completely dependent on my sales figures being high to keep making a lot of money. Furthermore, I work for a small company and we only have a limited range of products to sell. That's why I am investing a lot of my earnings into property (rather than splurging on luxuries) so when the party is over, I would at least still have a decent property portfolio worth several million pounds to depend on as a landlord. Market conditions can change suddenly and quickly so I don't know for how long more the party will continue, but I am going to keep making hay whilst the sun shines. Need I go on? There's plenty wrong with my job and unlike everyone else, I'm actually honest about it.
See? I am more than happy to tell you what is wrong with my job, because I am sure most of you would have realized that there's no perfect job out there. There is always something wrong with every single person's job out there - it's just a matter of whether or not they're honest enough to divulge that information or if they get defensive and want to give you the impression that they have no reason to look down on them. Being defensive is a knee-jerk reaction when someone thinks they are under attack and that's when they will give you loads of reasons why they thoroughly enjoy their job and how they work for such a good company but when I meet someone like that, I think, are you telling me all that to try to sell me that image that you're blissfully happy where you are, or are you trying to convince yourself that this is indeed the case and that you wouldn't be happier elsewhere? It doesn't take a genius to figure out the difference. But if you keep trying to convince yourself that you're happy in your job, that you have the best job in the world when really, you would much rather be doing something else for more money, then quite frankly, the only person you are lying to is yourself and that is the whole reason why I really dislike this attitude - it is so poisonous because it holds you back from asking for more out of life. That young man who asked me for a job wasn't defensive at all, he was hungry for more in life and I liked that.
So no, there's nothing wrong with taxi drivers or toilet cleaners if that's the best they can do, if being driving a taxi is the best job you can find with your abilities, then fair enough, good for you for working hard and doing a good job. What I have an issue with are people who are lazy, who have not even bothered trying to reach the maximum of their potential, who could be doing so much more with their lives but somehow keep finding excuses not to even consider that option. You should at least spend a moment contemplating what it would take to improve your current condition - maybe it is a price not worth paying or not one you're willing to pay for now, maybe it isn't exactly what you need right now but either way, at least go through the process of weighing out the pros and cons before arriving at a decision rather than simply saying, "what's wrong with what I do?" as a knee-jerk reaction. You see, if you become this defensive, then it's not the judgment of others that you have to worry about, hell no - that's actually far easier to deal with. No, you then become your very own worst enemy because this defensive attitude will stop you from challenging yourself, from maximizing your own worst enemy and the silliest part of it all, is that whilst people who say things like that are so worried about how others may look down on them, they're actually the ones looking down on themselves the most. I have met loads of incredibly successful people and the more successful they are, the less defensive they are when it comes to talking about the problems they encounter in their line of work. Conversely, it is those who have achieved the least who tend to be the most defensive and insecure: why be your own worst enemy when there are enough nasty people out there who are trying to bring you down?
Is there a balance to be struck? Can we feel grateful for the blessings in our lives without becoming so comfortable that we never ever try to improve our situation? Or is naked ambition something that needs to be tamed, because there is always something else that we can want out there, something else to chase for? A lot of where you stand on that scale depends on your personality, but what if like me, you were brought up by risk-averse parents who never ever pushed you very hard - then what? Are you realizing your full potential in an environment where you're encouraged to settle for the easier option all the time? How happy are you with the number of zeros on your pay check and would you be ready to defend your job if I could offer you a better job that pays ten times more than what you currently earn? Why are Singaporeans usually lacking that raw ambition and drive we have seen from people in other countries? Are you a settler or a maximizer? Let me know what you think please, do leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.
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