[Miniseries 01] Stranded on The Road of Life
This is not completely real. Whatever you read here is an amalgamation of fact and fiction, for better story telling effect. That is why you do not see me introducing myself as Tien, or that I live on a sunny island call Singapore, or that I am completely lost on the road of life after serving the army, or that what is about to be written here are based on my experience since July 2007. I need to find my calling, an ideal job that I would come to love — eventually.
All characters appearing in this work are not exactly fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead or you wish were dead, is purely by design, not entirely coincidental.
After graduation, I was at an impasse. My grades were not good enough to enroll to the course I want (English Language and Literature or Psychology) in the national university, neither was it poor enough for me to just get some random office job — which I loathed.
Caught between Charybdis and Scylla, I started serving my compulsory military service. Two years and a few university application rejections later, I ended up in customer service line, as a telephone customer service officer.
Taking calls for eight hours a day continually for five months was not exactly the best time of my life. Being reticent by nature, talking was not an in-built hardware for me — it was more of an installation process aborted halfway. Lending a listening ear is one thing; solving problems for frustrated customers is another. That and the fact that every other call I picked up seemed to be some half-crazed customer, awaiting a certified mental problem, screaming at me. How was I supposed to know why the installation workmen had not arrived? Or that the modem did not work the way it was supposed to?
I needed a change in jobs. I needed to find my calling. I needed another ass-kicking job — by which I meant a job that kicked my ass — to convince me that I should go into education industry.
My mentor was right. All salesmen can be trained and you will get better at whatever you are doing. I was definitely getting better at being rejected by potential customers. By the time I approached my n-th potential customer on the street, I was ready to give up. I could never sell anything! I could not even convince myself that the product I was selling was fantastic! And I despised myself for approaching strangers, masking my begging as sales tactics to get them to even listen.
After my sales job, I trudged wearily to a private university for my night classes, where I was doing part-time studies in English Language and Literature. As I trekked into the classroom, my mobile phone alerted me to an unread message. I read the contents half-heartedly. After a cursory glance, I read the contents whole-heartedly.
“English, primary level, four to five students, fifteen dollars per hour.”
I had previously dropped a few applications on one-to-one home tuition online. Although it was not exactly what I was expecting, it was a start. One reply and I had secured an interview with The School.
