Saturday, August 01, 2009

Unpaid Holiday

The paid holiday came to the end with the end of September 2008. Making it exactly two years since first arriving to Singapore to take on a full time post as a teacher..., and more importantly to travel around.

At the time when the teaching job came to an end, I was already a student again for a month, giving me something to do, and with it, the ever needed feeling of purpose. I was to successfully complete the three subjects during the one semester at NUS, and subsequently my way-overdue-degree. But it wasn't to be. I failed one subject - and since my home university gave me the strict condition to complete ALL the requirements for the degree by the end of the year, or lose it all - I lost it all. Beyond stupidity: Seven years of invested effort, time and money that went towards the degree got flashed down the toilet due to submitting one last assignment, for one last subject, one week too late; all thanks to my old companion, the procrastination. I failed miserably - or so I thought.

About half way through the semester I had some very positive job interviews with the IT consulting company, HC. I was expecting I'll start work in December, just after completing the NUS semester. Eventually, all that happened was that I wrote another letter trying to recapture their attention in order to get yet another interview. I failed. No interviews were to take place any more - or so I thought.

So there I was: degreeless, jobless, ...less, and considering the current economic situation, with no hope of finding an industry job any time soon. Though, luckily it took only few days for me to go from feeling sorry for my (lucky) ass to get back to best enjoy the situation that I was in. It was a conscious switch that took only seconds, but made a world of a difference to my attitude: I went from unemployed, to HAPPILY unemployed.

From then on, it was all about the fun times on the unpaid holiday...!

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