CHOICES

This morning on the way to work, I realized that I am fed up with my job, and this after only about 8 months on it.

Coming from a high profile profession, being low profile just doesn’t fit me. This has also, affected my personality in a way. I became more aloof and unmotivated to mingle around. The office consists of only 5 people in my division and 8 people from all divisions combined. Most of them are reserved Chinese, not able to let go and have fun.

Unlike my old office whose people were upbeat and aggressive, the colleagues here are slow and receptive. And in an almost sublime way, more genuinely helpful. Heh, now that is something new.

The only reason why I left my previous job was because of the 50% jump in salary. I could not afford to let that pass me by. In my scale, job satisfaction could make way for financial gain. Satisfaction alone does not pay the bills you see. So I fled.

I do not regret it though I miss my old job. Back then, I have a reason to dress up and look pretty. Here, I could have just come in shorts and tank tops and ‘Selipar Jepun’ if I could (Which I couldn’t, Pah!).

And the dreaded 45 minutes drive through the terrible jams, unless I want to contribute to Samy Vellu’s hair transplants by paying toll fees that totaled up to about 9 bucks to and fro.

Choices we made, by far, mine had been influenced a lot by the number of digits I get on my payslip. I mean, apart from the choices I made on personal life front. Choices like hanging out at some desolate pubs near Hyatt Regency to have a bottle of Heinie alone at the bar, listening to Corinne Bailey Rae’s Stars (which was the soundtrack for Grey’s Anatomy by the way… love that show! Made me ‘perasan’ like I am acting in it)

In a way, now, I think my life evolves around people who want to talk to me and who wants to hang out with me, like the skinny NST reporter, the slightly pudgy BH journalist and some other exhausted journalists from other press houses. They are tired of covering news on the floods and to them, another flood is just another flood. They lost a few good shoes and clothes and pants thanks to wading through the chin high murky waters, but then it’s part of the job.

Other than that, I go to sleep around 10.30 pm, automatically wakes up at 6.30 am and goes back on the dot everyday on 6. No more clubbings on a work night, no more sleeping past 7 am, and no more late drunken nights and hangovers.

In short I have become boring and uninteresting. I would rather get drunk at home on cheap wine (Or good ones, depending on how much credit I want to blow on my VISA) alone, slurring away to the moon or stars or my good trusty bitches (My cats, that is.)

I don’t even have ideas anymore. Back when I would be constantly thinking out of my skull on publicity projects, now, everything is pretty much straight cut. I handle predictable complaints and problems, rude customers and sales representative and compile boring daily reports.

How do they manage to give me my 50% extra pay on that kind of work load? That is still a mystery to me, actually.

Until I get around to figuring that out, I am grateful for the choices I managed to make, even the bad ones. At least, I am still very much alive to make it.