A Year Of Nought.

The year is coming to a close and looking back, things are no better than it was at the beginning of the year. In fact, life has actually got worse despite trying my damnedest and it was a year best to be forgotten.

Articles about the big bonuses that Singaporeans are getting this year and recent headlines in the Straits Times and other media, about departmental stores like Robinsons and Tangs and other retail outlets doing roaring business during this Christmas season, due to the buoyant economy, depresses me even more. The cheer and joy of the festive season are beyond me and it got me wondering what’s wrong with me? Why am I living at the fringe of society, not partaking in the largesse? Why am I unable to celebrate Christmas just like everybody else and afford those presents for my daughter and son? Why, despite trying my best, I just cannot seem to get out of this cycle of poverty?

So many whys, yet the answer is so simple – the sad reality that our society has changed – much too rapidly and people like me has been left out of the gravy train, perhaps permanently. We are no longer able to land those middle-management posts – like those we had prior to the economic crises our country went through from the late 90s to the early 2000s – that pays a meaningful salary to allow us a decent standard of living. For one reason or another, with the most likely being age and cheaper foreign alternatives, I did not land a single job for middle-management posts, despite sending zillions of resumes and willing to lower my salary expectations and even entry point.

What is actually left to people like me are menial, daily-rated contract work in factories, warehouses and shipyards. Jobs that are physically demanding and do not commensurate with the efforts but are needed just to survive. Jobs, whose real worth, due to their “pao-gar-liao” nature, has been driven down by the uncontrolled influx of cheap foreign labour. Jobs, who pays no more than $900 to $1,100 a month, that is if you work 6-7 days a week. With a year of record rising costs of living in Singapore – from food, medical to transportation costs – $900 to $1,100 is barely enough to support a family with 2 kids. And jobs like these, due to their menial nature and the environment one worked in, have a tendency to destroy one’s health.

Am I the odd one out? Unfortunately no. I have met so many fellow Singaporeans, reasonably well educated, have hold middle management posts in the past, yet like me, found it extremely difficult to get out of our rut. A recent article by Yawning Bread, “CPF & Its Creaky Assumptions”, about this social displacement and difficulties faced by this group of people aptly sums up the situation. And one can forget about doing your best, hoping to get noticed and promoted in such jobs simply because such attributes like “doing my best”, “working hard” and “working smart” are not needed in the menial industry. In fact, I have a feeling such attributes are no longer even relevant in our society.

But the biggest worry in my mind is my children. Besides my inability to provide them with a decent standard of living, they are disadvantaged when compared to better-off children whose parents are able to give them the necessary enrichment classes, tuition and additional resources like books and educational software, so necessary in giving them a leg-up in the competitive educational system in our country and hence, their future. For crying out loud, I can’t even afford to pay the full amount needed for text books next year for my daughter but instead had to adjust by buying the books for the 1st semester first. One article by Mr. Wang Says So about two years ago, “The Perils Of Being More Affluent”, very aptly described how the limitation of resources limits the potential of children from less well-off families.

Against this backdrop, what should my course of action be to get out of this poverty cycle and improve the standards of living for my family? I guess the only choice left is to set up simple enterprises with low start-ups costs like push-cart retailing or setting up a food stall, especially with my background in the retail industry. But finding that $7,000 to $8,000 capital needed for such a venture was an extremely difficult and uphill task, to say the least. Besides having no siblings to fall back on or friends well-off enough to lend this amount, no banks or financial institutions in Singapore will entertain me unless one have collateral or a job with an income that meets the borrowing criteria, a situation I wrote about in my post “The Search For Micro-Financing In Singapore” sometime back.

Against my better judgement and with much reservations, I recently wrote to most of the charitable organisations in Singapore, asking for a loan to set up simple enterprises but sadly, not a single organisation bother to reply. How I really wish Grameen or even Kiva has an office in Singapore to cater to borrowers like me, just like they do in Bangladesh and the United States. That would really be a Christmas wish come true because it will provide me with the one and only solution left to improve the standards of living for my family. It will give me the one chance to better our lives as compared to the never-ending cycle of coping with short-termed menial jobs that pays a pittance. Sadly, the dream of starting a simple enterprise to improve the living standards of my family will be just that – a dream.

Struggling daily to survive, struggling to feed a family, dealing with questions of self-worth and managing the guilt that one has to contend with in not being able to provide a decent standard of living for one’s children, is not a nice feeling, especially in Singapore where everything is measure by one’s status and income. It is not easy nor is it pleasant and I can now understand why some have succumbed and chose the easy way out by either ending their lives or resorting to drugs and alcohol to numb the harsh realities of life. I just hope I will not end up like them and add to the sad statistics of living in a highly competitive, increasingly expensive and cold Singapore because there is only so much that I can take.

~ by 2chances on December 23, 2007.