My new job is depressing me (And I don't know what to do)

What do you do, when you can’t do what you love?

I’ll be honest. Not knowing what I wanted to do had never been a problem for me.

I was the asshole of a kid who sat at the back of the class in high school, reading Harry Potter and giving the teacher the my figurative bird whenever I passed a test.

Right, that was just me bragging.

But I was also the kid who scoffed at those who walked around our school’s annual education fair with a lost, glazed over look in their eyes. I smirked at – okay this is embarrassing – the kids who shrugged mirthlessly when asked what they were going to major in, or the kids who dropped out of A-levels because it “just wasn’t their thing”.

In my head, I was the one true straight arrow, headed exactly where I needed to be. In my last post I mentioned being a real little shit. See what I mean?

But now through the added lens of retrospect, I can see that all I was, was fucking lucky.

My parents brought me up reading Peter and Jane since I was 3. They sat me in front of a computer every night – my father an electrical engineer, and my mother a linguist – and made me write pages and pages of stuff (A story, a poem, a letter, 367 words of Hello Kitty, whatever).

Then there was the fact that it was writing I loved, and not anything else. Writing is an okay profession. It pays alright and no one will judge you because then they’d have to read your work first, and that takes more time than a lot of people are willing to give.  I know some children of doctors who would rather come out as gay or bisexual than as an aspiring artist or – EGAD – a musician. So yeah, that was another thing going for me.

A few months back, when I was still writing for The Star, I met up with a childhood friend of mine. He had a problem.

Said friend was studying accounting but his heart had left that field semesters ago. Now, he said, he felt like he was just passing time, trying not to kill himself fin the process, but that he couldn’t drop out because his parents were pinning too much on him becoming an accountant.

Already, that friend had ditched an exam and intentionally flunked another. My heart went out to him – hard not to, with 13 years of friendship under your belt – but there wasn’t much that I could do besides offering a hug (I’m a great hug giver. Sometimes, if I like you, I’ll even do it for free) and sending him off on his way by the end of the night.

Back then, I felt a cruel sense of relief. Thank god I wasn’t in that position. Except, fast forward 5 months give or take, and I am.

In a previous post I mentioned moving to real estate like it was no big deal. Only it wasn’t. Let’s be brutally honest: I’m in a field I previously had zero interest in, dealing with people who make money off the desperation and/or greed of others, earning money that I might – or might – not receive, with zero hands-on coaching and hardly anyone around my own age.

And here’s what I’ve learnt.

It’s taken a few bouts of chronic depression and a dash of suicidal tendencies, but I can say this at least:

If you’re not happy doing it, you’re probably not doing it well enough; and if you’re not doing it well enough, you’re probably not doing it often enough.  Life doesn’t care why you’re not getting any better, like that bitch of a boss you had, life just relies on results when doling out privilege or punishment.

People talk about “doing what you love”, like it’s some fucking easy thing to do – that’s what I thought, at least. But hardly anyone ever mentions loving what you do. So my first piece of advice is this: If there’s nothing you can do about it – and absolutely nothing – then just do it. Suck it up, strap it on (you’re not a whiny 14 year old anymore) and get the job done. In fact, get the job done so many times that you actually get good at it. In fact, be the best at whatever job you’re doing. Take pride at what you do. After all, you’re probably doing said thing more often than the average Joe. Average Joe knows nothing. Average Joe will flail and die without your advertise. Average Joe needs you.

My second bit of advice is this: If you already know what you’re good at, or if you find something you like doing quite a bit, don’t ever let go. And I’m writing this in the hopes that those who are still reading (you are? Really? Don’t you have a life or something?) will be just joining college and settling on a major.

So experiment. Do it as vast and as wide as you can until you latch onto something you find so enjoyable it’s practically self-indulgent.

Take writing for example: For a very, very long time, it never occurred to me that I could be good (or bad) at it, because being good was never a matter of import. I liked writing. It was for me. So for a lengthy period of time, I kept doing it because it made me happy. I also continued to make the same mistakes again and again until Ian took a look at one of my drafts and fainted, but the point is that I made it my calling. I’ve always believed that the best writers don’t just write. They bleed.

Some people indulge in making money. Hey, no judgement, that’s their thing. Some people like looking hot and using the patriarchy’s obsession with pretty things to fuel their career. Nothing wrong with that either. The world isn’t made out of solely doctors, or lawyers, or engineers, or architects. It’s made by a whole cacophony of people and passions. We need food to eat, and bricks to be laid, so by that line of logic, someone’s got to do it.

The problem is when we start glamorizing certain jobs and blacklisting others with Forbes top-earning listicles and reality tv shows. Like, just this week, during the BRATs Malacca camp, I met two 80-something women who were working in a tiny shop, cutting hair and sewing clothes and basically being awesome at life.

Whatever it is you decide to do, listen to me: If you find something that sends all your senses on overdrive, and find people that make you excited about life, then don’t ever let that go, even for a second. Because you never really know how valuable that is until you lose it. And to be honest, I’m really tired. I’m tired of feeling lost and I’m tired of feeling so tired. But most of all, I wish I could be as excited to be awake again.
           

Now I can't see the word SPA* the same way again.

*Hint: It stands for Sales and Purchase Agreement

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BRATs Melacca 2014 Part 1

“Hey Clarissa” 

Ian’s message popped up on my phone, “You still interested in senior-ing for this trip’s BRAT’s camp?” He asked.

I had missed the last one because of a family trip to Thailand, so I was still getting a lot of flak for dropping out at the last minute.

Okay, no. That’s not the version we agreed on.

In all honesty-not-really-but-okay, I’d been harassing Ian for the past year for a chance to senior for the next BRATs camp. It’s was unbearable. I was relentless -

 So desperate.

- Until ultimately he gave in (in what I’d like to believe was a table flip and near-manic “What will it TAKE to get her off my back??”) and let me hop on board. Because really, ever since I moved back to Penang, things haven’t been the same for me.

I guess both accounts are true-ISH, depending on how you want to see it. But either way, I found myself getting on an 8 hour bus ride to Melaka that involved screaming babies. A pervy middle aged man, and one very, very slow bus driver.

BRATs is young journalist camp for teens from the age of 16 to 19. The acronym stands for Bright, Roving, Annoying Teens, which I suppose is a pretty apt name, given the sort of people we’ve managed to attract in the past (it takes a certain type of person to enjoy writing, and another sort to willingly put that writing up for critique and judgement)  VJs, international models, chart topping bloggers (ahem), you name it.

I was a little more than apprehensive about the thought of handling thirty-over – practically forty­ – angsty teenagers. Not because I think I’m cooler than them (which so does not need proving), but because I’ve been a BRAT before and BOY WAS I OBNOXIOUS. I feel bad for whichever poor soul who had to lead my team (I afterwards found out that not only did I forget said person, but no one seems to recall me either. Huh.) I thought I was the best writer on the planet, that my farts smelt like roses, and that my shit don’t stink (all of which were proven to be disastrously wrong).

So you can see why I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep up with 38 past-Clarissas; I cannot stress this point enough: I. Was. A. Little. Shit.

I arrived at the hotel some time around 4pm, having taken a taxi ride from Melaka Sentral to Quayside hotel and MAN, did the place look posh. What was previously some sort of warehouse had been converted into an artsy loft-styled hotel that looked super atas, in a Tumblr sort of way.

Ian and the rest of the R.age team – May Lee and Vivienne – arrived an hour later, considerate enough to bang on my door for a full minute before letting me know that I had the wrong room. Fuck.

The kids* were arriving the next morning, so that night would be the only responsibility-free one we’d have until the end of the workshop.

It's shoooooo pretty

The night before.

 

Our first stop was Pak Putera Nasi Kandar where I had multiple foodgasms in one sitting. It was a first for me. I could hardly stand up after we were done. I’ve never done it with three other people before.

Really, this is too easy, I can go on all night (Ayyyyyyy).

Then we walked down Jalan Heeren, Jalan Jonker, and  Jalan Tukang Besi to get an idea of where the BRATs would be doing their assignment the next day.

Nearly all of the shop houses were closed for the day and the roads were glowing with a dusty yellow streetlamp-glow. On Jalan Heeren there was the sound of live piano music dancing out from a tropical looking café, darkly lit and empty. At the back sat a man behind a huge, black grand piano.

Then we turned down to Jalan Jonker and walked past more closed buildings till we got to the main road where a few food stalls were closing.

On Jalan Tukang Besi, reggae music was blasting from a dingy, little store. When we got to the source of the Jamaican beats, we saw a couple of foreigners chilling outside on rattan lounge chairs. The interior was a narrow and plainly furnished with a couch, a counter for the cash register, three tables, and a fridge way at the back, filled with nothing but orange juice**.

We had a can each and sat at a table near the couch where three middle aged Chinese men were sitting and rolling joints. That was when I noticed that the walls were entirely plastered with magazine cut outs of random things. And cat heads. A lot of cat heads. All the images of people had their heads replaced with that of cats. It was bizarre.

We could have gone back to our hotel then, but hey, it was 1 in the morning and we had at least another hour to kill. So we drove around in this completely inconspicuous looking The Star van, through dark empty roads on night-chilled asphalt.

There was a stretch of real nasty looking pubs and nightclubs. Outside one, stood a crowd of about 20 people who were either cheering or standing idly in the middle of the street, directly in front of where we were heading.

“Oh my god I think they’re fighting.” May Lee said, from the high perch of her shotgun seat.

“Let’s get out of here”  Said Vivienne, who looked like she wanted to be anywhere else but.

The crowd made way for our van as we drove past slowly. From my window, I saw a man stumble across the street, blood flowing from his head down to his torso. This was getting a lot more exciting than I had anticipated.

Just as we made a two-metre headway, people started running in all directions. A man actually ran so fast he made it past our van and went on sprinting. It was hilarious. Bless his soul.

At first we thought that there must have been a cop car coming from behind, but when I turned around, all I saw was a blank van. “Oh my god” I said, “I think they’re running from us.”

And our The Star charity van. Imagine that.

We managed to find our way back to the hotel where everyone collapsed on their bed . I fell asleep nearly as soon as my head sunk into the pillow. I didn’t even get around to hearing May Lee’s snores.

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What it’s like working in Real Estate

In my last post, I mentioned leaving the bright and brilliant world of writing and journalism for the dark and dullness of property. 

 But then I deleted that paragraph to make my word count so do me a favour and completely strike that last sentence out. Let’s do this again.

Four months ago, I got a visit from my parents in KL whilst I was still stationed at The Star. This was a month before my term was supposed to end and a particularly momentous, uh… moment because

1. They stay like, 400 kilometres away, which is 300 kilometres too far and
2. If you knew my folks, you’d know that they don’t ever leave the comforts and quiet of SP for anything, unless it’s for

 a) Their child, (a1) on fire.
 b) Really, really good food. Like, insanely good. Like, HOLY SHIT I jizzed my pants seeing the Instagram good. And
c) Buddhism. Preferably camps, retreats, pilgrimages to India, etc.

 So I knew something was up. The only question was what.

Turns out, nothing; they just wanted to see their daughter. Can’t a parent want to visit their child? We never hear from you anymore, Ah Chen. Also, we think it’s best if you came back to Penang.

 Called it.

My father’s a negotiator himself, so the concept of coming back to work alongside him in Reapfield wasn’t completely repulsive. But I knew houses and land as much as a chicken rice seller knows the inner workings of a soft drink vending machine – Just because you occasionally come into contact with something and feel it’s effects now and again, it doesn’t mean it’s your job to understand the subtle mechanics of said thing.

 So in a move that, I think, stunned everyone including myself, I packed my bags and hauled ass back to the tiny, sunny island of Penang (no complains there) and signed myself up as a real estate agent. The first thing I learned was

 Not anyone can become an agent 

Much like lawyers, you don’t just stroll into a firm and ask them to hire you. No matter how cool your ukulele and table-top rendition of Kantoi is (Answer: hella cool), that just don’t cut it for the big wigs upstairs. No. If you’ve got the credentials that I had, you start from the bottom. Most of the people you might know in real estate aren’t really agents but negotiators. We’re the foot soldiers.

Like freelance brokers but less illegal, real estate negotiators do most of the heavy lifting. We don’t have a professional license so we’ve got to rent the license from those who do, and join their firm after spending hundreds on training and course fees. If that sounds like a pretty raw deal, it gets better.

Depending on the firm, you start off with a 40-60% cut. That means for every 1000 ringgit you make, you get to keep 400 ringgit and the agency gets the other 600 ringgit. Then, as you continue to bring in more cash for the company, you slowly get bumped up to 50% , then 60%, then – Nope - That’s it. Also! Non-performing members (aka people who don’t manage to sell as much) get booted out in favour of newer, more lucrative young-uns.

The good news is, everything changes as soon as you do get your license. You get to either open up your own agency, or rent out your license to 30 negotiators for a fee and a cut of whatever they make. The catch? The passing rate is something along the lines of twenty percent.

 Fuck Penang. No, really, just fuck it. 

First things first: I love Penang. I really, really, really love this stupid island. It’s beautiful on normal days and breathtaking on good ones. But much like its politics, hawker food, and road etiquette, Penang just doesn’t roll like the rest of Malaysia.

The normal commission rate for real estate agents in Malaysia is 2-3%. That’s already an insanely low amount compared to other countries (Japan prices its agents' rates at 7%) but in Penang you’d be lucky to even get 1. Most of the time, Penang owners insist on a maximum of 1%. We call it 1 + 1 here because the seller pays up 1% and the buyer absorbs the other 1%.

This is mega illegal because according to the national board, you can’t have two principals at the same time. You’re either serving the interests of the buyer (To get as a low a price for value as possible) or the seller (to shave off as much as you can from the buyer), but not both. Then again, have you ever seen a Penangite willing to part with 10 ringgit when someone else is willing to take 9? Doh-no.

Penagites are clever and friendly and so f***ing kiam siak when it comes to money. I think it’s a city-island thing.

 Everyone’s old enough to be my dad (or mum) 

 Most of those who enter real estate are in their late 30s to 40s.

These figures make sense because unlike me, those people didn’t have a father to pluck them out of their career and into the property market. I did. Most negotiators are either working mothers or fathers, disillusioned by their previous office job and eager to get away from the bureaucracy of it all.

Just to get an idea of how much older the people in my office are, here’s an example: last month we were talking about the youngest negotiator in Penang; he’s 24.

I turned 20 this June.

Writing this post is making me bummed out. I need a drink.

Authors note:

I got one.

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My macam yes tapi bukan ex

Three months ago, I fell really, really hard for someone that I’d never even met before.

But before I go into that, I want to talk about a term that I’ve coined in reference to the said someone I fell for:

A Something Else, with a capital S and E.

My Something Else

The way I see it, almost everyone’s got a Something Else; something other, that helps keep them sane. Because let’s face it, life has this amazing tendency to get shit-boring when you’re not paying attention (and sad, and sucky, and a fuck-ton depressing). If you DON'T have a Something else, then you're either lying, or are an insanely content and well-adjusted person and seriously man, what is your secret?

For most people, their Something Else is a hobby, or music, or a television show, or getting high off weed – Anything to take you out from whatever mental jail you’ve gotten yourself into. 

Before I met Lyle*, my Something Else was writing, and then, Doctor Who. That overblown sci-fi about a mad alien man (with coincidentally sexy hair and an equally sexy Scottish accent okay, no, I know all of them aren’t David Tennant but let’s stick to the analogy) and his mad alien spaceship – slash – police phone box.

I don’t have to go into how unhealthy having another human being as your Something Else is.

(But I will anyway)

Because god knows how many TV writers and Michael Bay won’t.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Sidekick Ex-Machina, Blithe Spirit, call it whatever you want but the trope’s still the same. As is the idea that some magical OTHER individual can come into your life, chase away all your demons, rescue you from whatever depressive funk you’re in, and take you on life-changing journeys to the opening track for New Girls.

I guess that’s why I called it off.

And partially why I wish to hell I hadn’t.

Because now that even though I’ve found someone else who lives in the same country, has a decent, stable job, is inhumanely considerate and annoyingly caring, I kind of, sort of, wish he…wasn’t. Does that make sense?

If you could hear me right now, I’d be talking in a mortified whisper, because that’s just how disgusted I am at myself. Like CLARISSA, you’ve got someone who’s willing to drive – and has driven – you to SP and back again, willing to take you out on romantic dates, spend his time, energy and money on you even when you tell him -

Oh my god Alvin, not again. I’m not fucking broke. I can handle this.

- to stop.

Like, what is wrong with you? And what’s so special about this old-looking, posh sounding Brit guy?

This old-looking, posh-sounding Brit guy

I met Lyle on Tinder.

Okay, haha, laugh all you want. I could show you all the charts and statistics and graphs that point to the fact that online dating is not only for losers and lonely single balding men with slight paedophilic tendencies, but then I’d have to explain myself.

He had on this pair of glasses in his profile pic that I found kind of hot. His other pictures were okay, but it was his DP that really got me to swipe right. There was this intense sort of look in his eyes that I really liked and a scruffy almost-beard that bordered on Hipster, but didn’t really fit the bill either.

Lyle sent the first message.

There was no “Sit on my face and I’ll eat my way to your heart”, no ‘’Hey cutie, wanna drop by my place tonight”, no “I’m 8.3 inches”.

Just “Hey :)”

Things started getting real Hallmark Original Movies real fast.

I found out that he was a 29 year old English lad who hated England but couldn’t really leave because of – surprise, surprise – his job. I found out that he loved gaming, had a bit of a geeky WoW phase and was more than addicted to Skyrim. I found out that he brought his Xbox to work when he had night shifts because “There’s practically nothing to do anyway’’. I found out that he loved reading just as much as I did. I found out that he loved spicy food, and I found out that he had this weird thing going on for –

You don’t have, like, yellow fever do you?

Oh my god, you’re a fucking otaku.

No haha shh, I’m not an otaku

- Asian culture.

Then he asked me something–

What gets you excited?

- that no one else before had , and to give in to horrible clichés, it completely blew my mind. So I told him the truth – Nothing, for the time being, but that it was so weird because I was usually the kind of person that got excited over almost anything, and now I felt so empty without it.

Understanding Lyle

For the first month, it was like meeting my soul-mate. We talked about anything and everything. The two of us were lazy when it came to Skyping so instead we sent voice-notes back and forth over Whatsapp. He was in his office working past 2am; I was just waking up in bed. He was in the tube waiting to reach home; I was in the neighbourhood Starbucks calling up potential buyers. We sent each other pictures of the food we ate and the surrounding scenery we were in. When he showed me City and Colour, I swallowed up his entire album, listening to him as I fell asleep, imagining Lyle's body behind me, just inches away.

When he was out with his friends, I’d get an occasional text or voice note, telling me that he missed me, wished I were there, what they were doing. For the first month, he was perfectly imperfect – I thought he was kind, straightforward, understanding, chill as fuck and deep, like woah.

His friends knew about me, and mine knew about him. We made plans about flying over and visiting each other.

We had weird, awkward phone sex.

And then, like the water on a badly placed floor in a high-dense, low cost apartment, it started to trickle out.

He’d go missing mid-conversation because of work or friends or bad connection or sleep, and I’d find myself waiting hours – sometimes days – till he-

Sorry, got so hammered last night

Nothing’s changed about the way I feel about you.

You’re the one that’s changed

- Woke up or found connection. I got paranoid; he got irritated. And the more Luke pulled away, the more paranoid I got.

Pro tip no. 3: If someone you’re falling in love with starts to withdraw back into the normalcy of life, smother them. They’ll love it.

A lot more happened in between that I thought seemed important back then, but don’t really seem as much now. We argued, we made up, we argued again. Everything was my fault and I was the unreasonable one and I was the offensive one and it was my fault I got upset and it was my fault that he got upset and (this was his piece de resistance) it was my fault he stopped talking as much and then I met someone else.

No, that’s not exactly how it happened either.  I lied; I met Alvin way before I ended things with Luke. He was a good friend, a guy I found cute at first but then boring as hell after. Someone who was easily satisfied and raring to please. Someone who brought me strawberries when I was waiting for the next Luke-text or who listened to me freak out when I didn’t hear any Luke-word for two days straight (surprise, he was hungover). In short, Alvin was the perfect, stereotypical “Nice Guy” with a capital N and G.

I was exhausted trying to feel wanted again. I was tired of feeling discredited or being gaslighted. 

And then in the most logical move of my entire life, I told Alvin – transparent, loving, sensitive, understanding, considerate Alvin – that I couldn’t see him anymore, and that I had to focus on working towards making things work with Luke.

He said okay.

He said Lyle sounds like a great guy and that he hopes I’ll be happy and that he was really happy being friends.

He said I’ll miss you.

It took a single day – of non-Lyle-ness – before I broke

My tipping point

Here’s the thing: you can change who you choose to be with, but you can’t choose who chooses to be with you.

So I took the safe route, and stopped seeing Lyle too.

For, like, two weeks. And then I got together with Alvin because bloody hell, I missed that guy.

Which brings me to why I’m writing all of this down in the first place – It’s my confession page (or pages, 5 to be exact) and my confession is this: Now and again, – mortified whisper, here we go, everyone together now  – I miss Lyle too.  

It’s not that I don’t love Alvin; I do – every second, every minute, with every bit of my soul.

But sometimes, when I get home to an empty apartment, with the floor grimy and dusty  – because that floor ain’t gonna sweep itself – and my clothes hanging off the arm of the couch like mementoes from a late night lover, and the room covered with an almost tangible sheen of darkness and gloom, and no work left to do but to lie down and stare at the ceiling, I find myself almost unconsciously reaching out for my Something Else. Another place, another life, another string of possibilities.

I know what it’s like to feel like you’ve spent all your new possibilities, and like whatever’s left is the change you’ve got to keep in the bottom of your jeans pockets, next to the dusty infolds and pocket lint. But I also know this: that you can always find another Something Else, but you can’t always find someone who will understand and stick by you unconditionally. Someone that’s so deeply ingrained in your life you don’t even want them to be a Something Else anymore, but a Something Familiar, Something Old.

Since then, I’m pretty glad to say that Lyle's found someone new. It’s a little disarming sometimes to see their pictures on Facebook. I occasionally recall our old texts

I want to take you out on a nice date. Let’s go to a fancy restaurant.

There’s a cave underneath my town, you’ll love it.

A new bar just opened

And thought –

That should be me

- about all the plans we’d made and how weird it was, seeing someone else acting them out. Maybe she’s his Something Else now, and maybe they’ll end up Something More, but none of that’s my business anymore. I can hardly remember Lyle now; all that’s left are the Lyle-tropes and the Lyle-isms. The memories I have are all overplayed and smoothened out by time, it’s like looking into the past with rose tinted glasses. I wasn’t infatuated with Lyle, I was infatuated with Something Else.

So if you're someone who's starting to get bored of their partner,

And no judgement, it happens to anyone,

Then, ask yourself if it's because what you're looking for is a lover, or Something Else. Because you can only be with a person for so long before the novelty fades, and Something Else becomes Something Old. Something Else exists for a reason, it's what gets us up in the morning with that sliver of possibility that something new might happen. It's why we push our boundaries and rock the boat and reach past what is familiar and safe.

But don't go looking for it in people. They're people, not teacups.**

I like this one. I think I'll keep him

*I actually DO know someone by the name of Lyle. (Hi Lyle!) Rest assured that this is not about him.

**Because you can pick those up and put them down whenever you like. Get it? GET IT??? I'm so fucking deep.

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