Chapter 2: My Father

My father was born and bred in Singapore with both parents from hailing from China. Like me, he is also a Singaporean Son. He served his national service and completed his Nsmen liability. If I remembered correctly, he was one of the pioneer batches of Singaporeans who served the early version of National Service.

He was the 4th son in the family with 3 elder brothers, 2 elder sisters and 4 younger brothers. Big family isn't it? But this was very common in the olden days especially post-war when infant mortality was high.

My father was very lucky to be given the chance to be English educated as he was deemed to the one of the smarter children my grandparents had. However, he blew the chance away because he was playful and mischievous. All he wanted to do all day long was fishing, catching fishes and spiders and playing with marbles. Hence, he dropped out halfway in Secondary School without obtaining his O levels certificate.

Armed with spoken and written English and Chinese, he could find desk-bound jobs fairly easy because not many people were English educated at that time. During that time in the 1970s, import and export was at its peak. Hence, my father landed himself a job in a logistic company, dealing with imports and exports from the other end of the world. This led my father to think that learning a skill was not important at all. After all, he had a job!

When the economy continued to boom, more and more people are getting better education and most importantly, education in English medium. There were more graduates with diplomas and degrees and soon, my father found himself competing with graduates who had better and more impressive resumes. He could not find another better paying job with his sub-par resume and was stuck in his job for the longest time.

Though he lacked certificates, my father managed to rise through the ranks and was soon made the Assistant General Manager of the company. The General Manager was the boss himself, and he was succeeded by his son in the early 90s before he went into retirement. Impressive his designation may sound, my father was still drawing salary that was lower than the national median income. While our family stayed in a rented 2 room flat till I was 5 years old, his boss's family stayed in a bungalow with a small swimming pool and garden. Capitalism at work.

Despite being paid pittance, my father was a loyal man. During his stint in the now defunct company, he had many opportunities to jump ship because in the small industry then, all the other bosses knew my father's capabilities very well. They were particularly impressed by his foresight and business acumen which was crucial in the industry. My father would always come home and discuss these opportunities with my mother during dinner and asked for her opinion. As you can imagine, my mother had always encouraged him to take up the offer and switch company. I recalled vividly when I was about 5 years old, one boss had even wanted to rope my father in as a partner without having to contribute any money and we were all so excited and started talking about buying flat in the near future and finally having our own home etc. I even said I wanted to go Disneyland. However, little did we know, even before my father came home to discuss these opportunities with her, he had in fact already made up his mind and rejected all the offers despite being offered higher salaries and better career prospects. My father was that loyal to his boss and company. In fact, he stayed on with the same small logistics company for more than 20 years before the company went bust during the Asian Financial crisis in the 90s.

Many businesses folded and many people became jobless overnight too.
My father's old boss came into the office one day and gathered all the staff. He then handed out cheques that was the last salary to each and everyone of them. Then he annouced that he will be closing the business due to the poor economy. Everyone was shocked. None had expect the company to close down just lke that. The boss then gave my father a pat on the back and thanked him for his hardwork and contributions for the past 20-odd years. And that was all.

No severance pay.

No gratuity.

That was it.

My father was dejected and lost.

Some of the smaller players in the industry knew my dad's plight and offered him a job. However, he had to suffer a pay cut to settle with a $1500 salary, 25% lesser than what he used to draw. This was in the late 1990's and beggars cannot be choosers. My father continued to work in the industry till today (2015), in his 2nd company of his life, earning $2800 today with a designation of Operations Manager.

P.S. The 1st old boss and his family continues to live in the big bungalow with swimming pool and garden till this day.


Next Chapter: My Mother



Tags: Story of a Singaporean Son, Chapter 2, My Father