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Recession Be Gone

It pays NOT to be forgetful because if you do...then you can end up doing things that you wont be doing if you have not forgotten. Yup, I learnt it the wrong way when I was travelling from one convenience store to another, one petrol station to another and one supermarket to another...just to find the bloody Straits Times papers. This isnt the first time I forgot, but I always managed to get it from the nearest 7 eleven (convenience) store in the late evening.

Still, people like me needed to be taught a thing or two to get things in her head so that she wont repeat the same mistake. Physical pain always help coz my legs are still a bit sore from the walking. Im surprised how I managed to walk rather quickly at about the same speed despite walking for more than an hour. I supposed I burnt off the calories from the spaghetti I had for dinner.

I think it's just a reflection of my own self....always thinking how the heck my family going to survive for another week more before my payday. It doesnt help that my mum is the type who swings widely on the pendulum mood swing from being understanding to.....'my daughter is the most stingy person I have ever known to walk on this planet earth'. That and her endless rant of having little money but yet wants things that I have to buy for her so as to prevent a coming World War III.

Then plan as I might, there is always a loophole in the plan so sometimes I try not to think too much about it although I cant help it. If you ask me, I have been in worse financial situations than this before so I suppose I must find ways to cope during such tough times. My brother says I am living paycheque to paycheque. Well, if you were not born..probably I would have a hefty savings by now but it's too late anyway.

Times are really bad and in the US, big giant companies are laying off workers in big numbers and that is scary. The newly appointed President has a lot of things to handle and while I am glad that he is of the liberal mindset, I do hope he places the overcoming of the current economic recession as his top priority because it involves thousands of civilians who are on the brink of losing their jobs or are already part of the newly unemployed figures.

Back home, it's not exactly sunny paradise....although it hasnt been raining much these days. I had a short brush with such 'incident' when I heard that my department was closing and that I would be losing my job. My first thought, I remembered in the auditorium, was how the heck was I going to support my family since I was the sole breadwinner. It was also an agonizing wait coz they made us wait for more than two months to let us know of the outcome like whether they were redeploying us elsewhere or retrenching us all.

But I was lucky. And to think I was lucky that even in the midst of such crisis, I managed to score a new job in a different industry...a job which I didnt expect to get even though I once shamelessly begged for it on the job application form. So basically I know how it was like to experience rushing thoughts and endless questions of what would happen after losing a job. It is not a simple matter of just finding another one...during this crisis where companies are scrambling ways to cut cost to keep the cashflow working.

I was watching this Malay info show discussing about the Government's plans to help fellow Singaporeans cope with the recession. They interviewed the owner of a meat packing company (err..forgive me if I described your company wrongly) and asked him about his opinions if he has to lay off workers in order to save his company and if the government's proposed help for companies like are going to benefit him.

He said that if he had to lay off 10 of his workers to keep the cashflow, he would so that his company can be saved. It's not a matter of maintaining his business reputation but this option would be better than to let go of all his staff, say all 40 of them, if his business went bust, as opposed to just 10 of them. Thankfully, the government's bid to save businesses like him means that if he takes up the proposed packages, no one would be laid off.

It's inevitable that this recession is somehow going to come sooner or later. To many of us, it's like an eye opener to us that things are not always going to be smooth and easy because you'll never know when the comfy cushion will be pulled right underneath us. It also means that we have to take a good hard look at our current lifestyles and how money seems to have lost its value because of how we spend it.


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