5 career paths I didn't go down.

Today, I shall answer a question that came up in a conversation with one of my readers. She was a young person who was trying to figure out what career she wanted and she wanted to know if I knew what I wanted to do with my life when I was her age (18) and the answer is no, I had no idea. There were certain things that I'd like in my adult life of course - I desperately wanted to get out of Singapore, I wanted to see the world, I wanted to be financially comfortable, I didn't want to work crazy long hours, I wanted to work with nice people, I wanted to do a job that I enjoyed. But here's a list of careers that I had toyed with over the years but never pursued. It's a strange, eclectic list, but it allows me to look back on them and wonder if I have any regrets for never having pursued these career options. I am not including careers that I have actively pursued: this article is about careers that tempted me but for some reason, I never pursued. Some of the more unusual options on this list may surprise you, but if you know me well, then maybe you won't be surprised at all.

1. DJ: radio and club

Yeah, I really wanted to be a radio DJ back when I was a teenager. I suppose it had a lot to do with the fact that I listened to the radio a lot as a teenager and loved the station 98.7 FM. Their radio DJs who were immensely popular back then. We're talking about the pre-internet early 1990s in Singapore and practically all the students at school were listening to the same programmes when we got home from school - the influence of DJs have diminished a lot in the age of iPods, Spotify and Youtube playlists where you essentially get to be your own DJ and pick your own playlists. But back in those days, I thought the DJs had the best job in the world: they were immensely popular and influential, they seemed to have a really fun job playing their favourite songs on their radio shows and sometimes even got to interview celebrities. I loved pop music as well and whilst I couldn't afford to buy all the albums I wanted, I would tape songs off the radio like so many kids of my generation. I remember the famous interview on 98.7 around 1991, when Swedish duo Rob n Raz visited Singapore and were being interviewed live on air. The duo were best known for their huge dance hit 'Got To Get' featuring Leila K (see video below). The DJ innocently asked them, "why aren't you working with Leila K anymore?" To which the answer was, "Leila fucked up." You couldn't swear on live radio in Singapore in 1991 (mind you you still can't today). Everyone in school heard that interview and were talking about the infamous  'Leila fucked up' quote the next day.

The other kind of DJ was a club DJ: I remember going clubbing back in the 1990s - back in the day, they didn't check for ID as strictly as they do today. I get getting into places like Zouk and Fire from the age of about 15 and buying drinks at the bar. As you can imagine, for a student in those days, going clubbing was like the funnest adventure ever and I used to look forward to going clubbing so much in those days. But I also really got into the Euro-dance techno music scene of the period from around 1989 to 2000, I adored bands like 2 Unlimited (whom I got to see live in Singapore in 1993), Snap, Black Box, Technotronic, Felix, Culture Beat, Ace of Base and Sash. Being a club DJ seemed like not just a glamorous job, but extremely fun if you love your dance music - it was well paid, top DJs would travel the world playing at different clubs in beautiful, exotic locations, doing remixes of the biggest hits in the charts, working with other famous singers. I remember when Paul Oakenfold played Zouk in 1995 or 1996, people were queuing around the block just to witness the legend himself spinning the decks. Oakenfold has been back to Singapore many times since to play at various clubs in Singapore, such is the glamorous lifestyle of a superstar club DJ. Of course, my parents were convinced that people were all doing drugs and having sex in clubs which made it even more attractive for me. I wanted a job where I'd make so much money, have a lot of fun everyday, be as popular as those famous DJs: what a perfect fantasy it was.

Did I ever pursue that dream? 

Not really. I remember once when I was about 15 years old, I wrote to one of the 987 DJs (his name eludes me - that was an awfully long time ago) and he was kind enough to get back to me. I asked him about how I could become a DJ like him and he gave a very standard answer which basically amounted to, "you're still young, focus on your studies, when you're old enough we'll talk about it and you may discover that you may want to do something else. Maybe in your school holidays you can do some work experience with us." Sadly the latter never materialized. After I moved to London in 1997, I got to know some people who worked in the music industry as well as in the clubs on the gay scene and oh boy, they didn't paint a pretty picture for me. A lot of amateur DJs are desperate to gain any kind of experience and will wanna do it for free - even if means playing a 30 minute set in a small club in the middle of nowhere on a Wednesday night for nothing. Sure the superstar DJs get paid loads of money, but there are many DJs who end up doing gigs like birthday and wedding parties, earning very little money. I suppose there was a part of me that lacked the confidence to pursue that dream, once I realized how hard it was going to be. There were only so many paid gigs for professional DJs on radio stations and in clubs and too many people wishing to enter that profession. Reality bit and I decided to back away.

Any regrets? 

Not really. I guess if I was ever going to pursue it, I should have done it in Singapore where I could have become a big fish in a small pond. Having done some television in Singapore as a teenager, I was beginning to get to know people in TCS (the former name of Mediacorp). By the time I was 18, I even knew friends who worked in some of the local clubs, however that was also the time I had to enlist for national service and that put my life on hold. Once I finished national service, I left Singapore. When I moved to London, boy talk about being a very small fish in the big sea: I didn't know where to start. At least on the gay scene, it was quite a closed scene with certain DJs that worked almost exclusively on the gay scene in gay clubs - and even then, as a foreign student who had just arrived in London, I was happy enough just to go out clubbing and having a great time. I didn't even think about trying to start a new career then as I was a full time student at university as well then. Once I graduated, I was focused on getting a job that could enable me to stay on in the UK and I didn't think the Home Office was going to look favourably on a struggling DJ with little to show for. In my 30s, I stopped listening to radio and going clubbing - the DJ 'phase' was something I naturally grew out of. But still, I love my dance music from the 1990s but I'm quite content enjoying it as a consumer: here's another great remix for you.

2. Charity worker

This was an idea that I had from a very young age for a variety of reasons. My regular readers will know that I had a very troubled childhood as my parents are severely autistic so from a young age, there was a part of me that wanted to stand up for people who couldn't defend themselves. Not necessarily abused children who were victims of bad parents, but people like refugees or more generally the underprivileged in society, people who had been victims of abuse or discrimination. I started volunteering with various charities since I was in secondary school, but struggled to find a role where I felt I could make any kind of meaningful contribution. I suppose what attracted me to charity work was having a raison d'etre, having a cause you believe in and I believed that charity workers were noble people who put the needs of others before their own - a part of me wanted to be noble like that but perhaps for a selfish reason if I may admit. I thought if I did something noble like that, then people would like me, would respect me. I didn't think people would like or respect me if I didn't do anything worthy with my life. When I moved to London, I continued volunteering with various health-related charities focusing on HIV awareness & prevention. Over the years in my working life, I had continued to volunteer with various charity groups in London but there was only one time when I did apply for a job with a charity.

Did I pursue that dream? 

Through my volunteering, I did see a lot of charity workers bogged down with a lot of mundane tasks that made their work actually fairly boring - they weren't exactly rushing into disaster zones offering desperately needed relief to save lives, Don't get me wrong, I saw the difference they were making in their various communities, but I did apply to several charities upon graduation from university - I spoke several languages and armed with a degree in geography, I applied to the ICRC (the International Committee of the Red Cross) and they had a graduate recruitment programme then, I actually got through several rounds of really tough interviews in Geneva, mostly conducted in French if I may add, as if the interviews weren't tough enough, oh no - they expected me to speak French and not English. Well, it was an eye-opening experience to see what other kinds of people would apply for a job with them - it was a mix of Europeans and I was the only non-white applicant in that group and I remember the interviewer asking me how I would feel if they sent me to a war zone and I made up some answer about being ex-military, having served with the army in Singapore. If they had taken me on, my life would have been very different - but no, it wasn't meant to be. I was encouraged and emboldened by just how far I got in that process, so I applied for many other similar organizations all over the world, but had no joy whatsoever. So I accepted my fate, returned to London via Paris and I started looking for work all over again in 2000.

Any regrets? 

No, absolutely not. I gave it my best shot - I was either going to go work for the ICRC and do that kind of charity work, like going into West Africa at the height of the Ebola epidemic, or I would simply support my favourite charities by contributing to them. There's a brilliant BBC radio 4 comedy called Clare In The Community which makes fun of social workers: it centers around Clare Barker, a social worker with a sense of self-righteousness, exposing just how wretched some of the people and mundane crap she has to deal with are and how she justifies things to herself to keep doing what she does. Okay, that's just comedy to make us laugh, but I don't want to end up like Clare who clearly wants to feel noble about the sacrifices she has made to become a social worker, but struggles to keep doing her job without going crazy. Perhaps it is wrong of me to create a hierarchy in my head to place red cross workers in Africa at the top of the charity food chain and people like Clare at the bottom, but I've seen so many people like Clare in the smaller charities I have volunteered with over the years and for them, it has become just a job. All the passion is gone and they just want to leave work on time. Furthermore, I wanted to do a profession that I thought would appear noble, so people would love and respect me: how incredibly naive I was. Turns out, society tends to respect and cherish people who have money instead.

3. Journalist / Broadcast journalist

Oh itt is evident that I really love writing. one of my older sisters became a journalist upon graduation - so there was a part of me that did admire her and wanted to follow in her footsteps. Since I speak several languages, I thought I'd be good at this. Perhaps rather naively, I thought journalism would allow me to see the world - travel to far away countries to cover everything from the G20 summit to wars to volcanic eruptions to colourful festivals, I soon realized that my sister was pretty much covering local news and she never traveled for work. I then realized that I would much rather be a broadcast journalist like my hero Anderson Cooper rather than someone who merely wrote articles. I did take part in several creative writing competitions throughout my army and student days and did manage to win several awards - even many of my old friends in Singapore assumed that I was going to go into journalism as it seemed like a natural fit for me.

Did I pursue that dream? 

Sort of, kind of. When I was in London, I managed to get paid work writing for various magazines and newspapers as a student at university, but it was never going to turn into a full time job. I have covered everything from political issues to gymnastics as a writer: they would commission me to do one article, I'd get paid a modest amount of money to do it and then I was eventually left thinking - I'm never going to pay the bills like that, going from one article to the next, not sure when I was next going to get paid work. The fact is there were so many people desperate to get into journalism and only so much paid work available - I did worry that I was never ever going to get into journalism quite the way my sister did. Don't get me wrong, she had her share of problems - I remember this article she did and hated because her editor changed the tone of the story to the point where she felt completely misrepresented, but such were the constraints of working as a journalist in Singapore. I remember being asked by a newspaper to look into a story about the mentally disabled people in London and I was like, I can't relate to this personally and the editor was like, "I didn't ask if you could relate to it personally, if you won't do it, I know loads of other young people desperate to prove themselves and will do whatever it takes to create a good story out of this." I think it was at that point that I decided that it was not for me - nobody was going to pay me good money to write about the stuff that meant a lot to me, quite the way I do in my blog.

Any regrets? 

Not really. A bit like trying to be a DJ, I realized that it was one of those industries that was going to be very hard to get into and even for those who do manage to get a job as a journalist like my sister, they are forever trying to please their editors and what they write will always be subject to their editors' approval before it will ever be read by the public. By the same token, most DJs play the music they think the crowd will like, rather than just play their personal favourites. Now a few journalists have columns where they express their personal opinions, but journalists like my sister were meant to report the news in the most neutral manner without tainting the facts with their opinions. Now you know me, I love sharing with you what I think - trying to be neutral will be completely frustrating for me. Of course there are journalists and broadcast journalists who are superstars and excellent at their jobs, but I suppose I am fulfilling that desire to write with my blog today. I suppose it is a decent compromise for me - I enjoy the process without worrying about being paid for it or pleasing anyone but myself. Whilst I don't get paid for my writing (well, I get a little through Google Adsense but it isn't much at all), nonetheless I still get the satisfaction knowing that my blog is being read by thousands on a daily basis.

4. Creator of room fragrances / bath products / scented oils

I did go through a phrase in my life when I was obsessed with everything from bath bombs to scented candles to all kinds of products designed to make you and your surroundings smell just a bit better. It was during my army days when this obsession began - now I completed my army stint in Singapore in 1997, that was 20 years ago but believe you me, I can still remember the smell of the place. Everything, like everyone, seemed to smell bad there - the men generally had a very poor standard of personal hygiene and I never got used to just how bad the guys stank. There was a workshop near my office and the stench reached a new level there, even after 20 years, I will never forget the stench of rank engine oil in the tropical heat. I used to buy air fresheners to try to at least mask the smell around me where I worked, but there seemed to be no escape from the horrible smell. When I got home, I would take a really long shower and use every beauty product there was to scrub myself clean - to get the acrid smell of the army out of every pore in my body. Then when I was clean, I would turn on the air-con, light a scented candle and enjoy every minute of feeling cleansed. I used to go shopping for fancy soaps, shower gels and scented oils and it wasn't long before I started experimenting at home, trying to create my own fine smelling solutions. This was a luxury market that I wanted to tap into and what I lacked in knowledge, I made up with enthusiasm and a genuine desire to rid every last reminder of the SAF from my nostrils.

Did I pursue it? 

No. The obsession to scrub myself clean like that suddenly disappeared the moment I left the army and I could once again, choose to avoid men who stank. Oh the joys of being a civilian! There was no doubt that I hated most of the guys I had to serve NS with - I would never choose to be their friends if given the choice in the civilian world. However, you don't get to choose whom you have to live and work with in NS, so I think a part of my mind blanked out the fact that I didn't like the people around me as it was pointless to dwell on a problem you can't do anything about. Instead, I focused on one small aspect that I could try to do something about - the smell. I did meet a man who worked in the perfume industry in London some years ago, I think it was around 2006 and we talked briefly about trying to do a men's perfume project together, but he wasn't the right person to go into business with. We were both way too obsessed with the details of creating the perfect scent whilst neither of us were business-minded enough to focus on how we were going to make money. Just because I like something doesn't mean I know how to make money from it - the dream of one day launching my own shop selling luxury scented products was merely a fantasy I had when I was surrounded by men who stank in the army. I just wanted to be in an environment where my nostrils would be thrilled by lavender, rose, orange flower, ylang-ylang and jasmine all day long. The bottom line was I just wanted to stay the hell away from sweating, stinking working class men and I didn't need to launch my own range of perfumes for that - all I needed was to be a civilian again.

Any regrets? 

Not at all actually. I remember a few years ago when I was in Tunisia, I stumbled upon a lovely shop in Hammamet where this little old lady sold loads of different products made with scented oils. I ended up buying something from her because I can never ever resist products like that. Her shop was beautifully decorated and opened up into a small private courtyard where she had jasmines and roses in bloom. The smells in her shop were incredible, delicious, breathtaking - it made you want to just close your eyes and inhale deeply, absorbing everything that was lingering in the air that made it smell so sweetly rich. I fell in love with her cute little shop, it was like a dream come true. Okay, her shop was a bit touristy, her wares weren't cheap aimed at people like me with money (and definitely not the locals who couldn't afford to shop there) but for a brief moment as I stood in the middle of her gorgeous shop, I thought, yeah once upon a time, I wanted to have a shop just like that. What a lucky lady, to have a shop like that. But do I want to work in a shop like that today? No. I just want to have the money to shop somewhere like that and buy everything in there (and I did spend a lot of money in that shop). Running a small business like that shop can be hard work - good luck to that lovely Tunisian lady.

5. Spy (Well why the hell not?)

Oh I loved watching those old movies involving spies who had an air of mystery around them - they were glamorous yet dangerous at the same time. Who were they working for? Could they turn out to be double agents? Can you trust and believe them? What will they give you in exchange for what they want? Are they armed and dangerous or will they use a honey pot trap to blackmail you? Is your phone tapped and are they reading your mail when you are sound asleep in bed? Is that just a smoke detector on the wall or is that a covert camera? This could describe any of the many spy films that dated back to the 1980s, the cold war era when I was growing up. I suppose these films were designed to entertain so all the spies were beautiful and sexy - none of them were fat, ugly and had bad skin. It glamorized spies and I thought they led the most exciting lives. Even today, we look back upon that era with a certain nostalgic gaze - ah, the cold war.

Did I pursue it? 

No, whilst countries had intelligence agencies (MI5, CIA, FBI, FSB etc) but they only recruited from within their own countries and I had no allegiance whatsoever to the government of Singapore. I couldn't wait to leave and settle in another country as soon as I could. I did spend several years in the UK as a Singaporean expatriate as you need to have lived in the UK for a minimum of 5 years before you can apply for indefinite leave to remain (aka 'permanent residency') and time spent here as a student doesn't count. MI5 were never going to employ a foreigner for such sensitive positions and once I neutralized as a British citizen, I had already carved myself a career - there was just way too much to give up to chase a pipe dream about entering the world of spying (well, the security service is the office term) and even though they are looking for people with language skills for their intelligence, I had a look at the details and realized that whilst they are keen to hire Chinese speakers - I hated the Chinese language when I was at school because of the poor relationship I have with my father (who was a Chinese teacher). I had other languages like French and Spanish to offer - but they were not looking to hire people with those language skills. And the other languages they were particularly interested in were Arabic, Pashto, Persian, Dari, Urdu, Turkish - well, basically any language that an Islamic fundamentalist-terrorist would speak and the bulk of my languages are European languages that they didn't need.

Any regrets? 

Actually no. I have a friend who works for MI5 and he told me that they would probably have me read loads of Chinese newspapers, websites, monitor what is being said by the Chinese authorities and I would be bored out of my brain. The kind of secret meetings with Chinese or Russian spies where they exchanged information on a bench in Hyde Park - that's the stuff of fiction, these days spies tended not to meet in person but interacted over the internet and everything was encrypted to cover their tracks. I was told that if I didn't want to use my Chinese language skills because of any ill-feeling I had towards the language because of my childhood, then I should never work for MI5. He joked that perhaps the 'bad guys' would want to recruit someone like me to do industrial espionage, spying for corporations rather than countries. I reply, "great, where do I sign up to be the James Bond of the corporate world?" He said, "no you don't need to sign up anywhere, if they think you're right for the job, they'll approach you and make you an offer you can't resist. Either they will tempt you with money or they'll kidnap a family member and make sure you get them what they want whilst they have a hostage. You know, just like in the movies." I don't know if he was joking - maybe he was, but there's a part of me that wishes it is true because life would be too boring otherwise. Would I be good at industrial espionage?

So there you go, I did eventually pursue two careers: in acting and in banking and so far, the banking option has worked out a lot better than the acting and I'm just glad something has worked out for me. It isn't rocket science and once I've defined my role, I'm sticking to what I do best. Still, there are times when I do wonder how my life would have turned out if I had pursued one of these other options? I can see some recurring themes in those options: I wanted to have fun (DJ, spy) but I also wanted to do something that will make me well-liked and respectable (journalist, charity) and I wanted to be surrounded by things and people I liked (fragrances, DJ). Do you know the movie sliding doors? It is a movie that splits into two - showing two versions of events in the protagonist's life: one version where she does catch her train and the other where she misses her train. Do you have any career paths that you wish you had explored? Are there any regrets about careers you didn't pursue? Let me know what you think, leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.