My working life started about 46 years ago when I was 16, working as maintenance operator in a factory which produces miniature bearings. I left the job after about one and a half year to take up a Diploma course in Ngee Ann Technical College. (Currently named as Ngee Ann Polytechnic.)
Thereafter I was enlisted for National Service, and was fortunate to be posted to Singapore Air Force to serve as a Mechanic for aircraft Airframe and Engine division. After my ROD (currently called ORD), I applied and was accepted for a production supervisor post in the company that I previously worked in. Two months into the job, I felt that I am not cut to be a supervisor, I felt rather awkward and uncomfortable when facing and assigning works to group of experience operators, let alone handling their grievances.
I left and joined Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) as a maintenance technician. It was a move that most people think is stupid because that was a hands-on job in a heavy industry. The common wisdom is that; with a diploma, one should have gone for supervisory if not an executive post. Anyway I lasted 8 years before the desire of making my diploma useful kicked in. That was when I decided and moved on to my next job as a Quality Assurance officer for a M & E building maintenance project. The project ended after 2 years. I left and joined SMRT which is my last job that lasted 29 years. I retired as a principal engineer at the age of 62.
The decision to write this blog was hatched when a friend jokingly asked to write a book to share my working experiences. I thought why not? But I am not up to that level, so instead I thought may be I could do a blog on reflection of my working life to share my view about maintenance operation and also to exercise my mind.
So that’s about it. This blog is just a reflection of a bored elderly man who had retired from his engineer post, and needed some space to voice his thought and engage in some mental activity. It basically is based on memory of past experiences and generally is opinionated.
The reflection were supposed to focus on what I went through in my working life, especially those that are more recent where memory are more vivid and those that were more unforgettable because of its impact that affect the emotion and thought, or maybe the feeling of uniqueness and/or weirdness of some incident and handling methods.
However, as I proceed I realized that writing a blog is not that easy as I thought. When I started writing, bit and pieces of memories started pouring in randomly. I find it hard to organize them sequentially. So, pardon me, expect some side track if you happened to be reading. After all, this is not an academic paper, but just someone on the ground sharing his thought.
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Update: 30.07.2021.
It’s been few months since my last entry. I has been wondering how my blog was being received. The only comment that I found so far, is from a website called SCAMADVISER which carried a review about the trust worthiness of my website. Unfortunately, my website received a low trust score based on the fact that I used a paid service (web Host), the website was registered recently and that it does not have many visitors and it is not optimised for search engine.
Well, first of all, I can guarantee that this site is not a scam site basically because it is just a personal blog. There is no product sold here, I am also not asking for donation and there is no need for subscription to access to the articles. Using a paid host does not meant that I am hiding something. I used a paid host because I need their server to publish my website and this is a common practice for people who wish to own a personal site that is not peppered with unrelated advertisement and commercials. The site is registered recently because I need to start somewhere and have happened to start recently. Is that a fault? The site do not have many visitors, yes I acknowledge that, I admit that my blog is amateurish, or maybe boring. It may have consumed some unrecoverable minutes of the visitor precious life, but that should not amount to be considered as scamming, otherwise every website would also be as guilty. Lastly I find their claim that website that is not optimized for search engine are suspicious of being a scam is really ridiculous. A scam site would likely want more visitors to make it work. My site is not optimized for search engine simply because I am a novice, I just started blogging and still exploring and experimenting. I was not aware the website require optimization for search engine, so do not know how to do it and besides, as mentioned I am not selling product, and I am soliciting for donation either, so there is neither need nor urgency for optimization.
I guess they probably needed to comment on something to attract attention and donation to flourish their website, and my website surely is an easy meat. Anyway, even though SCAMADVISER review is amateurish and fallacious, I am still thankful for their interest on my website.
As this website is just simply a blog created to kill boredom brought about by COVID-19 restraint, and is entirely personal, I did not engage any proof reader, nor adviser to comment on its legibility. Now, when I re-read what I had written, I realized that I had assumed that it will be read by people of the same country, same trade or even working in the same kind of environment, and thus left out some information or details that were needed to clarify the point made in my article. Coupled it with my limited proficiency in the language, it may has make understanding difficult. Sorry about that, I am a novice, still experimenting and exploring, and I will try to amend.
Cheers!