I've never expect myself to experience a pandemic in my life and this is one of the biggest pandemic in a few hundred years of history - COVID-19. The name stands for Coronavirus Infectious Disease that was discovered in 2019.
It has now impacted everyone worldwide, not only to our health, but the economy as well. To think that such a small organism can cause huge chaos to hundred billions of people and at this point of writing, there has been 697,676 cases worldwide and 33116 deaths. 844 infected in Singapore and 3 deaths.
Many countries have closed their borders including SG and we are told to stay at home wherever possible. Safe distancing is also another term that is widely used to ensure that we are 1 m apart to "flatten the curve" to ensure that the healthcare facilities do not get overwhelmed, which would result in higher mortalities. There has also been a global shortage of PPE.
The virus was thought to have orginated from Wuhan, China, hence was given the name Wuhan Virus and was later renamed to avoid discrimination to the place. China's infected patients shot up to more than 80 000 people and Hubei was under a lockdown a few days prior to Chinese New Year. That was a lockdown of 50 million people. The measures were drastic but they managed to bring their number of infected people down to single digit after 2 months of aggressive combating with the epidemic. As the virus slowly spread to Europe and the US, who were too complacent to do any preparations while watching their Asian counterparts fend the virus, they are now in the top positions : USA, Italy, Spain, UK , with Prince Charles and the Queen tested positive.
Today is Asher's birthday. And I have took the step to cancel the birthday celebration with our families. I did not want to risk getting 4 households infected as I'm have an itchy throat these days. I've cancelled a swimming "playdate" with Shok's son after a surge of cases involving the PCF childcare centres. The fear of spreading to people is greater than the fear of getting the virus itself. I do not what to put Asher at risk since he has very sensitive lungs. We organised a virtual birthday celebration instead.
***continued writing on 3 Jan 2022***
So in Feb 2020 I quitted a recruitment job at YY after working for around 2 months. It was a job that gave me no life because we are constantly required to chase for recruitment targets for part-timers. We were given the company phone and when I had that phone I practically do not check my personal phone as much. If we do not hit the quote then we would have to go down and be a banquet server or even cleaner. I experienced first hand being a banquet server at Fullerton hotel for this event for bankers. I was listening to the speech and lost myself as I thought I was a guest and even clapped at the event.
CNY was was approaching and I knew that I would need to work as a server if I did not managed to recruit hence I threw in the letter a week before and got myself jobless without a job for the first time.
I thought I could take a break and find a job to my liking and do lash extensions at the same time.
What I did not realised was that my monthly contributions to my insurance premiums was taking a toll on my savings (ok, this is an overstatement). Very soon, COVID began to hit and it was impossible to get a job. I was jobless for 2 months. P was quick to want to dismiss Phyo. I told him I could have found a job in 6 months and what if I need to travel out as a sales person. I told him that I would need him to help out in some of the expenses and to support me financially. He told me he would be able to give me a $200 allowance every month. I was pretty shocked and disappointed. He justified his actions saying that I did not need to spend a single cent as all my food will be covered by him. After a month, he told me he would only be able to support me till April, which makes it 2 months, and he would need to ask Phyo Phyo to leave. I was stressed and felt that he was really unsupportive when he supported me in my resignation. He could splurge on himself on his hobbies but was so stingy to me. I had to actively look for jobs to support myself as COVID prevent my lash business from continuing during Circuit Breaker. CB lasted for around 2 months. Childcare was not opened as well. I decided to focus on taking care of Asher and planned out the curriculum for him. After a week into CB, I found a part-time job as a cashier at Fairprice at Changi Bizpark. I was in a dilemma whether to stay at home to take care of Asher or to go to work as I don't want to feel the stress from P. I decided to go out to work. Going to work was one of the things I look forward as it was the only few places that make life look more normal. Families gathered at the supermarket as it was the only few places that were opened. Work was frantic and back breaking as people stocked up on rice, detergent, and essentials. I find customers talking to me and asked if I was an SQ crew. Some shift require me to stay till 1030pm. We were told that bus/MRT services will cease at 11pm and I requested P to send me home. He was reluctant and did not give me a Yes as an answer. Perhaps out of the 2 months, he sent me home less than 8 times. Other times, he would bring Asher along to NTUC and wait for me to knock off if I were to end early. Other than being physically demanding, the odd lunch hours which triggers my gastric, it was challenging to find a seat at the mini pantry. Only takeaways were allowed during CB and we only had a 45 min lunchtime. There were flies in the pantry and you don't get to eat often with a kaki. I was thankful I met a kaki called Richard, who looks over me during my short stint. He buys food for me often, helped me in little ways and made life a little brighter.
I worked at Fairprice for 2 months, the pay was $10/hour but it did not really matter to me. All I need was not to deplete too much of my savings. I found a swabber role at HPB which paid $3.8k. I went for the PPE training, after which I found they had a supervisor role which offered $4k. I requested for the Site sup role but was told that I did not have an ops experience hence I could only OJT with the same pay. In June, I reported to the Float for my SS job. It was a big scale ops that sees around $3k of people everyday for their swabs. I had to report to this Site Manager called Dahlia. She was a young lady that I found authoritative and demanding. All she wanted me to do was to sit outside the swab site and watch each station and ensure there are no bottlenecks. I was also told to time each station and micromanage the processes to see why a station is slow. After a week, I was joined by a fellow SS called Gerald. I "imparted" everything to him. Eventually he overtook me in excel and got into the good books of Dahlia. He became their clan and he was recommended to stay at the Float. I, on the other hand was by the Manpower team if I would like to transfer after 6 weeks. I was beginning to get used to the work at the Float, however the judgement casted by the team at the Float affected me and I decided to make a move to transfer to CSC Changi in mid July.
I joined CSC Changi by a fellow SS called Aloysius. The team was managed by more mature leaders Lydia and Angeline. I was tasked to be the Green zone SS with Aloysius while Chew and Xinyi were the Red zone SS. Chew is a Scoot pilot and Aloy was a Scoot cadet pilot. Aloy was struggling to pay off his debts for his flying school. He was a friendly chap with a lot of positive energy as we tagged team to help each other and stayed back to sort out the logistics. As he was paid a lower wage he decided to find other jobs. I stayed on and with Lydia's and Angeline's guidance I was able to run the site without much supervision. They went back to BAU in Sept. I was later joined by SM Swee Cheng (also a young cadet pilot who happened to be Aloy's friend too). I was leading GZ's team of 20 ushers and logistics staff as well as supervising the security team. ANother new GZ SS called Chris came to take over Aloy's place and we hit off very well. He was the joker of the team and he always come back on my shift to help. Even though we are on different shifts, we did HOTO seamlessly and was in touch everyday.
One day, around 6 weeks after Chris joined, he was suddenly dismiss which I found out later that he had a criminal record (of 5 years imprisonment) and he did not clear the checks. His sudden departure got me all teared up at night and I was lost as he did not tell us why he left. SC and I were both quite affected that we went for a drink after our duty one day.
Chris left and SC was covering his duties for a week before CK came. CK was another easygoing chap and it was comfortable working with him; maybe because I was the senior so generally people could follow what I adviced. However, I also gave him a lot of autonomy and encouraged him to make decisions. RZ SS were also replaced by Alex and Kevin (SQ Captain). Chew went up to upper management doing Ops planning while Xinyi went back to BAU. As the contract offered by HPB was a 6+3 months and I was offered the 3 months extension. I decided to actively look out for a job. After some push from LL, I decided to spruce up my careers.gov application and started applying actively at the portal.
*writing continued on 5 Jan 2023 (1 year later) :P*
I managed to pass the interview for MOM under ACE as a Housing officer taking charge of Domitaries.
I was verbally offered over the phone for $5+k and so I thought it was quite a good offer. While waiting for the enlisting process, I received a call from MOH to ask if I was keen to go for the interview as a Contact Tracing officer, I thought just give any opportunities a go. I ended up with the MOH job as a team lead with a much higher renumeration package then what MOM could have offered. The latter's processes were much faster and I began my Day 1 on the 15 Feb 2021.
I was supposed to be a Centre Head, leading a team of 50 people together with a team of fellow Heads. I was being put on OJT as a CTO to learn the basics of CT. During that period, there were not many cases, may around 10 imported cases per day and 2-3 local cases every other day. We work in 9-9pm and rostered shift. Local cases were a big thing then as each local case will take around 2-3 days to close. I moved into the Heads room 2 months later. It was tough for me initially as I no longer got to enjoy the awesome seaview anymore and I did not get to lunch with my ex-team mates as often. Things gradually turned for the worse as it peaked up to 5-digit figures a day. My team sometimes could work up to 2am. The latest I left was around midnight and I felt guilty for leaving them behind. Mother's guilt set in as well when I did not get to sleep with Asher. I always try to rush home by 1030pm to catch him sleep. Eventually, Asher subconsciously slept later as he knew I would be back soon. Work began to feel tough when I face challenges with my demanding bosses. I stumble a few times without much guidance and bosses would give pressure and criticise you like a child on our groupchat. I felt so demoralised and so much resentment about my bosses that I almost wanted to throw in the towel. I managed to pull through but I felt wary and lost my confidence at work. After much encouragement from L not to give up a good paying job in a fit of fury, I persevered.
As CT efforts, the conveyance team as well as hospital capacity could not keep up with the exponential increase in cases with the help of the SAF team, the govt decided to pass on the responsibility to its citizens. Each household was distributed with self-test kits called ART kits and we were supposed to report close contacts and self-isolate. Social responsibility was the big term in the propaganda. When this was first introduced, we were skeptical on the response. Of course, there were hiccups with every new thing that was introduced, but it was sorted out very quickly. Surprisingly we had a good percentage of very responsible citizens who would self-report to keep everyone safe.
We had meetings every day to monitor the situation, and I must say I was quite impressed how things were handled by the ministry.
As cases started to plateau, measures started to lax. Till date (5 Jan 2023), there are about 2.2 million cases and about 900 deaths (as of Aug 2022).
We have started to "live with COVID". At least 85% of the population has been vaccinated and hospital bed capacity have stabilised. I'm currently in MOH for close to 2 years and my job has become more relaxed. We are doing more surveillance now on imported cases to screen for variants, some Long Covid Studies and doing exercises to ensure currency. We monitor clusters in vulnerable settings as well.
I'm happy with where I am however I'm still on a supernumerary contract. The longest I can hold on to would be Dec 2024 and I'm not sure if I can still hold on to any positions within the ministry as a perm staff.. Maybe by the next blog entry (a year later :P), I will know.
*This entry has not been checked for grammar as I was too tired and couldnt wait to rush out the next entry.
