The crisis and me!

Not in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined that I'd be working in the banking industry!

But as if that wasn't wild enough, now the quotient goes even beyond wild ....I am in the banking industry AND in the middle of a Financial Crisis!! hahahahahaha I mean whoever has known me since childhood would understand how completely crazy that sounds. I hated numbers, I hated banks and I couldn't care less about a financial crisis in any part of the world.

So a month back when Lehmann and AIG and others started going bust, I thought, perhaps this is my excuse! Singapore, being the financial hub that it is, will surely cut jobs and get a bit depressed. As an expat living in Singapore and working in a bank I surely had reason to imagine the worst and pehaps pack my bags for home! Now don't get me wrong, I do love my job but somewhere my subconscious is still struggling to deal with reality. The reality of being part of the financial industry. I mean I'm doing exactly the kind of work I want to do, but just that I'm doing it for a BANK!

[Definition] Bank - (1) A place where my parents and all their friends worked. (2) Uncool

Then again I'm not working with an international bank, merely a LOCAL BANK (yes, they say it like it is a stigma). Now I need to clarity that a bank is a bank to me (look at definition above), no matter whether it is international, local or rural. I'm quite indifferent to that. Even if I worked in the biggest mightiest bank, I'd feel just as unable to reconcile why I was there!

But lo and behold, I finally find out why desitny put me in a local bank. It was good for my career! We really are more safe today than our international counterparts! At least in Singapore we are. MAS, the big brother, ensured we stay safe. We all raised money just before the crisis was official. I mean there are some really smart people up there.

I'm not quite sure what will happen next though. A lot of excellent strategy and planning that we worked on in the last one year, could be washed away by a mere slashing of budget now. Time will tell.

On another note, I've been busy being super-creative as a scriptwriter, director to put together a musical for our bank's internal quarterly show. And whoever has seen bits of it can't stop laughing. Yes, it is a spoof on the financial crisis and Abba songs can be so handy!