Pink Tuesdays

Wanted to blog about this earlier. I’ve been through interview after interview after interview. And one job offer. I was practically jumping up and down when that happen last Wednesday (thankfully, no one was around). I applied for the position of Admin Asst. - clerical work, what’s so hard about that?

Then came Thursday where the company slowly broke the news that there is not Admin Asst position. The job goes in four steps, 1) You are supposed to study how to predict the ups and downs of the FOREX market, 2) make a lot of enemies and find your first client, 3) ??? 4) Money.

At first, usual lah - very angry. “What is this, wasting my time (and RM7.40 in transportation cost; ahh, sunny ol’ Klang Valley - where public transport is expensive and inefficient)”. But what do I have to loose? I know a lot more about how a limited-supply market works now. For example, I always thought money is made when the market goes up (”bull”) but now I know you can make money when goes down (”bear”). And these people spend the entire day predicting how the market moves and then at the end of the day put money on the market and usually leave by the end of the hour - usually (90% of the time) with their clients richer.

There’s plenty of stuff I’ve learnt - like when markets go way, way up, it’s usually a bad time to trade because the market is volatile and hard to predict. And that we have to wait till the Japs go to sleep and the Wonks wake up to make most of the money.

Since reading Rich Dad Poor Dad I actively thought of getting a sales job. In fact, moments before I got the call for the job offer, I was about to pick up the Classifieds and find one - highlighter in hand already. Then I got this job, and I went, “Ehh, if all things goes well, I got another century to live, I’ll get this job and some money and then latter consider a sales job”.

Instead, I got this job. Where I have to sell RM40,000 investments. The work of prediction isn’t complicated. Its more like tedious. But if I get a client, I’m sure I can pull it off, make a fortune for the lucky person and receive a cut from it (yeah, the pay I would get is commission based on number of clients/accounts, number of transactions and amount of gross profit created - no fixed salary kind of deal).

So what do I have to loose? So far, RM7.40 per day in transportation, ~RM5.00 per day in food, and a whole lot of face. Oh, and considering this is a grey area of the law in Malaysia (we never actually took to liking speculators since 1997 Asian Financial Crisis), possibly my liberty. Ehh…

Few months ago, my church board recommended that 40 ministries be created. My pastor said, “Oh, well, wait till next year”. I thought that meant (hopefully), “Not going to happen, fool!” (say in deep A-Team B.A. voice), but now it either means “Oh my God, my Board is really pushing this, I ought to say yes lest I get impeached or something” or “Hey, it’s a rather jolly idea”.

Granted, when the plan was announced today in church, the number of ministries in the church isn’t a humongous number of 40. No, thankfully, it is a much, much lower number of, well, 39.

Still, the idiocity remained. There is a “Sound Room Ministry”, “Projection Ministry” and “Drama and Creative Arts Ministry” - as well as an Audio Visual Ministry. So lets say the church decides to make a video presentation - the Drama and Creative Arts Ministry would cast, record and direct. And then on the day or presentation, the Sound Room Ministry would handle the audio output, the Projection Ministry would handle the video. The Audio Visual Minister? Probably charged with pressing “Play”, “Pause” and “Stop” on the DVD Player.

Don’t worry, on the forms, it is required everyone pledge to accept training - so those involved in the A/V Ministry would be trained to know exactly the amount of pressure to apply in pressing those vital buttons on the DVD Player. It would be a great learning experience, the aunties and uncles can learn how to program their VCR! In Church!