Joining the workforce in 2001 to the electronics sector that involved manufacturing to a certain extent, the discipline i've learnt in my student days definitely helped and played a major part of my 2.5yrs in that company. Facing teachers and students alike, very often i felt my role, in extremities, similar to a full-fledged teacher! Preparing lesson plans, examples and presentations for them...and teaching them how to use the product that i've been tasked by the company.
Yes...it's a product that we've been using since our secondary school days...the Scientific Calculator!
Was pretty surprised to learn upon joining the company that the market share of our brand was actually very low...wondering what brand i'm referring to? Well...guess u might have guessed it...CASIO.
All my life, i thought this is the only scientific calculator brand available...but i was so wrong.
Started with less than 10% of the market share among the schools (then was like 183 secondary schools, 14 JCs etc...), it was indeed an uphill task that my fellow partners faced in bringing back the name of the brand to the minds of the consumers.
Early morning calls from teachers...weekend workshops for schools...all done by the team i had...my dear team comprising of colleagues from the Distributor's office and our academic consultants.
Organized competitions with collaborations from polytechnics...slowly, the brand made its way back to the board. 2.5yrs later, we managed to garner more than 40% of the pie, with introduction of new models solely for our market. It was a satisfying accomplishment.
All these will not be able to happen without the help of the bushido spirit in all in the team...from head office in Tokyo down to colleagues from our Distributor's office.
Assisted by other products like the Graphics Calculator, Financial Calculator etc...we made it.
In that 2.5yrs, we too managed to assist our Malaysia distributor to enter with the Ministry of Education the rights to supply the calculators to the school...assisted our Thailand distributor to enhance our graphics calculator presence with workshops conducted by our academic consultants. Eventful it was...fulfilling it was too...
Apart from the scope that i was handling...life was full of fun with other product launches...the drinking sessions with our own colleagues and bosses...this first job i had...truthfully, it was very much the most fulfilling and happening thus far.
Then why i left? sighz...we live in a whole of reality that the $$ plays an important role in our being in this society...cost of living is on the rise...things are getting expensive...though happy we were, we also need to ensure our survival here in Singapore...so the opportunity came...and i boarded another ship that allowed me to "sail" the world with the product i had.......STAMPS!
Since starting this little bloggy, i didn't really penned down the comments and my feelings for the stamps that we helped the nation to produce. Being exposed to the world of stamps at a young age, i guess most of us were like that, i started collecting and inheriting stamps from my mum, and had always been fascinated by the intricate designs found in that tiny piece of gummed-back paper...but as time ticked by, got older...and was attracted to other forms of activities that i left the collection aside.
However, just about 6yrs ago, i'm yet again being exposed to this little piece of paper, and i started looking into the details on the designs itself.
I suddenly realised, back then, at that young age, i had already received tons of information that i can never find in our standard textbooks and even from teachers. These information found on the designs of the stamps are really in abundance! Especially if now i dig back some recent stamps of Singapore, like last year's 150 Yrs of Singapore Postal Service, the Cash Crop of Early Singapore...when we had the stamps to commemorate the anniversaries between countries like Vatican City, Vietnam, China, Belgium, Sweden etc...even the 600th Anniversary of Admiral Zheng He...many more...i couldn't believe the vast amount of information obtained by reading up the writeup provided through the leaflets of the stamps! My my...did our teachers teach us these? or can we find such information in our standard textbooks? i think if the exposure did not come about, i might still remain as a normal being who really didn't know much about history, facts and even political arrangements.
I really feel that our stamps are worth looking at...although emails and smses are the most convenient form of communication between friends, families and even business associates, but i do feel, sometimes, a handwritten letter that pops into my mailbox can be really heartwarming! Specially so during festives! The number of cards received are getting lesser while the number of ecards increased! hahaha...but my heart really jumped when friends send a handwritten card...and the words that can be found truly bring memories we always hold dearly...imagine...looking at the handwriting of your friends that you have not seen for decades! and ironically, sometimes, their handwriting can still be the same as in the past!
I had the opportunity to be at the World Stamp Exhibition held in Luoyang, China just about last April...looking at the crowd turn out...it's really scary but yet, encouraging...to have such a turnout at a stamp exhibition, it was really something that we really can't find in Singapore...350k visitors for the 7days exhibition...that's an average of 50k per day!! All the booth holders couldn't even manage the crowd even with an additional 2 volunteers allocated to them per booth...that's the magnitude of the turnout! Queue can be as long as circling the museum, which is the venue of the exhibition, and people can wait for a good 2-3hours in order to access the rare exhibits gallery...though one might say that well, their people there had the time to spend, but think again, if not of the passion to gain more knowledge, would one spend hours in order to view the exhibits?
And when i heard from colleagues that Singapore collectors won something at that exhibition, it's really something! for a 4 million population country to win an award amongst all the collectors from bigger populated countries, that really show quite a lot too!
This new area from the electronics truly exposed me to the knowledge out there for us to take and receive. I've never realised how much i learnt in my past 6 years in this scope until i was given the opportunity to describe what i was doing for a living to my relatives in the recent CNY. It was then that i was like...Goodness!
In the past, it was only those that we learnt in textbooks...but now, i can even rattle off in certain extent species of flora and fauna...their behavioral patterns...the trees around us...our nation's built heritage...all because of stamps.
Boring it might be to many out there...even among peers...they can go to length of mocking at what i'm doing...that no one use stamps nowadays...true...not many people actually use stamps for letter posting...but at what cost? the technological advancements of our nation was so quick that all of us, including myself, can't make do without a mobile phone...can't make do without our internets and tvs...entertaining these might be, but where's our personal touch? we are losing our humanity in terms of interpersonal interaction...
even in office, we hardly communicate with each other...even though very often, our own colleague is just seated next to us!
We tend to type faster as the days go by, and we tend to write slower with the pen and paper too...we used to write beautifully with teachers commenting "how nice your handwriting is...", to "what the hell am i writing?"...yes...sadly, sometimes, we can't even recognise what we wrote! hahaha...hilarious it might be, but yes...it's really true...we need not be doctors to have their kind of handwriting...
Days past...knowledge is still very much there for my taking...and to be honest, i'm loving it...but well...loving it is just another expression...i'm waiting for another boarding time.......till then...will update more often...
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