Coronavirus impact and updates

It is now May, and this thing called the coronavirus has made a huge impact on the lives of many. Including my own.

The April trip had to be cancelled and I had to process cancellations and corresponding refunds for the parts of the trip which were booked.

In such an environment where many firms are cutting headcount and/or slashing wages, I’m glad to still be in a job — however pressure has grown since the start of the year because of the very poor business sentiment. It does not help that there had been a compliance incident earlier this year in my division, which caused a major reorganisation — and resulted in change of duties for me as well (for the worse).

Well — good thing is that I just finished a third round of interviews with a major competitor, and I should be receiving an offer from them pretty soon. It will then take some thinking through if I should take up that offer.

If that comes through, I will be happy because my daily commute will be shorter, as it is now another office in the city centre. Also, I won’t have to contend with bosses from a South Asian background (finally) — hopefully it will be much less toxic an environment that I had been exposed to in my first two jobs, and recently in my current job.

I may need to think through my MBA plans again because of the fast changing educational landscape. Now there are a lot of government grants in Singapore for further education, which means I may be able to take an advanced certificate or something in the interim — one certificate which I am looking at is a certificate in AML and risk.

Basically I may not even need to pay cash out of pocket — 90% basic government funding, 5% additional COVID-19 related funding, 5% government credit scheme. It is an interesting proposition which means that this year will probably be a good year for me to look into all these.