Life After University: The Lost and Gains From The Change Of Being A Student To A Working Adult

A year ago, at this time I was about to start my final year degree in chemical engineering. Fast forward 365 days later, I am now 4 1/2 months into a career in Unilever as part of their top level management trainee program. Looking back at this I realized there has been some lost and gains during this transformation.

This post would revolve around the 5 things which I felt I have lost by being a working adult and not a student and also 5 things I have gained because I am no longer a student and have started working. The first half of the post would be the lost

THE LOST

1. Sleeping Hours.

For those who knows me well, they know that I can sleep for extremely long hours. Trust me when I say it. I can go on sleeping continuously for like 18 hours. When I was in my final year, I only had one subject in the semester. Which means I only had to go for class twice a week, which I did skip most of it as well. I am sure more of those free time sleeping rather than doing my FYP.

Ever since I've started working, I can no longer sleep past 8 a.m. Nowadays the body clock has adjusted to waking up at 6.30 in the morning. Even if I were to force myself to sleep more than would only be until 8 a.m. and I can't find myself sleeping more. That is one thing I certainly do miss a lot. Having those long hours of peaceful sleep.

Ever since started working, even during my sleep I do dream about work lol. I guess the stress and pressure is starting to catch up on me. There was no such thing during university times where I used to get extremely peaceful sleep and some nice dreams as well!

2. Quality Times With Friends

One thing which I used to do during my final semester was to go for Cheezy Wedges at K.F.C during midnight with Vaagi and Bear. Lol I remember the number of times me and Vaagi woke Bear up from his sleep and dragged him along to K.F.C.

Apart from that, myself, Bear, Vaagi, Ivan and Prabhu used to just hang out in the room talking about stuff let be movies or football any current issues. The semester before that it used to be me, Bear and Rooparn used to have this philosophical talks. I certainly do miss those sessions

Ever since started working, I've hardly found much time to chill down for myself, let along to hang out with friends. Monday to Friday are jam packed with work. I leave home by 7 in the morning and return home around 8.30 at night.

The only hang out time I have is on weekends which is equally spent with and friends. Saturday are usually the double date activity of hanging out at cafes playing games or going for movie and lunch. While Sunday is something sort of family time.

3. Sports

Back when I was in University, sports used to be a regular thing. A couple of times a week with a combination of futsal and badminton. It serves as a good work out and also a stress relieve as well. Playing sports on consistent basis definitely helps you improve your game.

After starting working, I have only managed to go for sports just twice in 4 1/2 months. From like twice a week to twice in 4 1/2 months. Gosh I miss those regular futsal and badminton session. As a result of that, the last time I played futsal I felt extremely rusted. Hopefully the boys would make this futsal thing a regular weekly thing at least.

4. Blogging

One of the biggest lost I have felt ever since started working is that the number of blog posted. I have almost literally stopped blogging. The only reason why there has been a couple of post this week is because I am on leave for a week lol. I no longer able to find the time and idea content to blog about. It is something worrying and I have to start working on.

In the past blogging was almost a weekly thing. It was a great platform to express idea and the thrill of writing something is just amazing. I was able to explore many genres from film review to short stories to current issue. I am trying to pledge to myself to ensure I make at least 2 blog post a month.

5. Pursuing Other Dreams.

Back in university, I was a boy with many dreams. I wanted to accomplish many things. I wanted to be an engineer, a blogger, a film director, a business owner, an author, a motivational speaker and an educator. Phew the list is long.

But as soon as I hit the corporate world I have been forced to give up on many of these dreams. I have not given up everything yet and trying to work my way towards achieving at least a couple of them. The difference is that once I have started working, reality has hit me hard and managing all this dreams might not be as easy as I thought when I was a student

Now having written what I feel I have lost by no longer being a student, now I will share what I feel I have gained by being a working adult.

THE GAIN

1. Money Money Money!

*Saying the tittle in the voice on Mankatha Ajith" lol, jokes aside one the biggest gain I have had since started working is definitely the money. Being in a job that pays extremely well has ensured that I have a decent amount of pocket money to spend.

When I has a student, I have to live on a budget everyday because money was limited and it wasn't my own as it was mum who was providing me the money. But ever since I've working, one of the greatest feel is surely the pay day. The feeling of having to work hard and get paid is something amazing.

2. Turning My Room Into A Man Cave

Again, this point can be linked to the first point. With the money I am earning, I have slowly managed to transformed my room into a term called "Man Cave". This are all stuff I wanted to have when I was a student but not able to do so because I was staying in a hostel and I wasn't earning anything to buy.

Now being a working adult who earns, I have the opportunity to get stuff with my own hard earn money. A Smart TV, PS4 and Astro in the room. A wonderful collection of Action Figures and also a quadcopter along with some amazing posters in the room. It feels awesome to be able to pimp up my room turning it into a Man Cave.

3. Ability To Do Things For Mum

One of my greatest joy and gain of being a working adult and not a student is that, now I am able to do things back for my mum. Small things such as bringing her around where ever she wants to go. Buying her dinner or more recently buying her a brand new stove. This small things which makes her happy means the world to me. During the past I was not able to do all this for her, but today I am in such position and it is priceless.

4. Better Dates For The Million Dollar Smile

Back when I was studying, during our dates, most of the times it was she who does all the spending. She would buy me lunch, pay my bills buy me countless of presents. She was working and she could afford to do so, but I was a student living on a budget and it was extremely hard for me to do things for her.

Today I feel so proud that I am able to buy her the things she likes, take her on proper dates to wonderful dinners and spent for me. I am able to lead the relationship a little more on a financial aspect. I still have things to work on but things are surely better than how it was a year ago.

5. Accountability and Responsibility

One of the biggest thing I have learnt and gained from my working experience is that how I should learn to take up accountability and responsibility. I entered a field which has nothing to do with engineering, therefore I had to learn a lot of things from scratch.

Which means there are many moments I have made mistakes which are costly and when I say costly it means I causes the company a big sum. But the biggest lesson I have learnt is that whenever you make a mistake you have to be accountable for and take responsibility to limit the damages caused.

Instead of running away and trying to hide mistakes, I learn to acknowledge what went wrong and make quick decisions to improve the situation. Because the truth is you can never learn without making mistake but that doesn't mean you just make mistakes and leave it. Make mistakes, learn from it and quickly solve it.  A big thank you to Unilever for giving me this learning curve.

What I have learn over the period of one year is that you can never run away from changes. As life goes on, changes are immanent, you can't run away from it so it is better to embrace this changes with an open mind. The life we plan and the life we have are always going to be different but that doesn't mean we should stop trying to achieve the life we plan. Keep working hard and make your dreams come true

A Year On: An Untittled Short Film Plot

About a year ago, I had this idea to do a short film. My roommate, Kugarubaan was one of the few person I share this story with and was heavily involved with me on developing the plot, coming up with a brief screenplay, dialogue writing and also assisting me in making my casting choice. I remember we even auditioned a couple of people for the lead role before finalizing who we would want. Yet due to other commitments we did not move on with this project.

With a year gone now, I doubt it if I ever will have the opportunity and time to ever direct a short film, thus I am going to share here the plot of the short film that I have developed. Since the plot was developed during my time in UTP, the cast which we have selected are everyone from UTP which I will share at the bottom of this post. I hope you enjoy reading it and share your comments in it

If this short film plot were to ever get some good response, I would like to proceed in converting this from a short film into a short story like a novel kind of concept. Happy reading 

 

The Plot

" The story revolves around a plus size dark skin Indian girl who is often bullied and mock due to a physical appearance and how that hinders her progress. The story will be based around a university location. The cast will be mostly students aged 20-23. The short film will start by showing a group of 5 people meeting up somewhere in the university. Four of them are good looking physically guys and girls and the fifth is the lead character. A plus sized, dark sized girl. 

 

The scene than heads into a montage sequence with a type of music which gives the montage a feel that they having a good jovial time hanging out together doing some fun activities together. Towards the end of the song it can be heard the sound of an alarm. It turns out that the lead character was dreaming about the whole event now thrust back to reality.

We than capture her daily activities as a university student as the harassing and bullying she faces due to her physical presence. As she wakes up and heads to the wash room, she and a fellow housemate bumps together at the door as it can’t fit the both of them in which results in the housemate scolding her that knowing you are fat why can’t you give way for me to go in first. 

This is followed by the roommate mocking as she combs her hair and puts on some make up in the wash room whereby the housemates mentions than no matter what she does, she is not going to look that beautiful. The lead character often reacts to those sarcastic comments with a smile but a sad smile.

She heads to class and sits at the back because if she sits in front, her classmates will mock her that they can’t see the white board due to her broad body size. She sits towards the back of her class alone. Then comes along a guy who sits beside her. It is her best friend and through monologue we see that she has a crush on him but is afraid to confess to him due to the inferior complex she has built within her about her physical presence due to all the bullying and sarcastic remarks she has been subjected to in the past by the society. 

In the monologue, as she thinks of telling him she is loves him, scenes of her being bullied is played over stopping her thoughts and keeping it to herself. Through melodious smooth background music we show a montage of the times they spent together which can be seen through her eyes she loves him. 

One fine day at the notice board in their university, they see that a singing competition is set to be organized in the university. The lead characters decides to join this competition because in the past she remembers her crush telling  her that he likes a girl who can singing well. As she goes to register herself for the competition again she is bullied with sarcastic remarks by other fellow participants who are there to register themselves. She nearly breaks down and walks away from the place and bumps into her crush who says that don’t let this people stop you from joining the competition. He gives a little uplifting motivating talk. Being encouraged by her crush she goes on to register herself.

With another montage with music, again we show clips of her practicing for the competition along with people at times laughing at her when they see her singing and also clips of her and the crush talking as if he is encouraging her. No dialogues are shown just with background music so that we don’t reveal what song she is going to sing and how her voice will be. 

On the competition day, she is shown waiting at backstage being very nervous and anxious about having to go up to stage and singing. With the other participants also there and giving her the sarcastic look writing her off as a competition. Her crush than walked in backstage and talked to her uplifting her one last time and asking her to trust her instinct and just be who she is.

After a couple of participants, she goes on stage. As she is seen on stage, the crowd breaks into laughter and booing. Again she starts to panic don’t know what to do. Whether shall she walk away or not? She than sees her crush from a distance trying to encourage her. She braves herself up and says that the song she is going to sing is dedicated to someone very special to her. Again the crowds laugh at her mocking her that even she has someone special. 

The music plays, and she starts to sing. Her voice was so mesmerizing even until the crowd who was laughing and booing her was stunned into silence. She goes on to sing a romantic love song with all her emotions and breaks down to tears a bit to the end. The whole crowd gives a thunderous standing ovation. She sobs in joy seeing how the perception of the crowd has changed towards her. 

As she walks backstage, her fellow competitors are in awe and congratulate her. As she walks from them she sees her crush standing waiting for her. She hugs him joy and then he proposes to her. He mentions that he has been in love with her for a long time but was waiting for her to break the negative perception on her and stand up to her bullies before he proposes to her. 

He had decided that no matter what happens on stage today, he was going to propose to her. He says that he loves her and asks if she loves him. As she says yes, at the same time we can hear the host announcing that the lead character has won the singing competition and is lead on with strong claps from the audience. "

The Cast

The Lead Character would be played by either Mugileswary or Kavitha Mohanakumar as both this fantastic ladies are excellent in the Tamil Language and can really emote well to the plight of the lead character. The plot was initially written keeping Mugileswary in mind, but as she was on intern we found another wonderful talent in Kavitha Mohanakumar. If both were available it would be an extremely difficult choice for me to make.

Kugarubaan would play the role of  Varun which is the lead character's love interest and friend. Again when I wrote the plot initially, only one person came to mind to play this role and that was Kugarubaan. There is something about it which makes it so natural for the role of Varun. He would fit in like a T for me

The opening montage scene of the four friends would go to Navaneethan, Kummanan Mano, Franzeene and Priya Tharshini

 

Kesha Varthiniy as the Lead Character's roommate who mocks her about dressing well to class

Lila Balasubramaniam as the Lead Character's housemates who mocks her in the wash room

Vaagi, Franzeene, Priya, Navaneethan, Kummanan Mano and Ivan as the Lead Character's classmates who bullies her

Kuga (Bomb), Debhasri and Ivan as the guy who mocks the Lead Character during the competition registration and the friend who is with him

Myself as Varun's friend who accompanies him during the scene where the Lead Character walks away from registering for the competition

Benedict and Keeshvini as the competition organizers at the registration booth

A malay guy, Chinese girl, Kiren and 2 foreigners as backstage contestant waiting to sing next in the competition

Prabhu as the competition host/emcee

A crowd of students to fill up and make it look like a singing event.

Selective Humanity: A form of racism

*Warning: The content of this post maybe a little sensitive. If you are someone not able to handle it I suggest you do not proceed and read it*

I am sure we all know what humanity is. Just for the purpose of this post I will share with you the definition

So we have establish what humanity is, but what I want to talk about here today is about another term I would like to call as "Selective Humanity". It means the same as the mentioned above, but with just one difference. The difference is when an individual practices Humanity at selective moments only. It can be two similar scenarios which begs for humanity but the individual professes humanity act in only one of the situation.

The break it down to further detail in manner more understandable I will use examples which I have observed based on social media reaction towards certain events.

The first situation I will like to speak upon is about the War Crimes that has been in Palestine. I am very sure everyone reading here today are fully aware of the events that is taking place there. Many innocent Islam brother and sisters have died helplessly. If you observe well the reaction of people on social media and perhaps on the international political level, there is one common thing you will be able to spot.

Majority of individual who are raged and angered towards this situation and demanding for something to be done are fellow Islam. They condemn the actions of Israel and any nations which supports such act. In Malaysia, many protest has been conducted to highlight the plight of Palestine people. There were even talks of boycotting Israel based business and technologies. Donation drive and aid support were send to Palestine by our Malaysian Government.

Again all this actions were initiated and carried by a majority of Islam based individual. Of cause there are other individual who are not Islam who has also fought hard to ensure something that is right being done for the people of Palestine. My point in this post is to support the majority religion based people who fights for humanity for those who are suffering from this event

Next I would like to highlight on the war crimes in Sri Lanka that happened a few years ago. I am not sure if those who are reading this post today are aware of this situation. Many Tamilians were brutally murder under the name of war by Sri Lanka's Army. Again when you look at the reaction in social media, the majority outburst of individual who are seeking for humanity and justice are fellow Hindus and Tamils.

I have noticed a couple of my friends on Facebook who are Hindu has been strongly posting and writing about the war crimes that happened in Sri Lanka. If you look at a national level, I don't see the same amount of effort done in terms of donation and aid support as of for the Palestine people.

Both situation shows innocent people suffering due to war crimes. Both situation begs for humanity and support of people, but why does the people who raise their voice for the suffering for the Palestine people do not do the same for those who suffered in the war crimes at Sri Lanka.

Doesn't both situation calls for equality in humanity actions by the same individual. Yet why they don't do so. They only cry for humanity when they can find themselves related to the victims in terms of religious. That is why the majority of people who fights for justice for Palestine are Islam and the majority people who fights for justice for the crimes in Sri Lanka are Hindus/Tamilan. They need a sense of belonging or connection.

The sad thing is that these people fail to see the biggest link of all, that we are all humans are each scenarios deserves our utmost attention and help. It is when we fail to do so is what I call Selective Humanity. It doesn't make you a good person if you help one situation and totally ignore the other situation. It only shows that you are heartless.

The day we let go this Selective Humanity, that is the day we will eventually gain unity. With a unity driven by the power of humanity, nothing will be able to stop us

One World, One Love, One Humanity Spirit