Dilemma...

I am awake right now, having bad coughs that prevented me from my lovely sleep. Sigh! What a tiring day from the badminton tournament, though I didn't participate. Tomorrow will be the same as well to help out Joseph organizing the competition. At the same time, must also go to support both our dear friends, Yee Siong & May Peng participating the competition. [I felt that it's tough to see girls that can really play badminton very well these days, though there's abundant of them out there] ^^


Checking through my emails, I am pretty surprised to receive an email notification from Shell regarding my Industrial Training application. To be honest, I only started applying to various companies just the beginning of this week. We were provided with 200++ list of companies around Malaysia and I had only listed out a few companies initially. Why few? You will understand as you read along. I am very interested to work in power related fields, which in this case will be at the power plant because I felt that my interest lies more on power rather than electronics or communication. By this, the only 2 companies that came across my mind initially were Alstom & ABB. Just to try my luck, I had also decided to apply for Agilent and Shell. I am supposed to be happy when I managed to receive the reply from both Agilent and Shell, which were the only 2 companies I had applied so far. [Gosh, is it too late to apply for Alstom & ABB? January already still haven’t applied…] Though, that’s not the case right now….


Being a scholar from Yayasan Tenaga Nasional (TNB), this is where the dilemma starts. My last resort for this training application will be at TNB, if I didn’t get any feedback from outside. Initially, I’ve been told that I must apply my internship at TNB. There won’t be any allowance paid for that 3 month and I have to apply for that training all by myself. Goodness! They don’t even give me any allowance, which I felt it’s not fair because scholars from previous years got. Well, who am I to demand for such rights? The worst thing is, they don’t even assist any of us the very fundamentals things for the application; e.g. giving details or cover letter. What were the people inside that building very busy of? My allowance for this semester also havn’t received. Pokkai liao! How to survive? They said after Chinese New Year only give. Give ang pao meh? That’s what leads me even more to find my training out of TNB; somewhere else...


This is where the dilemma begins. Few days back, I had a chat with my lecturer, Mr SS. He’s an ex-YTN overseas scholar. After being sponsored for 5 years, he went for PEPS training in TNB for half a year before being placed on where to work. At that time, he was interviewed and asked if he would like to be a lecturer. His response was being a field engineer in transmission line initially and maybe after some lengthy period of time only would he work as a lecturer. Weeks after that interview, he was sent a letter to his home, stated that he’s being ‘offered’ a job to be a lecturer. If he rejects, he must pay the entire sponsored amount for his course, which lead him to no choice but to accept what’s given; a job which is not what he wanted. That’s a whooping 100k++ debts to be settled! Alright, he had worked since then for the job not of his choice till the bond of 7 years ended. After that, he tried applied for field engineer back (transmission) but to no avail, there’s no response till date. By the end of the chat, I started to have this thought, will they put me in a job or position which isn’t my interest if I didn’t had my training with them?


My brother’s friend’s brother was also the ex-scholar. He didn’t go through the training in TNB and ended up being in Human Resource Department for about 5 years, the limit of his bond. ZzzZzz. HR department for an enginner? If that’s so, then would it be better if I just stick to the last resort without having to waste my time applying for others? My seniors told me before that though they said that the internship must be at TNB, it’s not compulsory. Most of them did their internships out of TNB. How about me? I still haven’t send in the resume that Agilent requested through emails and what am I supposed to do with the Shell’s interview? Take it as a normal interview or screw it? How about applying for ABB or Alstom? Should I make a bold move of doing my internships out of TNB? I guess I will just have to make my decision, real fast…