Opportunities Day

I went to a commerce Alumni event last night. The night was designed for students or Alumni people to network with each other. The speaker was a guy from a boutique advertising agency and gave a talk on current issues raised in the marketing industry. As he had a background as a journalist, I was interested in talking with him about the media industry. His business story was that he enterer the advertising industry as a magazine editor, and at the time he got into the pool, he had no marketing knowledge. Despite he is a good speaker, I do not comment him as a successful person. In his speech and the subsequence face-to-face talk, I could not find much of his opinion on “strategy band management”. We all know that the current advertising industry is more and more competitive while less profit is earn after the restructure of the commission system. In his opinion, the reason for his company could still grow in business account at this difficult time while most big Ad Co.s are struggling for profit is because it is SMALL. He had no plan to open another branch in Sydney; I could guess that was the reason.

Anyhow, it was a great night. I met a girl from Commerce (Marketing)/Arts (Chinese) and had a nice chat with her. Then I talked to a middleman who did his business in Guangzhou and went there for the trade show every year and made great money from that. However, I did not gain any contacts from the event, except for promising the commerce alumni president to attend their committed meeting next month.

One reason for being such inactive is I don’t know whether I will stay in Melbourne or not. The other reason is that the people there are not in the industry I am interested in. I am still in the mode of sorting out my direction. I have a vague picture on what direction I am going towards, yet I know I am not that determine. If I really want to get something, I will fight for it, no matter what. Options are open and out there, there are lots of things I could do.

The Alumni president asked me: “Why did you come to commerce alumni, not Arts?” Surprise! Surprise! I know what Arts alumni is like, I am one of the committed there. I have nothing to do with just a title. On top of that, after the dispute with the faculty staffs and the Dean, I do not feel abound to Arts faculty anymore. The person in charge all those Arts events, which are not many throughout the year, is the one I was going to lodge my discrepancy to. I did not lodge the form, instead, I write myself a script and is going to knock at her door on the day of my graduation and yell at her “#$@*”

An interesting story: I feel much better to know that getting into those big consultant firms’ graduate program may always be a good thing. A friend’s friend’s …… friend got into BCG, but could not last for a year. Why? Stress! Sometimes, I feel sorry for those talented people. There are so many talents in the world, they have to compete with each other in the talented pool in a stress way; a normal person like me will also have to compete in a bigger pool but less stress. The payoff is – your income, which most of it will go to the Australian government’s pocket!

A quick note: I will go to Singapore for good probably at the end of next year. I went to a seminar yesterday, and found that I could gain a three-month visa easily and look for jobs within that period. Or, alternatively, it would be better I could obtain an employment pass before I fly there. But it will be much harder. Anyway, I will see but not wait. I am serious on this decision, and will determine to make a different life.