When I Grow Up I Wanna Be a Plumber

A friend of mine (who shall remain anonymous) has been checking the classified ads consistently for the past months. He is currently hanging by a thread in his current job and is preparing for his eventual exit through the ads. As I occasionally peek at the papers as well I'm amazed at, one, the numerous ads for call center jobs, and two, the kind of jobs demanded abroad.

I always wonder why I was not told that being a cabinet maker, plumber, brick layer, or a machine operator are hot jobs not just in the Middle East but also in Australia and Canada. Why the fuck did I waste my time writing college papers and reading those thick chapters on local government governance or management or policy analysis when I could've easily been a bloody construction worker?

(Ah, construction workers… that's another entry soon.)

I heard a cabinet maker in Australia can easily get P125,000 for a month's wages. Whereas even if I slave my self to death in this godforsaken archipelago it would take me almost a year to earn that much. My parents could've saved buckets of money by sending me to some TESDA training center in bumfuck Surigao than financing my university studies. After going two years in technical school, I could've immediately moved to the inner recesses of the Australian outback handcrafting kangaroo shelters or in the Canadian tundra where I'd do the plumbing of some igloo.

But obviously that is not happening anytime soon. Seriously, the wise choices we make!