Recession! Retrenched? So?

In my friend’s house the other day, I got to know that his neighbor was retrenched. The guy had just bought the house and there is this big installment he had to pay each month.

With recession, there is going to be retrenchment with people losing their jobs. Times are going to be tough. Nevertheless, such times are a test of a person’s true strength. Such times can lead to greater opportunities. Such times lead us to face reality, to survive and reach out for the knob to another door.

There is a saying that ‘When one door closes, another opens.” When we are secure in our jobs, we seldom, if not never, reach out to open another door in front of us. Let us examine what are the doors available for us to open.

Before we look into the doors open to us, let us draw a deep breath and relax. Tension usually comes with problems. Tension can bring sickness and, worse, other problems to the family. There may be the blame game. We blame ourselves. We may blame other members of the family. Yet, why should there be any such acts. We ought to understand that the problem comes through no fault of anybody. It just happened because there is a global recession. It is beyond our control. That’s that! Now, let us calmly examine how we can overcome it and survive the economic tsunami that is sweeping over us.

The first thing we have to face is our financial position. Did we manage to put aside some savings? Have we been saving regularly? How much do we have in our savings? With more money saved, we can breathe more easily. We can think of many more opportunities that we can go into to create an income.

Next, we could think of the knowledge we had acquired. During my younger days, I willingly serve others without any return expected and in my generosity, I was given the opportunity to learn many things. I learned to video-tape, to edit so as to have all that is important and remove the superfluous so that the result is not boring. I learned to use software to create special effects.

I learned to repairs taps and pipes by helping friends who had plumbing problems every now and then. I am my house’s own plumber.

In another posting, I had mentioned how I had in a similar manner learned floristry and had been a part-time professional florist supplying the RHB Bank in Sungai Petani with floral arrangements in Sungai Petani, Kedah during the early 1980s

Perhaps, you are an engineer. As an engineer with basic engineering knowledge, you may search for a little more skills to make repairs. Even during recession, people need a refrigerator. Refrigerators do break down. They need repairs. Such repairs can be done in a home. Other than the refrigerator, there are washing machines, televisions, radios and computers. Be committed to the chosen work. Plan it well. Inform your relatives, friends and neighbors. Show them you care enough to do a good job and they will be returning with more work for you.

Do we have relatives and friends who may have certain skills and abilities they could teach us? I learned flower-arrangement well enough to supply an arrangement each week to a bank. This was through helping friends to make arrangements. I, later, improved my skills through books I ordered from England. I wanted the latest and the best then. That was how I became a part-time florist without a shop at one time of my life.

Relatives and friends have ideas. Of course, some are good while others are of not much value. We ought to talk to them. As we listen, ideas might be offered. Then, we can list down the ideas given as soon as we reach home. Ideas do disappear and are lost from our memory unless we put them down in a secure place. Then, slowly, with our better halves and our children perhaps, think of the ideas. How viable are they? Which is the most suitable in our community? We plan our move. Then, we implement the idea. After that, since we are on new ground, we have to evaluate our plan and our product. How good are they? Are there any weaknesses? How can we improve on them? Our friends and relatives still play a part here. Now, we can see the importance of having relatives and cultivating good friends.

So, are we literate? (Of course, we are! Otherwise we would not be reading this. However, I add this in as I hope we can use this to encourage or get someone else to be aware of the importance of being literate. Realize how important education is to our children!) How well can we read and understand? Can knowledge from books be of any use to us? I am glad I have a good command of English as I had from young realized that the latest knowledge comes in that language! You see, those days I frequented the USIS library and the British Council library to quench my thirst for knowledge. That is the advantage I derived from not having sufficient money to purchase books and magazines. I was forced to search the book-racks in those places.
What can we do? Can we cook? Are we able to do house-hold repairs? List down all our abilities. All of them can be of help and we can never know where it may lead us. We may end up being our own boss for the first time in our life!

There was a time when I cooked every day for my family. I did it to ensure my family had truly balanced meals. I did the marketing. In doing so I learned how to differentiate between fresh and stale food, I learned the difference between young and old beans and I learned how to separate a ripe watermelon from an unripe one. When I am ignorant, I am never too shy to reveal it by asking people who have the knowledge. You see, if we ask, we are ignorant until then only, if we do not, we remain ignorant forever!

At one point, I even thought of setting up a restaurant! However, God gave me only twenty-four hours and there was a limit to how much we can stretch our time. We could start small, with a stall for chips or banana fritters or anything coated with flour and deep fried in oil.

And if we have no cooking experience, literacy can still help us with information from recipe books from the library or the bookshop. We could make jams. We could bake puffs. We could sell them from home or supply someone who needs them. Tell the neighbourhood about your food. Get orders or sell them at the nearby morning breakfast center or whatever suitable outlet is available.

How about drinks? Coconut water? Some kind of healthy herbal drink? Warm lemon tea? Cool chrysanthemum tea? Soya health drink? What is available in our territory? Try out the taste. Is it suitable for our community? Try the drinks on our family, our friends and our neighbours. Do they like it? That’s research that does not need much money. We can sell them to get an income sufficient to tide us over this difficult period.

We can make rubbish enzymes from fruit peels, skin and discarded vegetables? Such things can even be obtained free from the market or restaurants’ kitchens. All we need to purchase is brown sugar and a clean plastic container. Water comes from your tap. We can sell enzymes to encourage people to use less detergent and save the planet as well. Enzymes will help improve the soil for someone’s plants.

And we should not be afraid to be seen doing more messy work than before. During the last economic down-turn in Malaysia, there was this wife of a mechanic (Actually I do not know the true reason for a mechanic to fail but ran away, they did.) moved to a larger town to become a hawker and ended up earning a lot and now lives in their own big double-story house. Fantastic? Maybe. But it is true!

Do we have space? Do we have a vacant piece of land beside our house? We could start some kind of small business on that small piece of land. Perhaps, it could be a landscaping business. Pots, fertilizer and anything else that has to do with plants could be sold. It is a business where things do not have a self life and therefore the capital cannot dwindle. And the plants get better value as they grow. If mowing the lawn is within our ability, we can also put it to good use. Well, bosses, the well-do-to and those who still work need someone to care for their lawns and gardens. People still need hobbies.

Yes, hobbies are important to life. Aquarium fish and gardening too and essentials can be a source of income.

And if we have nothing; no money, no knowledge, no skills, no friends or relatives who can teach us something to help us out, there are still lots of things that can be done. Busy people need someone to wash their cars. Working people need someone to look after their garden. Working couples need to eat. We can help with the transport. We can sell. We can do a buy-and-sell business, paying the producer after each day’s sales.

We can also become agents; insurance agents, agents for cars and whatever there is to be sold.

The only thing we cannot do without in this world is the willingness to work hard; to put in effort to earn an honest living so we can walk tall.

Of course, it is tough. Nobody ever said it is going to be easy. But then, we can be tougher when the need arises.