Quitter or Stayer

Something pretty strange happened last week.

There was this guy I used to work for. This was the early days, possibly before I reached full maturity as an analyst. Perhaps if we had worked together in the later years he might have had some regard for me as a worker. But during the early years, I never got the impression that he had any respect for my talent or my work. So it was pretty surprising for me to find that he had popped up on my social media page and asked me if I was a quitter or a stayer. Actually he was more like “do you wish to see Singapore go down”?

That was the dumbest thing I’ve seen for a while. So I asked him right back “do you wish to see me go down”? All I did was to pass a few smart alecky comments about LKY and he went that angle on me.

Well it’s like this. Either you don’t think highly of me, or my departure is a loss for Singapore. You can’t have it both ways. I don’t know what made him think he could come to my page and say something bizarre like that. There’s something darkly ironic that the guy who did more than almost anybody else to make me leave Singapore is now asking me why I left Singapore. Well partly because of people like him.

When people work for you, have some respect for them. If you don’t have respect for them (and I’m not saying he has to) then it’s none of your goddamn business whether or not they choose to work in Singapore. It’s not an unreasonable question, if I’m a quitter or stayer. But I’m not taking it from people like him.