Looking back at my previous careers, particularly the earlier ones, if I talk to people about them, they would sound pretty cool, and possibly glamorous to some people.
I remember my very first job after I graduated was working at Heathrow Airport in London. My role was a Customer Service rep for a travel agent who's core business was selling flights between UK and Hong Kong. This was a looong time ago when people still buy flights directly from travel agents, and many local Chinese in UK couldn't speak English well. Our role was to help them at the airport. The travel agent had a very close relationship with British Airways, so we were like pseudo BA staff, helping out at the check-in desk. We even had clearance to the airside to help with passenger boarding and arrivals. I love airports and the idea of having access every day to areas only available if you're flying was so cool and glamorous to the young me back then.
Taken on my recent trip at Copenhagen Airport
The only downside of the job was the unsociable working hours. Flights from Hong Kong normally arrive UK early in the morning, and we're talking like 5am here. That means I had to get up very early in the morning and be at the airport before the plane lands. Luckily that wasn't a problem for the young me back then. Then I'd finish my shift around 7 or 8 o'clock, go home and sleep for a few hours till around lunch time. The next shift would start at in the late afternoon when check in starts for the evening flights from London to Hong Kong,
I worked there for three months, till I got a 'proper job' and started working in a boring office. I kept in touch with my airport colleagues for while, particularly when I flew back to Hong Kong for holidays, and they'd give me a free upgrade to business class 馃槃
A year later I left UK and went to work in Hong Kong. Back in those colonial days in Hong Kong, if you speak good, especially native English, it wasn't difficult to find a good job. I got, what some might see as a dream job. I was paid to watch TV all day!! I worked on the English channel at one of the local TV stations, and my role was to preview the programs before they are aired. The English speaking programs were mainly produced overseas and I had to check the content to make sure they complied with the local broadcast standards. Anything that was out of bounds had to be edited out by the editing team. These were mainly things like adverts, too much violence and sexual scenes, and things that were deemed unsuitable for children if it was to be aired during day time.
Since I had just started, my supervisor, a Canadian woman tend to give me all the boring mundane children programs to preview. And she always kept the best programs for herself!! 馃槨 Then I got some more variety, my favourite was The Golden Girls. They were so funny.
Source
The best thing about working at a TV station was the opportunity to see famous actors and actresses. One time a few of us wandered into one of the studios to watch people filming, I don't think we were supposed to do that 馃槂.
After a few months, being paid to watch TV all day got pretty boring. I moved into public relations. PR is always seen as a glamourous job and highly sought after by many young females because you get to attend all these flashy and fun events. In reality it's nothing like that.
Image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay
I didn't go into PR because of its glamorous image, it sort of found me. Remember I said if you spoke good native English it was easy to get a job in Hong Kong in those days? PR agencies needed to keep up their glamorous image to attract the best clients, and glamourous PR executive's backgrounds were all part of the package.
Ours was a small PR firm and had four staff including the owner. She was a very experienced PR executive, lived overseas for many years and was married to an expat. Then there was Genevieve, a middle age single Malaysian Chinese woman who was always very well dressed and liked to take off her 3-inch stilettos in the office because they were killing her. She pretended she was 30 and couldn't speak much Cantonese because it's much cooler to speak English. And there was another girl, I forgot her name, let's call her Lisa. She had just graduated from overseas like me. I think her family was pretty well off and her grandfather used to be the editor of the local English newspaper which would have been a pretty big deal in his generation. Lisa was really nice, down to earth and we got on well together. Then there was me, a BBC (British Born Chinese), I think I just made the cut 馃槄
Being the two junior staff, Lisa and I got to do all the shitty work. We used to spend hours each day ploughing through all the newspapers looking for any mention of our clients and doing newspaper cuttings. This is what PR executives really do in their worklife. Plus Genevieve loved to boss us around!
One time, the company was bidding for a new account and had to submit all the staff profiles to the client. It was so funny when Lisa and I read our own profiles. We had become experienced PR executives and all the stuff they said we knew and had done was a glorified version of what we really knew and did. Morale of the story? Never believe half of what the PR agency tells you!!
My PR life was over after a few months as I had to go back to UK. Sometimes I wonder, if I had stuck around, would I become another Genevieve?
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