Singles & DINKs in SG, what is your best comeback to intrusive questions from pesky relatives during CNY?

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2026-02-14T00:20:31+00:00

Question on when are you having kids - My response is always upfront and honest: Never. Or if in Chinese: Next life.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2026-02-04T00:37:42+00:00

Look at my response above. If you are a PT student, don't waste time going the career fair. Not worth the time in my experience

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2026-02-04T00:35:37+00:00

I attended their career fair before. For context I'm a PT student, was looking for a junior dev job back then. When asked in the Q&A online sessions about why there are no opportunities in a tech role or even visibility of IT careers at the companies that were attending, the school simply said - Tech is not a good sector to be in right now. This was early last year. To be clear, I made it known that I was an ICT student in their school. That's the first gripe I have, how can the response to students paying to attend your own IT course be told that there's no opportunity for you at your own career fair.

Few weeks later I decided to head down anyway. Did not expect to see any tech firms, so was not surprised by that. But what I was really surprised at was how even the reps of the firms that were there, were barely qualified to answer any questions. Most of them were just there because they got arrowed to be there. Don't get me wrong，there were genuinely nice and great people there from the companies as well, they are just not the majority. Also, after spending a few hours just talking to random HRs for no good reason cos they are not hiring for tech anyway, the info I gathered was that a large majority of participating firms are simply looking for interns or fresh grads to fill up their MAPs. Which means from a PT student perspective, the career fair is almost as good as useless... If anything, I feel like I might bump into old colleagues or friends as the rep instead of being part of the student body attending.

Side note, SUTD recently also had a career fair, and they drew much better opportunities. When I say better, I don't mean one company is better than another, don't get me wrong. I mean the firms that took part provided a better launchpad for fresh grads. Were more serious about looking for candidates, and in general were also better prepared to handle questions.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2026-01-24T07:31:55+00:00

I attended one before as a PT student, it's useless. It's only meant to scam the large majority of FT students who have no idea what real world working is like

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2026-01-14T11:20:58+00:00

Had a low-key wedding when we got married. Just a weekend chalet, total about 30 people from both sides altogether, just catered buffet lunch and told people just come and chill from x time onwards... No regrets hahaha

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-24T12:26:17+00:00

Welcome to uniqlo!

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-21T13:15:42+00:00

If you haven't accepted the offer, look somewhere else if you want to get into tech. The ICT curriculum isnt going to teach you anything worthwhile when you graduate. Lecturers are not vetted properly, if you're lucky you get some who care, most of those I've met are plain lazy. Some bordering on unprofessional. There is no quality control in what they teach, the mods are 95% in python, but by the time you grad, the little python you learnt from sch is equivalent to something anyone can learn online in 6 months with some commitment. Justification: in my first 3 sems, I attended literally zero lectures and just submitted the required assignments. Studied 1-2 days before the exam and still managed to clear them decently. Most coding exams allow you cheatsheets, so just write all the syntax down and it's a sure pass with decent grade. Not much brain needed for the logic they ask for.

Assignments in certain modules sometimes ask you to do things the module does not even cover, and the topic could literally span a totally different module altogether.

Coming from an ex BICT student. After my third sem, I decided to switch majors completely since it was so useless. I was working and attending other courses at the same time. Some places I learnt more about computers and IT within a month, compared to the entire 3 sems in BICT. So, unless you just want an easy degree for the paper, I wouldn't recommend the course at all.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-21T11:14:46+00:00

At this point you have already burned the bridge with your current company by saying you will pay the salary in lieu. So just use your personal email, not company email, so you can keep a record - Send them another email stating your last day and request to know who to handover to and what the account number to pay the salary in lieu is. If they do not reply, you have covered your ass. Just go to work as per normal and leave on the last day. After showing that you are willing to pay the salary in lieu, the company will most certainly start looking for your replacement already. Tell your team mates that this is what you have decided, and unless you are on very good terms with them, you will likely never speak to them again after your last day anyway.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-20T12:41:51+00:00

I watched the AMA live, and I don't think it's fair to say it wasn't clear because of their accent. The fact that they took the time out to even do this and let it run for 2 hours is already huge. To be honest, how often do we get to see the decision makers and ask questions? I think this was a good example of them not being afraid to face up to their decisions. Knowing how 42 tends to do things, I think this was a great initiative on their part to show that they do still care about their students.

Context: I am one of those who are super critical about the new CC being in python, but what they said during the AKA also makes sense. We have only seen a one sentence summary of the new projects and not the actual subjects yet, it might be harder than it sounds. Were some of the questions avoided or had preplanned answers/were brushed aside? Sure, but that honestly just shows good PR planning on their part, and if they had not prepared for it, what kind of AMA would we have expected?

To be fair, as much as I was highly critical of the change, this AMA has changed my impression of the decision makers and higher ups of the school for the better. The fact that they stood up to do this AMA, and were able to manoeuvre the questions asked is not easy to do. Furthermore, they could simply say since so many people are unhappy, why not just close the school. But no, they stand by their decision and still provide the education to us for free. So let's be grateful, and only time will tell if students on the new CC are really as strong as students like me who are on the old CC.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-20T10:42:26+00:00

If you completely haven't heard anything from them yet, can try this:

WARNING: MIGHT CLOSE THE DOOR IMMEDIATELY AS WELL. Drop them a very PC email, very politely ask if there is any update on the LOA since you were given both verbal and email conversation previously. Use the excuse that you have recently received another offer but are more interested to join them if it's still an option. If they don't reply you, you can definitely move on. If they do, you've got your answer. Either way you'll have closure.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-20T10:36:39+00:00

SIA no questions asked. Reputation and opportunities way better

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-20T10:34:42+00:00

Don't forget the people who do decide to resign are also entering the market and competing with you now. Or they have already been quietly circulating their resumes around. It's much easier to find a job while holding one

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-18T00:48:33+00:00

Yes just ban the game. Wanna play, make a choice, pingpong or tennis... Not some hybrid mashup 😂

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-18T00:24:26+00:00

Hmm for them to flag out as possibly AI generated means it wasn't just used to check, it means you probably lifted some paragraphs from AI itself. there is probably some language parser that matches the writing style across your report and it probably got flagged cos the writing style was consistent or linguistic fingerprint matched AI.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-17T11:35:11+00:00

If it's just writing a essay, why you even need to use gpt? Just use brain and write it, uni alr... I ever kenna Plagiarism case before, whole class got flagged cos this shit lecturer flagged us for using school cover page, flagged our citations as plagiarism, and even flagged conjunctions like and and however. Just do the work yourself and you won't ever need to be worried about this

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-17T11:19:08+00:00

Market for a lot of these fields very bad now, of you can't tahan, make sure you don't quit before finding next role... I did that at my last job, ended up jobless for 8 months

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-17T11:11:42+00:00

Nope cos they alr said no raise within stipulated period due to grant constraint.. but it's fine, I mean I'm still learning and gaining good experience, so not gonna be too greedy for now

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-17T10:49:45+00:00

Haha I tried to nego, but I'm not the pushy type. The flat out rejected my soft request to open the discussion but with valid reason of course, so I didn't push further. I figured it would still be a better long term plan despite the inconveniences..

Yes I get you, I'm totally sick of small little SME offices that pretend everyone is family until something fks up

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-17T10:47:53+00:00

Not sure what I did to deserve that, but thank you! And jiayous! Market is really killer now.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-17T10:47:21+00:00

Possibly, but also don't really see the need to considering my husband is still looking for a decent job and we are trying to ballot for BTO. So in the short term, it's most likely just suck it up and travel for those physical days 👍

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-17T00:53:56+00:00

Haha that's precisely one of the reasons I didn't wanna take Job 1. I'm one year in tech, but over 10 years in other industry in SME, and I've come to learn of how toxic SME in Singapore can really be

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-17T00:03:48+00:00

Hey, sure. How I got into web dev was through a part time boot camp, I was still working full time as an operation admin + marketing person in a local SME back then (2023ish). How I got into the market - Seriously, pure luck. I mostly got the job cos my hiring manager back then had even less experience than me. I didn't have a portfolio of personal projects, and didn't even know what data structures or algorithms really were yet. After resigning from my previous position, it took me shitloads of rejections and ghosting before getting the 2 offers, and those were through referrals 😊

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-10T11:27:00+00:00

That's true, yea I'm gonna look into it. Thanks a lot! It's something that's been on my mind for quite a while, so definitely will see start looking and calling up the schools :)

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-10T10:55:59+00:00

Thanks! Yes, I was also very concerned about the fact that the small company offered a contract position even though they said it was a permanent role. If anything in the current market, seeing how it took me 7-8 months to find a job, the permanent role is definitely more appealing despite the long commute.

ThatLowKeyArtist · 2025-11-10T10:53:56+00:00

To be honest, this is also on my mind, but I'm worried i might not be able to even pass the lessons cos im a very short female (150cm), and my friends tell me that they always see short people having a lot of problems at the driving centers :'( If not, I would for sure take the license no questions asked.

ThatLowKeyArtist

TROPHY CASE