The road less travelled

Talked to Koidy Koid on Gmail chat this afternoon. She'd sent me an email with a link to this entry on the Education In Malaysia blog and the following in the comment thread:

Anonymous (Wed Nov 29, 02:40:32 AM): PhD + 3 years postdoc experience, optimistically you may get between RM5K to 7K per month salary in IPTA (public uni) or IPTS (private uni) in Malaysia.

You are on probation and most likely you will work in a department whose head has not heard of Nature Cell Biology and Cancer Cell; neither the dean knows Nature Cell Biology and Cancer Cell. They know how to answer to the call of nature.

If you are in IPTA, your first priority is not getting your research gear up and ready. You have to sign 'Aku Janji' form and attend induction courses and other silly civil-service based classes to be educated about stuff totally unrelated to your scientific career, so that you are well prepared to take exams that you must pass for your confirmation and promotion later^* .

Then you have to cope with grant applications from various sources like IRPA, SAGA, etc.

When you are finally ready to carry out your world-shattering frontier experiments, you have to cope with unexpected power cut and zero water supply, which happen a bit annoyingly too frequent.

Meanwhile, the clock goes tick tock, tick tock and you discover that your brilliant virgin scientific ideas got published by your competitors in Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, EMBO Journal, etc.

After one or two years, you may make a bold decision - cut loss, give up science, and go into politics (the best exponential rising path is to join Umno Youth or Puteri or Putera, if you qualify) to salvage your bright future.

On the other hand, if you are as smart as you claimed and have guts to face rewarding challenges, then, my boy or girl, go south - the little red dot (which most likely will give you a starting salary in S$ more than the equivalent RM of a professor in IPTA in Malaysia, and you pay less tax, and no 'Aku Janji' to sign, and no civil-service based classes to take, and ....!) - or other leading nations in the world!

Smart people must know how to make smart choices. Good luck to you.

Koidy: Hi taikach.
me: hi koidy
Koidy: i'm thoroughly depressed.
me: just got your email
Koidy: yeah.
me: Unfortunately it's what I heard when I was doing a bit of career path research back home. (calling people up, talking to Emily Tan's dad, etc.)
Koidy: that plus the essay... can go bang head.
me: how buys are you this week? would like to talk on the phone. it occurs to me that i don't call friends much, but would like to.
Koidy: sorta busy, because Tar coming back tomorrow, then got this essay, also making him pressie. but i can make time :)
me: ahh okay
wanna chat tonight? just for a short time if you're working on the essay
Koidy: sounds wonderful :)
thanks.
need your pragmatic grounding on issue at hand.
but dang, future so bleak.
me: hehehe ME? pragmatic??
maybe we shoudl form a Malaysian Scientists Support Group on facebook.
Sent at 1:27 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: we should...
sighness.
me: /me sighs too
Koidy: maybe could have found rich boyfriend.
pulak-pulak Tar is also completely into low-income jobs and serving the poor.
me: i was just about to type "engineering pays well" and then hit Del.
Koidy: :P
sorry.
me: I'm seriously thinking about moving to Singapore.
don't want it to be permanent though
Koidy: really??
yan is there?
i mean, yan is there.
me: the impression i got from the people i talked to is that there is some hope that M'sia will improve over thnext decade or two but it will be SLOW.
Koidy: and how will it improve if people like you run to sing??
me: yeah, she's on a 3-year bond after uni =P
Koidy: i wonder how she's doing with the to boys.
me: HAH
i think it's one of those quantum statesthat's neither here nor there but the waveform will eventually col.lapse.
Sent at 1:32 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: are you referring to yan or to malaysia?
me: clarification: what i'm afraid of is getting stuck as a junior
lecturer with no power in an IPTA.
Yan =)
Koidy: haha. kenapa?
oh yeah. i know what you mean--all my hopes of research dashed.
me: my hope is that it might be possible to build up my career for a few years in Sg, and then move to Malaysia and start a new job with more seniority.
Koidy: makes sense.
but what about steve?
me: yeah. there's literally nothing for him in M'sia.
we saw the list of MS projects in the Biomed Engineering UM website, and he said they were undergrad caliber.
some of them were totally ridiculous, like "Changes in Body
Composition Before and After Prayer in Muslim Women."
Koidy: aahhhh! stop stop!
enough bleak news about tanahair.
beh tahan.
wanna bang head on mass spec and cry.
but arthur keeps holding me up and exhorting that no matter what, we
need to go where God calls us.
frustration and poverty are not things to run away from.
me: s'truth
Koidy: i agree with him about poverty (not that either of us will ever
be impoverished)
me: was reading an article in The Scientist about sicence in Africa
Koidy: but dunno about the frustration part. that's harder to deal with.
me: scientists in dev countries all over the world are fighting this
kind of thing. at least we've got company in misery, it' not unique to
M'sia.
Koidy: mm.
that's hopeful.
bleh :P
sorry... being petulant.
but taikach, what about your vet dreams?
me: shrug you know what's funny? after i figured out that vet school was going to be too expensive and applied to grad school as a backup, i really wasn't upset at all.
learned from my internship that i liked research. and weirder...ever since i could read^** (literally!) i've had this morbid interest in infectious diseases anyway
i think this is the right field for me. anyway, it still involves work with animals - zoonotic disesase, veterinary vaccines, just on the research side instead of clinical.
i think God wants me here, 's what i'm trying to say.
Sent at 1:40 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: sounds wonderful.
i really think there is a place for God's people in the sciences. as much as there is anywhere else, but there is definitely a dearth of Christians in the sciences.
for me, i'll go to grad school, then see how loh.
i think i'm committed to going home.
and if that's where God wants me, hopefully, i'll find in that (my
calling), the staying power to do what's necessary.
me: meetoo.
bah, i should remember to pray for you more often. i usually forget to pray for frineds unless they email me about their grad school apps.
Sent at 1:46 PM on Wednesday
Koidy: grin
it's okay.
i'm only currently trying to up my prayer life.
gtg liao.
to my other, more relaxing job at the library.
ta... and thanks!
call me after dinner?
around 8-ish or something liddat?

^*Werner's Where There Is No Doctor was one of my favourite books from about age seven. I still can't explain why, but it's laid the foundation for a lot of the things I think about now. It's the manual for rural healthcare workers.
^**This isn't just the one guy's opinion, according to the UM professor emeritus and new PhDs I talked to back home, funding depends a LOT on seniority, and a lot of the tenured profs are deadwood.