Singapore Stories: Riding Out The COVID-19 Pandemic | On The Red Dot | Full Episode

everything changed when kovit happened i was on my way to work and i received an email from my boss i've been revenge that's it wouldn't use the word burden but i just didn't want to get my parents worried [Music] because i've covert when i'm about to pass away what do i want to look back on most of the teams are all family breadwinners so it's important that they keep the job we did talk around with the idea that it's totally different from what we have been doing [Music] so much effort and then we are not earning much of profiting out of it how do we move things forward from this and become better my name is [Music] i hate going to the market i'll try to avoid it since young i don't really like the smell the hustle the slippery floors of the market [Music] but things have changed now i probably visited the market more than i ever visited in the past 30 plus years [Applause] freelancers here are feeling the heat as the covet 19 situation works before the pandemic mom conduct a lot of cooking classes students will come to our house and learn dishes and they will pay a fee for it that is a property agent my wife xiaomi and i shoot wedding videos and corporate videos for our clients [Music] the freelancers live isn't easy for two years we kind of have sufficient jobs coming in month to month but this time during the circuit breaker mom can't host her regular classes that she have been doing for years when government announced a circuit breaker only essential worker can go out to work we have to stay home it's bad for everybody when we didn't have any income coming in we started to worry about how how long can our savings last us that is really stressful actually course there's the utility bills and stuff we have to service our mortgage for this house so our cpf got wiped out now [Music] layoffs in the second quarter of this year more than doubled from pre-covert 19 levels to over 8 000 even as total employment continued to fall by around 104 000 in the same period we first heard about the news of the plan shutting down and letting go of staff around april i was not that overly worried because i was in that company for seven and a half years but of course reality comes and hits me my name is muhammad nasir jafar i'm 47 years old i was a city quality engineer from an oil and gas mnc i still can remember very vividly when my managers say that jay i'm sorry we have to let you go [Music] i was lost for that 5-10 minutes when you hear it itself from your boss right yeah that is when it hits you really hard for four months i submitted more than 60 applications i tried semiconductor pharmaceutical electronics industry as well chemicals but still nothing never in my life that i feel unwanted why is it happening why is it me [Laughter] i'm doing the easiest part like cutting potatoes my mom is in charge of the curry chicken portion and charmaine is doing the bread portion growing up every friends gathering birthdays family gathering my mom will always prepare a pot of delicious curry for everyone to share it's everyone's favorite during the circuit breakers a lot of our peers do facebook live cooking shows and mom kind of felt pressurized to step up to to do it online as well we wonder what could interest singaporeans her customer base she thought of curry bands [Music] it was purely just to demonstrate how to cook it but by chance we gave some of the buns too to our neighbors and friends and sales started coming in [Music] it started out with just two of us mom and i running all over looking for ingredients making the bands delivering the vans ourselves [Music] and then as more orders came in we couldn't handle it alone so lester and dad stepped in to help [Music] at that point of time we didn't think of it as a business we were just happy that someone wants to buy yeah [Music] in the beginning of the year kovit happened and everything changed [Music] there was this fear like oh okay i'm unable to find a job wouldn't use the word burden but i just didn't want to get my parents worried my name is chiven i'm a third year student in smu 23rd april was when my exam ended i thought my whole summer is ahead of me what am i going to do i wanted to get internship in a company in singapore unfortunately when kovit happened i couldn't get an internship yeah so that's when i started to look for other things to spend my time so today i'm actually going to be filming a tip talk it's something that i've started doing circuit breaker so i usually connect it to my laptop over here and then this other setup was where i'll put my phone and that's where the whole creation begins many like me were feeling bored they wanted an outlet to just laugh a bit when i seen so many singaporean families dancing together with their kid i think it's really cute that's when i learned a dance a very famous tik tok dance when i posted it there was barely even one or two likes i knew it wouldn't get viral because a lot of people do that [Music] i started to experiment with new ideas and that's when i found that video that worked you again people like relatable content people like funny content so when i started to do more so of that that's when i think people had positive response the video got viral and i think it's garnered about 200 000 views in one night i was quite shocked at that i think a lot of girls found it funny and relatable because they too had unshaped eyebrows because of circuit breaker your first time do facial is it okay yeah i see you got a bit of black hair right here so this one also kind of was went viral in the temple community because it's true right how many people liked it about like four thousand like four thousand from india not from india local singaporeans because i was making people laugh i was making people smile made me want to create more to date i have about 58 000 followers really never expected any of this mischa can i get back my phone don't ever let me catch you using the phone again is that clear it was well received especially my school content because people can relate to it like oh my god yeah i remember that don't ever let me catch you using your phone in the class again is that clear yes i promise i won't use it again and that's a wrap so now comes the editing and all that so this is this takes a bit of time social media can be toxic at times and i think i've experienced a fair share of that as well [Music] i told him right from the start there are definitely be haters because he's seeing it on the lighter side maybe some may not you must be strong to accept it some of the mean or nasty comments that i've received is like you know he's not funny he can't sting a little bit you know took the smiles off people's face like literally i just wanted to make people smile i just want to make people happy [Music] my name is kelvin i'm the general manager here since 2002 it's already close to 18 years that i've been working here we are right now in the printing room where we have our large format printers uh here we were making mainly large springs for clients [Music] 2019 has been a very very good year uh actually we expected 2020 to be even better but things take a sudden change when circuit breaker was announced the closure of workplaces will take effect from next tuesday we had to shut down the whole operation for the next two three months and we totally had zero revenue from that point onwards in business theory with that kind of results we should be cutting off manpower it's difficult for us to actually say hey you know the business is no good and we want to lay you off the team has good for me for some of them even before i joined the company some of them joined us for 10 years five years and so on most of them are all family breadwinners so it's important that they keep the job while preparing for the shutdown we also had difficulty to purchase masks and we did toy around with the idea that we may be bringing in the mass production capability into our place to support singapore's needs for mass it's totally different from what we have been doing [Music] this is our first machine that we imported in we actually went to china to procure the machines and all the supplies we did all the installation and training through video conferencing and messaging we could do about 100 000 masks a day if we run 24 hours this will become a challenge because our team actually needs a different set of skills [Music] previously my role was a fine art print maker it switched overnight and now i'm doing face masks doing the quality control and also to check packing so totally no experience brand new uncharted waters [Music] hi chung how is the adjustment to the machine after we decided that the earlobes and all the things are not attached properly are you looking into it when we brought in these machines they cost us a couple hundred thousand dollars we throw in almost uh close to one million dollars of cash along the way we failed at a certain part the year loop attachment the distance between the tick and the joint uh when we actually browse them together is quite challenging because just a little difference after movement will actually affect the whole attachment we need to resolve this since of urgency those who place the pre-orders are all calling ourselves to make sure that they get their deliveries done everyone knows that they have to deliver it's just like a war time where everybody puts themselves into the front line to help fight the war [Music] during kobe i had the time to like slow down and think about the end of the road when i'm about to pass away what do i want to look back on i think what's meaningful in life is being able to give back to the society that has given you a lot of course like you know i'm just one person i cannot do it alone [Music] before covet i was living and working in new york around march the cases suddenly exposed to the thousands the city went into lockdown my parents were very anxious and very worried and that's when i decided to return to singapore i actually got quite a bad sore throat but i didn't have any fever so i still took the flight home because i was doing my parents i'm very worried that i'll pass it to them then i actually took myself to the gp clinic to get a referral to go to a e for the covet test and it was positive [Music] she told me about how the other elderlies that were in other words were suffering and she was really worried for them yeah singapore is an aging population we see more elderly who are living alone who are isolated within the community they could be astray from their children their spouses has passed on as well or their siblings are also generally very elderly as well i think as humans we crave for social support and a sense of belonging [Music] [Music] which i recently started after recovering from kobe 19 with two other friends the idea of kapong takis and getting more volunteers in the community to help their own neighbours that's what keeps me going i'm trying to reach more and more people kampunkakis is a platform that matches volunteers to a neighboring need [Music] today we try to match kakis within a 20 minutes walking distance we want to make sure that they are neighbors who can check in on each other regularly [Music] we are a non-profit organization we recruit our volunteers through social media giving out flyers in the neighborhood right now we have close to about a thousand volunteers of course it hasn't been growing as quickly as when we first started anymore since you know most people are starting to go back to work some of our neighbor khakis they have to support more than one neighbor and certain areas we don't really have enough neighbor volunteers as well if this initiative is stopped four elderlies will really fall through the gaps [Music] because of the pandemic for the very first time i'm jobless you were looking for a job via online job portals right no response from the applications that i submitted it was really zero i was more than eager to actually start work because it was already about four months that i've been staying at home right my original resume was about six pages long yes yes i remember it was quite a long resume the first thing is to work on improving his resume to better highlight his technical skills and knowledge so after jay has worked on his resume my colleague actually shared his profile with 3d metal forge and he was invited for interview and within three days right yeah he received a job offer [Music] 3d printing is exactly the opposite of what i did previously which is a conventional machining process so it's more to my own personal worry on whether i will be able to keep up with the expectations from my colleagues and also from the company i am in charge of the inspection of the products to ensure that it complies to the engineering drawing which specifies all the requirements of the products this tolerance is basically referring to a surface finish tolerance yes there is a surface phase yeah i think that was the mistake that i did which resulted in some delay in the world engineering drawings can be very complicated so jay might not have seen or exposed to all these new symbols if let's say we ship this out to the customer eventually they might not be able to use these parts because it might not fit into whatever they need to actually assemble this component to i do feel very bad actually because it is an unacceptable mistake for a quality engineer to do to commit i'm still under probation for treatment of forge i do not know whether i have done enough up to the expectations of the company for me to be confirmed [Applause] this is this is concerns we are smu students i actually wanted to get an internship in a company related to marketing unfortunately when kovit happened i couldn't get an internship that's when i stumbled on tick-tock types of students in morning assembly son four years in school helped me time my time actually i've seen some people posting his stories on their story and those are people that don't know him and that's how i knew how big given switch has become [Music] mechanical pencil you every time kid asks me it's just that the week maybe surprised me because i didn't expect him to have that a week ever since i started tiptoe and gaining more traction it's when like brands will reach out to me i still am using social media for the purpose of connecting talking to my friends seeing what's happening in their life the small change would be that now i'm using social media and this influence to share about a brand to my friends could it be maybe that i have a sizeable following then they see that maybe i cater a bit more to the younger demographic so they reached out the clients are okay with the setting of the scene but they want me to drop the female corrector because they don't encourage cross-dressing yeah your first time do facial is that i do tend to take on the persona of a girl and i'll wear a wig you gotta take it now working your brains has been bittersweet can be challenging sometimes when a brain tells you okay do this and then you're like oh how can i make it funny you know how can i make it funny it's definitely not easy tik tok life is a new feature it was launched in the singapore market two months ago okay i think it's good i actually can be quite nervous before i go live so people who are currently on the app scrolling on tiktok they can actually watch your live broadcast so there are 13 13 000 people active right now so i'm gonna go live let's do it in three in two and one yay hi guys hello hello hi everyone watching uh steven tiktok live helps me to interact those people who follow my content now more people are more than ever looking at their phones so i think that's where you capture their attention so someone sent one diamond so these can be translated into cash there's also this cool feature where people who have actually been following you for some time right they can actually reward you with certain coins i would say one coin maybe is two cents sometimes they may give you five coins so that is uh that's like 10 cents [Music] i was glad that there was still job opportunities in the midst of kovit i've been receiving some offers from brands to collab and to promote their merchandise or their brand so most of them would really be less than 500 so i would say on average i do like four for a month i still have two more years before i graduate that money will go into helping me pay off my school fees [Applause] so it's hard to motivate yourself to wake up early in the morning when the sky is still dark but to deliver the orders we have to wake up like at 5 00 am 4 30 am sometimes our brand name is in my curry bun in short it's it my cb which is a reference to circuit breaker there's of course people who really dislike the name but as a home-based business starting in circuit breaker we have to take certain creative risks we sell our curry runs on instagram our customers direct message us and we'll follow up with their orders through there we started this business with no business plan we're just selling one kariban at a time to survive this pandemic none of us studied business none of us studied culinary customers all around singapore wanted to try our curry bun so we deliver island white with zero delivery costs [Music] and then the end of the day we realized that we are making such a loss i remember feeling very disappointed after all this hustle all these efforts ultimately could not support us so i thought how do we move things forward from this and become better saturday yeah the delivery route so my dad will just follow accordingly to the house number one number two number three etc i am designing the packaging i put on a little doodle something personalized for our customers [Music] mom did a lot of groundwork for refining the recipes my brother is very good with numbers and help us to calculate all the ingredients cost packaging cost that helps us with all the delivery [Music] we have to also pick up some side hustles so i'm editing a wedding video right now we had to juggle between both the caribou business and the video business which is a challenge because xiamen is very much involved in the kitchen process if we stop doing the curry buns then what will happen to our parents mom and dad have been freelancers all their lives and they are not of age to redraw from their cpf anyway so they really needed to rely on their job to provide for themselves so with the khariban business they are able to get an income at least [Music] this is your cat i'll rescue them so you feed them every day [Music] i was actually inspired by my own parents my parents would prepare food to help my stay alone senior neighbour so that kind of you know sharing and giving spirit is something that really inspired me to start kampung kakis [Music] so this is the map of all our gucky volunteers as well as aoka keys in meat the purple and the blue are volunteers and the brown is our beneficiary salkakis in need one of the things we realized is that actually a lot of the elderly were not very tech savvy and therefore they felt more isolated so my team decided to start a new initiative called digital car keys where we use our network of kaki volunteers to become sort of the tech support xinten a woman chessy zoom [Music] bye if kobe didn't happen i probably would still be quite busy with my daily life and work and maybe didn't put so much thought into how we can do more to help the community i had the chance to really slow down and reflect upon my life and how i was leaving it if i was to continue in new york i wouldn't be able to do all that after i came back to singapore i still had my job in the u.s so i would work late hours from eight pm to about seven am the next day it was quite difficult because i would start working on khakis in the afternoon before i you know commenced my work in the evening i actually did go back to the us from july it was very hard trying to manage kaponkakis from the u.s because of time zone differences i wanted to come back and see it you know continue to grow [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have 25 to 30 employees most of them are all family breadwinners during the pandemic our printing pieces were all shut we should be cutting off manpower but we chose the face mask manufacturing to actually help to save the jobs even up to today we still have a full team with us [Music] okay we had some issues on the yellow customers are complaining so we took the feedbacks we put in more stringent checks it took us some time before we will come and get a better product out there to the market the pandemic actually forces us to think out of the box to really move ourselves from our comfort zone to actually protect everyone's likelihood to evolve the business to change it to bring ourselves online and to expand to different portfolios to make sure that we are still relevant during the difficult times we thought that it was a good mix to actually expand the whole product line with hand sanitizer [Music] june is where we started back our printing production after the three months stopped right now i'm back to doing my previous role as a fine art print maker i oversee the printing from the color editing to the quality control so back to normal i would say happy to be doing something that i'm familiar with okay so this is safe [Music] now everybody is trying to do promotions so the activities are rolling back in quickly but the production of the face mask still continues [Music] we believe that holding this capability for future safety net is actually important so we decided to keep the the mass manufacturing business uh alive um as long as we can [Music] machine level pandemic has actually brought us stronger together we have learned to think in all the different perspectives don't just keep looking at what they are doing right now and you should be able to find the other part of goal what else you have to do preparation for tomorrow okay we tried juggling our videography business and the caribon business but that also means that we don't have any rest day at all it's difficult and it's really draining sometimes but i think it's worth it [Music] honestly if we were to stop this curry bun tomorrow we would just go out and work harder in our respective jobs but what's keeping us together now it's the chance to work together as a family and to earn together as a family sometimes we also wonder whether the very generous support we get from our customers and friends is this one is this thing gonna last and is there future in the caribbean business we don't really know as well do you want to continue doing it if we can if people still want to eat our curry buns we'll make them we will make it hey jay hi matt are you doing i'm doing good thank you have a seat my appropriation period is three months if they think that yes you have met the expectations right that is when you are considered as a confirmed staff i hope i can get my confirmation how are you finding settling in how are you finding coming up to speed with with what we do um settling in the first week was actually very scary for me but uh but of course with the uh guidance from the colleagues from the obstacle right it really uh made my transition much easier you got a probably the ultimate compliment from someone in sales the other week they said oh jay's got a very customer quality mindset and they were very happy with that are serious drj we are pleased to inform you that with effect of november you are confirmed in your position as a senior quality engineer in 3d metal forge private limited so this is my confirmation letter from the time i lost my job until i got the job over here it's just very humbling to me you know you taught me a lot of life lessons that there is no such thing as iron rice bowl you basically need to work hard as hard as the first day you start your work until now right and all those people that cares about you you know so you just need to make sure that you treasure them all right thank you my mom passed on on saturday october 17 2020. she is always the first person that i actually goes to to break the happy news she's bedridden for over eight years i'm sure from a much better place she's smiling right now we never like seemed like a very awkward scene and i was thinking like the view does not look good but at the museum it's honey oh it's okay that was like weird i mean that's so cool yeah do you wanna edit on the title app for you normally i like to use the adjust scripts right yeah and you can refilm with the adjustments yes these are the seniors over here i'm really the newest in this uh whole tik tok and social medias yeah i never expected this when i entered 2020 currently locked down but in this whole period of the pandemic right that presents a lot of opportunities [Music] the silver lining for me was me starting tick tock yeah and i'm thankful for it and that's why i still hope to do even the coming years to continue creating content just do that just to friendship [Music] expect the older one first because you already know i think it's a good choice to come home after going through this pandemic i do want to do more for singapore and for the community singapore is always home in the past it felt very difficult to make a change but when you hang around people who are all change makers i think you are more hopeful that yeah we can make a difference in singapore together [Music] this pandemic has taught me to be okay with change we just have to adapt and work even harder when we are out of our comfort zone because life is always going to be unpredictable [Music] i'm day dreaming about traveling shamin and i can drive a van and then we can make curry buns around the world [Music]

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 149,872

Keywords: CNA, CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, People Stories, Asian perspectives, On The Red Dot, COVID-19, pandemic, coronavirus, Singapore, Asia, freelancer, circuit breaker, lockdown, layoff, retrenched, jobless, stories, TikTok, social media, AVS Technologies, enterprise, pivot, mask, Kampung Khakis, volunteer, community, non-profit

Id: _GTZI2qenAo

Length: 44min 7sec (2647 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021