Ties, Suits and False Capitalism.

Today, I enjoyed some music of a genre called “vaporwave”. A repetitive video plays out some 80s Japanese Coca-Cola TV ads where men and women enjoying cold Coca-Cola on hot sunny day, while wearing suits and ties.

Vaporwave is a genre of music which samples out jazz to R&B and often takes out satire on consumer capitalism, nostalgic engagements with pop cultures, often from the 80s and sometimes incorporates glitch arts and late 90s web designs for cover art.

While all the focus tends to portray nostalgic moments of the 80s, I’m starting to think us millennials and the Y-generation would soon be portrayed as those cover arts – replacing those of the 80s.

Finding a job had been one of the most difficult thing to do. I don’t even know what to write about myself when there was a survey on the what are the graduates doing. While all the questions seemingly asking me what am I doing currently, I saw there was no option of “still finding a job”. As if of those questions are seeking a definitive answer that wanted me to blurt out, “I am employed”.

So this is how it feels like. The first phase of post-varsity life; landing a job. Unemployment phase.

When I was in school, they’d bring some of the most “successful” people – school’s best alumni to deliver talks. Most talks are about what is the speaker doing. So I, like most other kids glaze at their suits and ties like people seeing NBA superstars right in front of me. Admiring at their success. It’s like an unwritten advertisement trademark, “if you work hard, you’ll become like me”.

Except one thing – they never really tell you the realities you needed to face after school.

But long enough after I went to matrics and finally coming close to graduating officially, I realized those things are just “sugarcoat” about life. The speakers and people who are invited to deliver talks never really did tell you that you have to spend strenuous hours of studying everything you’ve learned in school within 1 or 2 years in matrics, fighting for your place to study at university and the hunger you have to face while being a student.

My interest after graduating, is finding a job. Jobfairs, are one of my list where should I find my job. I graduated from Social Science discipline, Political Science to be exact. But again, I found the same disappointment that I felt when I first graduated from my high school. Everytime I went from one booth to another, handing out my resume and talking about my degree, it made them raise their eyebrow as if they have found an alien landing on their booth. Every booths that I went, have placed me in the Human Resource department application. Which is something I don’t know much about.

However, things become quite surreal after all the hassle and hush between the crowds and lining up people there. Each booths had only wanted one or two people to be absorbed into their company. The massive amount of unemployed people and people who have already tons of experience in their respective field is discerning to me – do I even stand a chance? “Struggling” in these pools of people? What irritates me more is that most booths don’t even want fresh graduates. They simply want people who are already with experience – while most people who came are just freshies like me. And then there’s also booths which asks us to go to their website and send our resumes through email. Something I couldn’t fathom. Why would you open up booths and ask people to send their resumes through email when they are just “right there” in front of you?

“Let’s go back”, I said to my friend after going to all of the booths we went.

He agreed and we went for lunch. After that I sent my friend to a scheduled interview at a local bank. But then something struck my head, why not I just “walk-in”? Coming into the office, they agreed to let me in and asked me to write an essay about Malaysia financial situation. During interview, I apologized that I walked in but the interviewer has said something so remarkable to me. It’s like a light has finally lit at the end of the day – since it was late evening. Close to 7.00PM.

“Hey, it’s okay. If you want something, go get it.” Yeah, yes definitely. I calmly headed the questions and answered their inquiries. I was offered a position in sales.

That was long ago, perhaps a month. No, I received no calls and I assume perhaps I didn’t get it. Maybe not just yet. Or maybe I was just quietly rejected due to my military background and studies. My friend didn’t too, but perhaps he’ll get it one day since he majored in Finance.

Maybe of the ties and suits, there’s a silver lining somewhere out there. I believed it would do no good if one were to be spoonfed about how to face life, but we all deserved to be told what kind of things that we would later face. Not some sugary words. We young people, do not need comformity. Truths at the end of the day, are relative. They differ from one person’s view to another. In anyhow, people should just tell it no matter how bitter it is. Sugarcoated words aren’t motivational, but an opiate that people cling onto false hopes.

Hence, the false capitalism.

What was even more saddening is that there was a jobfair at Kedah which scammed thousands of young people, that took place in early October 2017. They were told that the more they bought their “forms”, the higher the chance that they would be hired.

We youths, are aspiring dreamers. We are so full of our energy, with some of us are just confident of our capabilities. Due to our youthful nature in taking risks, some us dared to push beyond our boundaries. Just to see our glittering dreams and hopes turn to reality. If what you seed are lies, then what you sowed are us youngsters who are living nothing more but in lies. If we are a society whose rooting for nation-building, then take us young people seriously. As the Greek saying, “a society grows great when old men plants trees whose shade they know they shall never sit it”. 

Asyraf Amir. 20171021.