My Unforgettable Paint Chemist Job

     I have a total working experience of almost thirty years, three years in the Philippines, eighteen years in Malaysia and nine years in Singapore. It gave me a lot of exposure and learnings that had I not become a professional, I would be a poor farmer in my native land, like many of the people here. Maybe I was ambitious and lucky in some way that opportunities came to me and gave me chance to uplift my family's economic condition.

     I was lucky to finish a college course through scholarship, a scholarship that only an intellectually elite few could qualify, from the Department of Science and Technology, about 200 all over the country. After graduation from college, I was able to find job as a paint chemist in Dutch Boy Philippines. I only worked in this company for almost three years, my only working experience in the Philippines, until I got offered a job in Malaysia as wood coatings chemist, which I grabbed because it was an economic solution to my family's woes. I worked in three companies in Malaysia before landing a chemist job in Jotun Malaysia, a Norwegian paint company, which would become my longest working experience in a company, about ten years. I was connected with the regional lab responsible for the R&D needs of Asia, based in Kuala Lumpur.

     After working with many nationalities, the Norwegians are the best employers. I love their simplicity and sincerity, their way of making you feel they are not your superiors at work. There's one experience that would always be etched in my memory when we had a global R&D meeting in Norway, and in the free time, we went to the ski resort. The Asians of course had no skiing experience. The Norwegian R&D Global Director, helped us don our ski boots, he himself took hold of our feet, one by one fitted the boots until he had his fingers accidentally wounded. A director of any other company wouldn't do that. I can't forget that humility.

Shot with some colleagues in one family day