Well my name’s Joan and I work as a school counsellor at a junior college in Singapore though at no point in my life did I think that I would become a counsellor. I didn’t even have a school counsellor when I was in school.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a mathematician, a musician, a civil rights lawyer and at some point I wanted to live in a tree in Canada. The first job I applied for after graduating from university was with the singapore zoo as a zoo keeper. My mum flipped when she found out and I never got a reply from the zoo. I did work my way through university because otherwise I wouldn’t have the money to go. I suppose I could take scholarships but I didn’t want to be bonded as a civil servant for 6 years which makes the fact that I am now a civil servant extra ironic. I worked as a barista at Starbucks coffee while in university for a number of years and loved the job too though I did get very fat from enjoying the benefits of unlimited lattes a day as a starbucks employee. Bubble teahouses were the rave at my time and I earned $20 an hour as a gigging keyboardist every weekend to pay for university tuition. I did some community development work in Indonesia for a year which explains my sub-fluent bahasa and then did some gigs as a choir director teaching black gospel music to enthusiastic Japanese ladies in Tokyo for a few months. Before joining the civil service, I started a translation company with a friend and did a whole bunch of English-Chinese-Japanese translation work while studying for my Masters in Social Science in Professional Counselling (I’m gonna officially graduate in October! Photos to come).
I’m an adrenaline junkie so I tried skydiving, mountainbiking (I still regret the day I sold my gary fisher), diving, trekking in the himalayas and a number of crazy adventures. Now that I’ve aged considerably my activities are more sedate so I take walks, play bass in the band and channel surf.
I don’t have a dog but wish I do (I even got a name ready) and I’m not close to my family. I have a best friend whom I do almost everything with and I’m grateful that I’m still alive today and still trying out new things! There’s alot more about me than what’s on this page but I suppose it’ll come through in my writings in future. Enjoy reading!
Update 10 October 2009: I graduated!!
After two and a half years of slogging (okay I admit sometimes it was slacking), I finally graduated with a Masters in Social Science in Professional Counselling! yeah! yeah! Sharing a picture of my ‘twins’ with you. 
