INTRODUCTION It's All About Life Choices

Summary

IT'S ALL ABOUT LIFE CHOICES

“Engineering opened many doors for me.”

— Alan Lim Kok Seng, MPE Pioneer

NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NTU) pioneer Alan Lim Kok Seng's engineering degree was his passport to more than 100 cities in Asia, Europe and the Americas over two decades. Names such as Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Sao Paulo, New York and Washington rolled off easily from the tongue of the 49-year-old former ExxonMobil global marketing manager. “My Beijing posting in 1995 put me on the global career circuit and started my 12-year overseas stint. It was a rollercoaster ride and my family just went along without knowing our next destination,” said Alan who graduated from the School of Mechanical and Production Engineering (MPE) in 1985. He was among the first batch of 557 engineering graduates from the Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI) as NTU was known then. At that time, engineering was the only discipline offered by NTI.

Engineering opened many doors for Alan. For one thing, ExxonMobil recruited him during a campus job fair. He credits his NTI training for preparing him for career opportunities ranging from engineering, operations, marketing to sales at ExxonMobil. “The structured mind of an engineer will perform far beyond the ambit of the engineering field, and if blended with some marketing, business and finance training, can be a potent combination in achieving one's career aspiration,” said Alan.

This book is the story of the career decisions of a group of ordinary people bonded by the common distinctive of being pioneers in a new university, a practice-oriented one. When they graduated in 1985, Singapore went into a recession after 20 years of growth. The graduates walked into a world of downsizing, re-engineering and restructuring, a phenomenon that has become the norm in recent years. Their diverse experiences over the last 25 years will be instructive for aspiring engineers.

The characters in this book aren't geniuses. They don't have magical powers. These are engineers most of whom are singularly ungifted at what you may call brand management. Some chose fame and scaled the heights in the political and commercial arenas. Some chose a simple life and appreciate the sweet balance between family and work.