by Debbie Yong

He's got a massage for you

His love for massage grew out of his love for his family.

'My wife and daughters would come back so fatigued from work or school and ask me for a massage to de-stress,' said Mr Abdul Latiff Ahmad, 55.

This was in 2000. Mr Abdul Latiff, then a senior technician at the National University of Singapore's central library, started picking up Malay traditional massage on weekends. Little did he know that his hobby would provide the platform for a swift career switch after he was retrenched in December 2002.

Scoring a home run

Her retrenchment became an opportunity in a crisis.

Today, Ms Susan Tong estimates that she earns at least five times what she made in her previous job.

She was a corporate sales account manager at a large American multinational corporation when she was retrenched in August 1998, with a severance package.

Motivated by his hobby

In November last year, barely five months after Mr Thum Cheng Cheong moved into his new semi-detached home in Kembangan, he found himself retrenched.

He was the head of the legal and credit administration department in the Singapore branch of a European bank, and the retrenchment was especially shocking as it took immediate effect.

Thankfully, Mr Thum, 46, said, his wife and two sons were supportive. His wife was retrenched as a human resource director in a finance firm two years earlier, but she has since found a similar job in an insurance firm.

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