A spectrum of emotions across the candidates

Thanks to a recommendation from a friend, I found myself at the Mediacorp Radio auditions for the Broadcast Journalist position. I didn’t even know what was going to happen, to be honest, because, unaware of a recent recruitment drive by the station in the newspaper’s classifieds, a whole horde of people had applied and shown up. Okay, I exaggerate—20 people do not a horde make, but when you’re there expecting to be seen alone, with the assumption of a personal favour done, and a nervous troupe of people march in behind you for the same purpose, your stomach does a flippity-flop you don’t expect.

I had been called to go down two days ago, so I was barely prepared. Then again, I probably wouldn’t have ever been able to prepare regardless, so what’s the difference?

First up, the voice test. I didn’t know why I was there, since I thought I would be writing, but I went with the flow. A page-long script riddled with grammatical mistakes was handed to me, and I kicked myself for not bringing a pen. Reading it twice silently, I kicked back and relaxed in the waiting area, smug that I was the only one visibly unperturbed. I realise now I might have been subconsciously nervous, because I did suddenly get the giggles seeing the word “Hizbollah” in the script, as juvenile humour overcame me. (”Bollah” is Malay slang for well, objects of a testicular nature. I may also be wrong about this. Nonetheless, it did get to me.) The sentence fit the term in a context something along the lines of, “Condoleezza Rice chastised Hizbollah in a recent speech.” Ah yes. This might only be funny to me, I realise.

More stomach flip-floppities as I was directed to a bare recording studio, separated by a window from a panel of (I estimate) six grim people seated at a table, headphones on and waiting for me to speak.

“Hi!” I said, as I tried to sound cheery. Silence from the other end from a while, before one of them said, “State your name and begin.” Hooo. Stiff audience.

Eventually, a handful passed the voice test, and……I was one of them! Rah rah rah!

Still waiting my turn

They said come back for the writing test later. No problemo, I figured. I mean, I passed the voice test—presumably the worst part—and I write for a living. This should be a piece of cake.

…WRONGO. I should’ve known, when I sat down, that it would be difficult, because the lady said the test would be two hours long and, looking far too kindly at me, said she’d grant a couple more minutes if I needed them.

I needed them.

I thought a writing test meant I’d flex my grammar-correcting muscles, and perhaps a couple of lucky vocabulary-guesses would top the whole affair off. Turns out it was a major exercise in Making Up Your Own Thesis and there was far more brain power required than I had initially budgeted for.

One of the questions asked what the prospects of peace were for the Middle East/U.S. tensions, and what could be done. Hello? Not only do I not know, I had to fight irresponsible, desperate urges to scrawl “BOMB THEM ALL BOMB THEM ALL” all over the answer sheet.

Next question? Recount the history of ASEAN and its prospects for staying relevant to the future. What? History? ASEAN? This was not happening.

Try the next question: Name three founding fathers of Singapore and their contributions to our nation. GREAT. Lee Kuan Yew. I got that one right, yay for me.

At the next section, I quite nearly burst out laughing in shock. They wanted a string of English headlines translated into one of our three national Mother Tongues: Chinese, Malay or Tamil. No such luck with me speaking Tamil or Malay, so I opted for Chinese, though I’m telling you with sad confession that it possibly made no difference. I had to stop translating midway through the first headline because I couldn’t write po in xin jia po, i.e. pore in Sing-a-pore. YEAH.

I also made up my own unique versions of how to write “right” and “left”, though they might never know, because it didn’t make contextual sense within my sentences, anyway. Several confused flips back to the front of the exam paper, ensuring that my test was in fact for the position of English Broadcast Journalist didn’t made the Chinese words go away, unfortunately.

The biggest thing is I think I might have possibly stiffed someone with infinitely more knowledge out of a job, just because I pronounced “lavendar” correctly.