He was fortunate to be B744 rated when he joined so could leave when he wanted to as better opportunities arose but if you read some of his early posts he would have you believe he had hit the jackpot joining SIA Cargo. Then again he had come from AAI which is understandable. I guess the same applies to those from RBA.
MC, when I first arrived at SQC, I was very happy and things were very enjoyable. I rarely positioned at all, when I did it was to HKG and in the 3 years I was there I only positioned in Y once. That was a AMS-SIN flight and it wasn't fun.
However, shortly after Capt Gan left, things took a turn south and seemed to accelerate on a daily basis. When I got there, you could pretty much make a request to scheduling any time, then under the new/current CP, it was once a quarter. The trips got worse and worse, the positioning increased and increased and the satisfaction factor went down and down. Multiple changes to the contract, changes in the homebase ticket. Things like that are just the tip of the iceberg.
When I interviewed, Gan made the statement we could expect to fly 75-80 hours/month. I took that with a very large grain of salt and really didn't believe him that it would ever be like that. For me financially, it worked flying 50-55 hours month. I did that on a fairly consistent basis and never really went over 60 hours and seldom went under 45. However, I know plenty of people who made the decision based on the published figures of S$7000/mo of per diem and flight pay.
You're right I was lucky being current and qualified on the 400. I probably wouldn't have considered it had the opposite been true. I and my family really enjoyed the living part of Singapore, so much so, we've stayed in Singapore. One thing I don't miss is SQC. The sad part is SQC could have been a very nice place to work had the powers to be not been so bent on bowing to the pressure from SQ.