CitizenXX, I may be way off base here, but I can’t help but suspect that you’re just a tiny bit out of touch with the rest of the world. I’m not commenting only on your self-serving interpretation of your actions in 1990, but more on your repeated comments about how you’ll only accept an Australian basing ‘when’ SQ begs you take a job with them in November.
Now I don’t work for SQ and never have, so I can’t comment on whether your expectations regarding your employment prospects are correct. I have to admit you sound a trifle smug, and (I suspect) just a little out of touch with reality, for I understand that SQ aren’t exactly famous for rolling over and acquiescing to demands from prospective employees.
However, I understand entirely your desire to take up only an Australian basing. The reduced after tax pay shouldn’t be of any concern given the money you should have been able to squirrel away over the last twelve years… and, could I be right in thinking that there might just be a tiiiiiny touch of apprehension at the thought of leaving your safe ‘little pond’ to live in that big bad one where even you might suspect that the fantasy you’ve been able to weave about what a hero (no pun intended) you were in taking the ‘courageous’ course of action you did in early 1990 might not be seen in the same light by the vast majority of the colleagues you’ll be forced to live among in Singapore? (I’ve heard the early arrivals have been more than a little surprised at the (non)reception they’ve received on the expat Singapore social scene.)
You and your heroic (pun intended this time) mates were left ‘in possession of the battlefield’ after 1989 and with no one on the spot to gainsay you, have convinced yourselves through constant repetition of the Big Lie that what you did was somehow honourable(!). Maaaaate, if you think you can sell that line to people who know what really happened in 89-90 as opposed to young FO’s locked into your cockpit in an post 89 AN aircraft, give up Aviation and make yourself some real money - Tony Blair has a job for you among his spin doctors.
You say in your last post: ”What you need to accept though, is that's the way things happen in life.” “That’s the way things happen in life?” – what’s that, that the Bosses always win? They win only because lily-livered or self-serving people (who have been labelled ‘scabs’ for over 150 years now) don’t stand the ground they initially promise to stand.
It’s also gives me a lump in the throat (I tug my forelock and grovel “arrr, thank yee, surrr”) to see that you ”…bear no animosity toward any who chose otherwise.” But just in case we forget you’re way up there on the very apex of your high moral pinnacle, you quickly go on to say ”It's such a shame that they didn't have the capacity to rationalize… They made a choice, and I made a choice - different choices, but I'm happy with mine,”
It always draws howls of outrage from some when you use a war analogy to illustrate a point regarding the (thank you Wiley) capital ‘D’ Dispute. But Bob Hawke called 89 a war, so here goes anyway. Using your logic, CitizenXX, the ‘smart’ pilots of the RAF in September 1940 would have painted black crosses on their Hurricanes and ‘got with the winning side’, because their leaders had made some truly stupid decisions leaving their country in a desperate situation, alone with no allies against an all-conquering and implacable enemy. Anyone could see (and many said it, including the US Ambassador to the UK), that England’s cause was lost and nothing could stop the Germans. A ‘smart’ Brit would have looked after Number One and not followed that war mongering Churchill ”up a dry creek bed”.
Similarly, our soldiers in New Guinea would have done exactly the same thing in 1942, for no one had defeated the ‘unstoppable’ Japanese juggernaut until then, and the Australian military leadership under Blamey was riven with dissention and had made, and continued to make, enormous mistakes that cost the troops on the front line dearly. Surely a ‘smart’ Digger would have seen the fight was ‘lost’ and looked after himself?
Some – a small number - I’m sure, did – and I’m sure the vast majority of the soldiers who hung in there and continued to do what they said they’d do when the going didn’t look quite so rough despised them exactly the way the vast majority despise the likes of you, CitizenXX. I don’t doubt you’ll get your job with SQ, probably even your Australian basing, but don’t think for one moment that it makes you anything other than what you are.