THE comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there. Popular radio and television personality Phoebe Yap is a firm believer of this saying.
Last year Yap, who is popular among Chinese-speaking audiences and listeners, bravely quit her full-time job as a deejay for a reputable radio station, which she had held for 16 years.
“I entered the radio station when I was in my 20s,” explains 42-year-old Yap.
“The radio station has become my second home, and leaving your second home is always hard. But I know that if I want to grow as an artiste, I could not stick to my old routine. Leaving my steady job was a risk I had to take.”
She explains that her job as a radio host was hectic, and did not give her the freedom to pursue her other talents, like singing and songwriting.
Currently, she is working as a freelance host and aerial yoga instructor while working to rebuild her singing and songwriting career.
Laughing, she says: “Of course, I miss seeing my fixed income entering my bank account every month.
“But I believe in the saying that if you are hardworking, you will never go hungry.”
She admits that her father had a hard time digesting her latest career direction.
She says: “I do not blame my father. He comes from a different generation and people from his generation believe that if you have a good job, you should stick to the job till the day you retire.”
Surprisingly, her mother supports her new venture in life wholeheartedly.
The first thing she did after quitting her job was to travel. The places she has visited include Thailand, Japan, Taiwan and Norway.
She says: “I love travelling. I love experiencing new places. When I was working with the radio station, I only had two weeks annual leave every year. As a result, I could not visit as many places as I wished in that short span of time.
“Now, I am a freelancer, and I have the freedom to travel as much as I want.”
Unfortunately, the pandemic has put a damper on her travel plans. But once the pandemic is over, she wants to travel again, and experience new places.
In the near future, she is seriously toying with the idea of hosting a cooking show, probably on a social media platform. But she does not want her cooking show just to be like the other show you can easily find on television and social media platforms.
She explains: “In 2009, I hosted a Hokkien cooking show called Hua Hee Makan where I got participants to share their grandmothers’ recipes with the audience.”
The show was popular among the audience, and ran for seven years.
She says: “The show was different from other cooking shows you see on the television. It did not just focus only on the cuisine. There were stories attached to the cuisine.”
She would like for her own cooking show to have a similar concept, providing a unique experience for her audience.
She says: “Maybe I can host a cooking show where I present healthy food, and at the moment no one is doing that. But nothing is concrete yet. I am still at the planning stage.”
Recalling her childhood years, she says: “As a young girl, I never followed rules. My paternal grandmother believed a girl should be in the kitchen, washing dishes and cooking food. Instead, I loved going out and playing with my friends. My grandmother was never happy with me.”
Another incident she remembers is when she got a scholarship to study in Singapore after completing her Form Five studies. But she had to work for several years in Singapore to repay the loan. She was not keen on the idea, so she rejected the scholarship.
She says: “My parents were not angry with me. They gave me the freedom to choose what I wanted to do with my life. But some of my friends and relatives thought I was crazy to refuse the scholarship.
“Like I said earlier, I am not the kind of girl who follows rules.”
