Man cannot live on salary alone....if you do overseas war
coverage, you might get overseas allowances, wartime allowances,
etc. 
Eh hello.....lots of uni grads are having starting pay of below
S$2000 nowadays leh. General degree holders (Arts, Bizad, etc) can
get as low as S$1500 starting pay. Use the first job as a
tryout.....after that, how you progress depends on you (takes some
skill and lots of luck).
I started out with a local engineering degree 15 years ago, with a
request for only S$2000 basic (S$400 below market rate at that
time). Even so, they bargained this down to S$1800, which I
accepted (this was after 6 months of backpacking and lazing
around). It was a public-listed US company, but the office here was
new and very small back then (about 5 staff only). Then a few
months later, I found out that the angmoh boss's house rental in
Singapore (Bukit Timah area) was S$12,000 per month! 
With basic of S$1800 per month, I was probably the lowest paid
among my classmates. This was about right, as I also had the lowest
grades in my class. Damn! I spent the horniest years of my life
(mid-20's) working like a slave, 14 hours a day, 6 days a
week.
