菜鸟随笔#1 (Account of a "New Bird")

My most spoken language at work (in descending order):

Mandarin, Broken-Singlish (what can be worse than this?), Hokkien, Malay

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My direct colleagues:

My Manager, Senior Supervisor and 2 Supervisors (ALL male)

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My indirect colleagues:

The cleaning team consisting of uncles and aunties together with young lads from Sabah and Sarawak, the stall attendants who are mostly uncles and aunties also.

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The most "shocking" moment on my first day:

Hearing the manager sprouts vulgarity in a closed-door meeting in the office (I think he would have cursed more "aggressively" if a girl is not there)

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The "proudest" moment:

To learn that I am the first female in the entire operation team

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The irony:

To lose 2kg since I started working, even though I am supposedly working in a food paradise

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The most paiseh:

To be called all sorts of names like “小姐”,“美女”and “美美” and you have to respond

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The ultimate-act-blur:

To act as if nothing happens even though you know the young lads and uncles are ogling or talking behind your back

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My worst fear:

That my English and Mandarin will worsen

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The constant reminder to myself:

That I must not act like an Ah-Lian outside work

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Initially wanted to post this on last Sunday for Fathers' Day but I forgot. Can you see how clever this advertisement is?

A student no more...

About 2 months ago, I was still trying hard to complete my projects and presentations. Then, after all the preparations for exams, I sat for my final exams. Now, my student life is over.

I have been sending out resumes since end of last year but no company replied. Then I tried my luck after seeing Food Republic recruitment on Recruit (although I wasn't really keen on a job in the F&B industry due to prior experience). 2 days later, I received a call from the HR and I was told to go down for an interview at Suntec.

The interview was not to choose a suitable candidate but more of a getting-to-know-you session. In other words, I was shortlisted even before the interview and the session was only to see if this person is ok. After a week of consideration, I accepted the offer and on 1st June, I started work in Wisma.

Things happened in such fast pace that I hardly feel the transition from a student's life to a working adult's life. Into the second week of my work, I terribly miss school life because there's greater freedom and more time for my vices. Now, life is a regular pattern of work-sleep, work-sleep and work-sleep... I hardly have time to read the papers, check my email, surf net and make plans to go for performances.

Due to the nature of my work, I have to work on shift and on weekends when others are out making merry or resting at home. If I am on the morning shift, I report to work at 8am and end my work at 3.30pm on weekdays and 4pm on weekends. However, this isn't the case because unforeseen events usually happened just before I finished work and I often stayed back for more than an hour. Sometimes, my manager would give us "lectures" lasting an hour. The afternoon shift starts on 3.30pm and 4pm on the weekday and weekend respectively. Work ends at 11pm on weekday and 12am plus on weekend. So imagine reaching home at 1am and reporting to work again at 8am.

The people I meet there is very diverse and the things I do are not the kind of things that you would expect a graduate to do. There are a lot of interesting stories to tell right from Day 1 but I don't seem to have the time to blog about it. So hopefully I can release bite-size information about my experiences whenever I can. Do keep a look out!