Army life got me thinking

Haven't blogged in a while, and thought I'd come back to this little "shrine" of mine to keep this blog going. It's been dead for almost 3 months, partly because of laziness and lack of discipline to maintain it, while at the same time serving National Service.

Blogging in the bunk. A lot of things have gone on, some good, some bad, but tough times don't last - tough men do. I just hope I can last through the last week of Basic Military Training, so I can live to tell the tale. That being said, our training is so much easier as compared to the previous generations of military conscripts training in the very facility we are in right now. Still, there's always a story to tell, and I've finally got one I can call mine.

Going to take over guard duty shift soon. Signing out.

April - The Month of Physical Stress and Mental Boredom

So, I've quite my previous job already, and it's getting mighty tiring just sitting at home and doing nothing but playing computer games. Uncle Yiye's pushing for me to get shaped up to prepare for National Service, but I reckon - so many people don't train up for National Service before enlistment anyway, why should I? After all that's what being enlisted as recruits and Basic Military Training (BMT) is all about anyway...

Or maybe I'm just plain lazy and can't get my ass off my hot seat in front of the computer.

In any case, I'm still getting myself to jog and cycle regularly - I hope all these stuff works out in the end. Meanwhile, I thought I'd start making things a little bit more interesting for my blog. Seeing as the blog looks pretty dead by now, having nothing much other than little snippets of my life added to it every now and then, I thought I'd post up some of the interesting stuff and videos I have encountered in my spare time surfing the Net and doing almost nothing else productive. Yeah, like doing such stuff is even productive in the first place...

For starters, here's a nice little masculine song performed by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (UOGB) - Theme from "Shaft"



Cute ukuleles - and I was taken aback, and before I knew it, I was laughing along with the audience at the racy lyrics! Go on, hit the play button - you'll like it. But even more amazing is the next video medley the UOGB did up. It's pretty awesome, check this one out too:



Pretty nice - it's rare to get all these stuff these days... This one is easily one of my favourite medleys. Well, at least for now, until I get to see more better ones. Somehow, some of the junk today's media generates aren't half as good as such stuff. Or am I being pessimistic about today's pop stars or it's just my taste?

Last day in BT

Well, I've been out there working, and being a busy man. Or busy kid, whichever you like.

Or at least I tried. Lately there wasn't that much stuff for us to do in office anymore, and being around there for some time, I've seen people come and go. Different and interesting people as well, and there most definitely are some weird out-of-the-norm stuff happening out there as well - wow, they sure help make our days interesting, and sometimes even funny as well.

Met a lot of people as well - this blog entry wouldn't be here if the my work experience out there at BT wasn't good. All those work-rushing with people like Marcus and Olivia, all the slack times we had with people like Iris, Estee and many others, with them it's much easier to forget the stress that comes with the heavy workload (which isn't very heavy to begin with...).

Where we used to be really busy doing a lot of computer stuff in the beginning, we gradually ended up surfing the Net on Rob's wireless dongle for some well-deserved entertainment to keep our morale up during the tough assignments, and I'd say it was a pretty good work-play balance even within the Spirit room - which was one of the warmest meeting rooms (and coincidentally, our work quarters). People came and went at the same time.

Well I must say, working at BT has taught me a helluva lot of things that books wouldn't teach me - that there are tough days and there are slack days as well. Always clouds with silver linings. Telecommunications systems - I could never figure out what all the stuff means until I had first-hand experience doing some of the things involving them. Telephone numbers? Access to stuff? First hand experience. And best of all - we get paid for doing such stuff - and the time was more productive when spent down there rather than staying at home and doing nothing...

It's been a while since I've left these guys (almost a week, I think), but somehow there's this feeling that wants me to go back there and work again. Probably it's because I feel I've achieved something and am recognised for it. Well, if my going back there can help the company achieve something more positive, then why not? Alas, but there isn't enough time for me right now before National Service, and too long a time to wait till I get a university degree to land myself a proper full-time job down there. Oh well, good things sometimes can be rare and so near, yet so far...

Blogging on state-of-the-art technology pretty cool!

Well, I'm experimenting how to use the iPad to write this blog post. As to how I got this gadget, it's borrowed stuff, courtesy of Uncle Steven, who got it through a lucky draw. Lucky fella he is, being able to get such a cool gadget after the previous two winners for this prize left the lucky draw early before the top prize was announced...

The touchscreen function is really cool here man, just that I'm not used to the typing because of the fact that it doesn't have the feel of an actual keyboard, and you know it's hard to adapt to such marvel technology when we've been using the good old button keyboard for many years already... Talk about being Neanderthals in the 21st Century.

As for work life in office, things have never been better. We've been paid to do work, now we're now paid to do nothing. So, the PSP has never been more welcome in my life now than it ever did in the past!

Also, things have gotten more interesting, with a lot of talk going on in office about gossip and stuff, the way of life in the office and corporate world from the seniors, and I suppose, what the hell would we stay in the office with no work for, if not for the funny tidbits we experience everyday?

Corporate life is always "nice and interesting."

Well, after about three weeks into the corporate lifestyle, I dare say that I'm putting on a lot of weight. Or at least, I appear to be. For one, there's hardly any more exercise, and I'm not practicising enough self-discipline to go for a jog these days since the college days... But that's not really the point, is it? Sooner or later I'll get myself up and running, for there's tough training that awaits ahead after I head into Pulau Tekong on that day, anyway.

So, there's all sorts of things happening around the office, despite the bore of doing the same thing over and over again all the time. Yeah, as Lia put it, "You are born, taken care of by your parents, educated to get a degree, then when you have it you sit in the office all day long just to look at Excel spreadsheets, spreadsheet by spreadsheet, by spreadsheet, by spreadsheet, by spreadsheet..."
Well, I wouldn't agree with that. More often than not, everyday always brings about new situations to handle all the time. It's been rocky since the day I got here in office - the first day, you start out with corrupt data, and when you're told to redo it. The third day the formula was applied wrongly, redo. By the end of the week it was finally ready.

Phase two. Work to create new data templates to input data in. Sounds cool, but the data needed new formatting, again. Redo. Cool, I haven't even got to start with the data. Wonderful. Then after all of those are done, we proceed on to do more data entry. Almost done with 9 out of 11 countries, cell by cell, spreadsheet by spreadsheet, and Lia was told the work needed to be redone because the goddamned source file wasn't the updated one to begin with. Brilliant eggheads. Hmm.

Along the way, some of the other guys working under the same department were coming in every now and then to discuss about the stuff that was going on in our work. "Well, why don't you just automate the changes to the values?" Brilliant, they wouldn't have had to hire us interns to work on the file otherwise. Very smart question.

So you see, everyday at the office, money talks and bullshit walks. Sometimes, though, funny things happen every now and then. You sometimes would be lucky enough to hear stomachs growling in the middle of your work at about 11am, and by 12 everyone rushes out to have their lunch and overcrowd the food and hawker centres all over the vicinity. I guess it's because of the hard work that even small things that happen around us amuse us sometimes.

Jobs and School - the big difference

Well, I've been out there, and believe me, the transition from school to work life is definitely something that caught me off-guard.

The work at Shop n Save was definitely an enriching experience, for the most part. Maybe it's just got to do with perspective after all. For one, I got to work side by side with many people of different backgrounds, different personalities, and the like. And working down there, cleaning the shelves and replacing the items according to planograms is hard work. Brutal, if your body is not used to tough labour.

But along the way I saw many different perspectives as well. For one, one of my colleagues there has been working ever since he was 14, and that's pretty impressive, considering that I began my first job only this year. I don't know how I'd manage both work and study at such a young age - I was still playing a fool back then in secondary school.

Of course, there's so many interesting stuff happening everyday, that despite all that physical fatigue, I still drag my feet to the place voluntarily. Partly because of some screwed-up contract terms that should we stop working, we have to compensate a sum of money for every day we don't turn up for work during the two weeks. Pretty nifty way to make people stay for work, though I'd still have turned up even without this outrageous contract term.

And so, the days passed by, and I was already searching for more office jobs every night when I got back home. What should I do after this job? Sit down and rot at home as usual? No, that'd get my brains rusty. Not that I need them that much anymore since after the A Levels, but there's just got to be a better way to invest that time in than just rotting at home, "enjoying life" as many people would call it. Nope, I went on searching, and many times I second-guess myself, "Do I really have to work?" for every job offer that seemed kinda attractive. But deep down inside, I wanted to work.

And God's providence decreed that I get an opportunity call from Derek. "Eh, you want job?" he asked. I answered that call of opportunity immediately, knowing that this temporary job is exactly what it is - temporary and really short-term. At long last, I have the first office job of my life. Two weeks at the supermarket doing slave labour is more than enough to make me appreciate the comforts of corporate jobs like this one I currently am holding now.

To be honest, in this respect I am really grateful to God. A friendly gesture like this being offered to me in this time of self-discovery definitely calls for something to repay back in gratitude. The trouble is, what do I offer my friend in return for this job? And what do I offer back in gratitude for His blessings upon my life?

But things just weren't about to stay like that. Not this way, anyhow. There was more stuff waiting for me the moment I stepped into BT, where I now work in.

First day I got there, the job seemed really daunting. Data entry by the large volumes, dealing with figures, understanding telecommunications concepts, sure got my adrenaline pumping, and I didn't need coffee that day at all. As the days went by, we did have slack days, and hardworking days. But there was a better part of the week that we didn't place much importance in back in the school days...

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY!

The big difference was that while we used to bring homework home on Fridays to slog through the pile of academic information through the weekend, which accomplishes almost did nothing other than to just bring back some certification that can at least allow us to carve out a living for ourselves, the very same concept of slogging through the weekend became obsolete in work life. Let's get real, man. We ain't paid to work on weekends! And this simply means...

...that we are free to be ourselves during weekends! I can't say I really hate studying, but I really hated the idea of working through the weekends. This most certainly made weekends very precious indeed. What better feeling is that, being able to completely enjoy yourself without being tied down to strangling stress that we get in school and work everyday?

Better still, there is always this subtle sense of accomplishment whenever you finish a job well and ahead of schedule, that sometimes in school we never get to enjoy at all, instead worrying about the grades that we get after completing every exam or lecture test paper. When a job is done, it's done, and we move on with the next.

And it pays!

But then, as with what many people say, there's always job stress and pressure to perform better everyday, especially when you're dealing with multi-million dollar contract deals for a particular service! For one, my senior de facto mentor Lia is always around to pass us work and sometimes, her presence alone is "punishment" enough to make myself maintain concentration while working with so much data all at once. But I suppose that's good - at least it improves our efficiency anyway, and it makes us look good too, in terms of the progress we're making in this current project that we're involved in.

I could go on and on more about the little office tidbits that happen around every so often that makes an seemingly monotonous job sitting in front of a computer keying in stuff so much more enjoyable, but that will have to wait. Stay tuned for the next post!