A.P.P.L.E

2pm - 10pm working time. Indeed, changed my life style. I cannot always be together with my love, like I always used to be. I spent around 3 hours and above with my love every single day. But now, after working, I only can meet him either before I go to work or after I finish working. I’m an eleven-o’clock-Cinderella. I can’t stay out too late. When the clock struck 11, and I am not back home yet, my cellphone will be ringing. Dad will ask me to go home…Just imagine, I finish work at 10, and it will take me 20 to 30 minutes (much depends on the traffic and weather) to reach my dear’s place, which means 10.20pm or 10.30pm….and before 11, I will have to go home…arghhh..I hate this kind of feeling. So I always treat my off day (Wednesdays) as a precious day throughout the whole week.

I work on public holidays too. That makes me degraded from a full time gamer to a part time gamer. If the public holiday does not fall on a Wednesday, I will have to work too. I don’t think I get double paid. But choosing another day as a replacement leave instead. I personally think that double paid is better. Not that I’m a “money face” person..because I think I deserve to get paid more for what I am doing, for I’m a diploma student…I feel wasted when I do my job. I’m a computer science student but I love computer graphic design a lot, yet my job is limited to “designing” advertisement whereby everyday I just need to draw rectangular boxes and type words in it and arrange it into the platform. What a LAME job….and do you call this “Design”…lol. If I’m lucky enough, I can really design some advertisements with at least inserting pictures..

Now I know that my job actually includes doing the pagination for the press. Which means what contents fit in which page…that is part of my job too, when my colleague is not around, I will have to do that. The advertisements I do, in precise, should say I type words more than designing..it’s more like arranging how the words gonna appear in the rectangular boxes. You know, when you look at the classified pages in a newspaper, those Vacancies stuff? That’s what I’m talking about. Sometimes I even have to arrange words for Wedding acknowledgment or congratulation for weddings, graduation or birthday…and sometimes obituary @@

I used to think that my job is LAME…and now I still think it’s LAME. Maybe because after 2 months, I get used to what I’m doing and I am coping with it. I can do things faster now yet getting bored most of the time. I can’t even use the Internet computer. I asked from the Head, see if I could also apply for an account to use the Internet computer. And yesterday, he told me that, to apply for the online account, he thought it would be difficult… I answered, “Oh, it’s ok then nevermind.” But deep inside the heart, thinking “WTF?! I just want to kill some time when I have nothing to do by online searching some useful pictures for my advertisement ‘designing’…” Then later he added, “Maybe you can use my account to access the Internet computer..” NANDA KORE..

It’s not like that I hunger for online. I can get FULL ACCESS to the Internet at home, man! If you said the Internet computers are just for official use and only for some specific personnel like the editor, etc…but you know what I saw with my own eyes? Because the computers are just behind my seat, I can easily turn back and watch the screens. I ever see people using it for very unofficial stuff such as MSN messenger, Friendster, forums (looks more like chatting in there), view others’ blogs (which seems to be very personal, or they might want to get the information inside for the press??! I don’t know..)

Sometimes I don’t know to say I hate my job or love my job. It seems simple and I just need to be careful not to make unnecessary mistakes. When I’m busy, I don’t even have time to eat…When I’m free, I can be sitting in front of my computer doing nothing for 2 to 3 hours…But for sure, I know, this is not what I’m looking for. I’ll endure, save money and fulfill my initial dreams. ^^ Oh well, this job does give me some “Benefits”. I get free newspaper everyday. I get to know the movie schedule one day earlier than the others (Part of my job too). Most of the time, I don’t have to be at home and see that face which I don’t quite like. And…er…I get paid. LOL

I think this will be the last chapter on my career review.
I will post some of my works slightly later when I’m free.
Include that in Appendix
lol, too much of my formal terms?
I’m still struggling with my final year project documentation..

In our family portrait we look pretty happy
We look pretty normal, let’s go back to that
In our family portrait we look pretty happy
Let’s play pretend, act like it goes naturally…

“Family Portrait” by Pink.

Yea, we looked pretty happy in this portrait. The photographer wanted everyone of us to show a broad and happy smile. Haha..but hmm..it’s sad..that now I don’t have the mood to talk about my family background… How I wished the person who stand beside Dad is Mom..my blood-related Mom… but Mom, your soul must have been standing together with us, right?

Note: The portrait was snapshot by using the camera of my cellphone. And the image quality has been scaled down and faces have been photoshoped.

After working for one month in a considerably big company, I’ve really learnt the cruelty of the Real World - an “open university” probably known as University of Society. There’s a lot to be learnt and it seems that the syllabus is very flexible and dynamic - changing all the time and you have to cope with it. It’s sort of “Dead-or-Alive” matter.

I’m going to say what I observed for the past few weeks since I first working in the office. Just take K and M as an example. Read slowly, as it might get confusing. Both K and M are colleagues for a long time. But you can feel that there’s something unpleasant between both of them. One day, M made a mistake while typing some numbers for advertisement purpose (which actually can be a serious matter). That was a Sunday, K is not working on Sundays. But K is the leader, so she was told to write a letter to explain what was happening. M insisted that she was only a typist and the checker should be responsible for this, not her (M herself). The checker A was probably having blur vision or something, which made her unable to identify the mistake that M made.

Now, M thought that she is not the only one who must be responsible for this. K thought that she was not working on that day (Sunday, the day that things happened), and of course non of her concern. But she (K) turns out to be the leader…..at the end, during a monthly meeting, they discussed about this to the head. And the story goes on…

From this matter, we can see that…people won’t like to take full responsibility whenever anything concern about bad things. If something concern about Vitamin M and good things, I think each and everyone will put on his/her perfect mask. Scary, isn’t it? Yea, I know. That’s called office politics. The Real World.

The funny part about my colleagues are, whenever one person not around, the rest will talk behind him/her. For instance, when M is on leave, K and the others will be saying things about her (well, most likely negative comments). Same goes for the others… I don’t know if they have said anything bad about me or not..but who cares? I’m not gonna work there for my entire life! And even if I work in another company, same things apply, at least I’m prepared. And once again, who cares? As long as I try my best to accomplish my tasks.

Next chapter

It was 10:02pm. Walking out of the office, I brought along a changing mood from boredom to happiness. It’s a Wednesday tomorrow, I thought inside. It will be my precious off day throughout the week. Walking along the road, down a small stairs to the car park…and heading to my car.

My dear always remind me to standby the car remote control in my hand and don’t wait too long to unlock the door (which I always used to do). With that in mind, I hold tight my remote control and unlock my car when I was approaching it. I stopped. Small pieces of glasses was all over the tar road. I remembered there wasn’t any glasses there before. First terrible thought came in, “Don’t tell me my car…”.

Looked up to my car and WTF!!! was my first expression. It was exactly what I thought in my mind. My car glass window which was beside the driver seat had been broken by some f*cker. I opened the door, staring inside for a moment, and I was so lost! I didn’t know what to do next. My CD player was still in place, but why? Why the glass had been broken? (Later, I found that the f*cker intended to steal my CD player, but failed to do so, as it was kinda stuck there…or perhaps someone passed by and the f*cker quickly ran away…well, those are just predictions)I was so nervous. The first person I thought of is daddy. I called his cellphone yet could not be reached. I called the house phone, ringing and ringing, yet no one answering. I called my sister’s cellphone…no one answered too..I had no choice, I was so helpless. I called my dear. He asked me to calm down but I was afraid, shocked and didn’t know what to do..crying like a baby…in front of some this-doesn’t-concern-me-at-all-looking security guards. I kept trying the house phone, hoping that someone could answer it. Finally, a voice came through my cellphone receiver.

“Hello!”
“Hello! Dad, my car glass had been broken..”, said me, with a shivering, sobbing voice.
“Huh? Where are you?”
“I’m still downstair of the office.”
“What’s the time now?”
“10.15pm…”

And the conversation went on, until a solution came up.
Police reported had been made.
Dad and I cleared the glass pieces from the driving seat.
I drove home in caution…not too fast as I feared that small piece of glasses might fly into my eyes or scratched my face.
I’m glad that one of my colleagues, Mr Tan, accompanied me for a little while before my dad arrived, when he heard the bad news.

—

Today, my off day. Early morning brought my car to workshop.
Now I get back my car and everything is fine.
I’m glad that my CD player had not been stolen by the noob.
I’m glad that non of my belonging is lost.
I’m glad that my dear and friend concerned about me when I was alone in the darkness.
And of course, Dad, thanks for helping me when I was in need, although you were sick last night ><

On the 12th to 17th of December 2006, I went to KL for vacation with my family. I don’t have to work? If that’s what you are wandering…No, I had to work actually. But I applied for unpaid leave. Excluding my off day (which is on Wednesdays), I had to apply for 5 days unpaid leave. Something very cilaka about this company is, 1 unpaid leave will cost you for deducting 2 days salary. So imagine and calculate for yourselves, 5 unpaid leaves..5 x 2 = 10, thus 10 days salary kena potong (deducted) T_T

So after my vacation, I went back to work, which was a Monday. At first, I didn’t feel anything wrong but after a while, I really didn’t feel very well. I could hardly breath..So I completed my task quickly and left an hour earlier. (left earlier, deduct salary again..)

The next day, I was told that the ads I did had some problem. What kind of problem? Well, I don’t wish to repeat myself here, but just to let you know I’d made mistakes during work. GREAT SCOTT!!

—

I learnt that, people will not always take the responsibility if there is something wrong, even he/she has to. According to M, our head leader K is a person who only care for herself. If we have any problems telling her, she will not do any action to assist. But is that true? After some time of coorperating with leader K, I think she is still okay but not too bad…Once again, this is office politics…and I will have to tell myself “Welcome to the Real World!”.

How is it like in the real society?
I was always been told that the society is how realistic and so forth…
It’s time for me to explore it myself…
How I feel about it..??
To be continued in the next chapter..