Little-Wonder.Net

13 June, 2007

Excuse me, do you work here?

22:32:16 | Ranting, Work | writebacks (7)

Am getting sick and tired of being interrogated by the security guard at the guardhouse whenever I report for work each morning. Of all encounters, yesterday had been one of the worst.

As soon as I walked through the gate into the protected area, the security guard - let’s just call him IdiotGuard - immediately sprang upon me as if I’m some intruder. I simply tried to ignore his reaction and handed over my identity card as I usually did to exchange for a security pass.

IdiotGuard: “Why are you here?” (Demanding tone.)

Me: “I work here”
(In a VERY POINTED tone, placing additional emphasis on the word ‘work’.)

IdiotGuard proceeded to give me a very dubious look, implying as if I am either not deemed fit to work here, or that I simply don’t look as if I belong here.

IdiotGuard: “Which company?” (Snappy tone.)

Me: SIA.

IdiotGuard: SIA? (Incredulous tone.) This is SATS Maintenance Centre (extra exphasis on the name, and pointing in the direction of the building name, at the same time giving me a look that implied I was an idiot) you know?

WTF, I can fucking read, I thought.

Me: I’m fully aware of that. I was posted here.
(Extra sarcasm on the last sentence.)

Obviously the bastard doesn’t doesn’t realize that there is such a thing called staff relocations and movements from one department to another.

And considering how I’ve already been working for a month, they should have recognized me by now? Perhaps they should start paying more attention to the people who walk in and out of the building instead of immersing their heads and noses into their screens playing warcraft or all sorts of crappy games and then acting all authoritative when they are supposed to be on duty.

Oh, and my cousins have left for Genting this morning, whereas I can only pop down on Saturday because I cannot take leave from work. Argh, the agony.

Plus, this wistful feeling I’ve been experiencing throughout the entire day at work, looking at the clock ever so often and thinking “Oh, they would be at the Malaysian Checkpoint by now”, “Oh, they would be at Seremban stopover by now” and finally, “Oh, they should have reached Genting at this time”.

Three more days for me before I get there. BAH.

Meanwhile, let me continue to sulk around in Singapore.

The only thing that cheered me up today was Grace’s presence, and this oh so lovely silver wind chime (with teddy bears in three colours!) that younger cousin David got for me from his two week long Europe Trip (the same one I had to forfeit because of my internship - bah!) which nearly made me cry.

Awww, you’re the sweetest younger cousin ever. And how the hell did you know I love wind chimes?!?

08 June, 2007

Itchy pen on paper.

23:29:48 | Random Musing, Work | writebacks (5)

Ries was right. She mentioned in the comments that notepad could be my best friend and sure enough - it really was. I’m currently drafting this entry at my workplace on notepad, to be uploaded when I reach home where I have a certain heavenly right called internet access. (Why didn’t I think of this earlier?) And later, I think I’m going to take a walk.

In between coding (mySQL, mySQL and more mySQL plus new syntax I haven’t seen before in my entire life - which means I’m learning a lot, which is good), stoning and taking walks, I’ve resorted to scribbling and drawing random objects on loose paper I see lying around.

Sample reports given to me by the assistant manager all have scribblings all over them. They were still nice and fresh and clean when I first laid my hands on them but when she walked in to take a look several days (or even hours/minutes) later, she was rather astonished to see things like Chicken Little, little boots, smiley faces and random quotes and ridiculous ‘witticism’ scribbled all over.

Thankfully those sample reports are no longer important and they are going to be discarded once I finish coding the permanent, nice new reports which they are going to use in the future. Which means I can still scribble and draw some more! (Yay.)

So it pretty much seemed to be a subtle warning to everyone else around not to leave their important documents lying around where a pen could be seen, because I just cannot resist grabbing said pen and scribble anything that comes to my mind.

Examples on what’s on some of my sample reports at the moment:

1) A self-portrait, with a caption beside it which says “This is not me!”

2) A statement written in anguish - at a time where my codes didn’t seem to be working, which says “SO MANY BUGS!”, with an elaborate border made up of ladybirds, big bugs, little bugs and cockroaches.

3) Scribbled quite obviously in the middle of one particular report, with a pink highlighter pen I happened to spot lying around - was a statement which screamed “PINK IS GAY!” (Ironically, my assistant manager had waved said pink highlighter pen around, proclaiming that pink was her favourite colour.)

4) Well, yes. As mentioned earlier. A not-so-little drawing of Chicken Little, surrounded with several scribblings of “Numa numa numa eh“-es and “Maya Hee, Maya Hor, Maya Har, Maya Har Har!“-es surrounding it.

5) A rather elaborate drawing of a boot and scribbled beside it was a childhood poem - “There was an old lady who lived in a shoe, she has so many children, she didn’t know what to do!”

6) Smilies of all shapes and sizes. Happy smilies, sad smilies, bewildered smilies (drawn when I was in the midst of debugging) and grouchy smilies (when my codes refuse to work). And on some of the bigger smilies are attempts to decorate their faces (a.k.a ‘makeup’) with the pink highlighter pen such that they end up looking totally hideous.

7) A scribbling of the words “Going Bonkers” on one corner of another report, surrounded by pictures of bouncing balls, and smaller ‘boing boing’ captions.

… and many others.

I should take a picture and put it up someday, as some of them look pretty hilarious. Plus, I could possibly frame them pictures up and tout them as my masterpieces - the outcome of boredom. (Creative juices flow best when one is completely bored, so they should be of some value aye? Hahaha.)

06 June, 2007

Fighting the boredom!

23:24:19 | Little Things, Random Musing, Work | writebacks (10)

Because the lack of things to do (darn the non-existent internet connection) at my workplace, here’s what yours truly has resorted to doing just to keep myself sane.

Oh, and pardon the baaaaad, slightly pixellated image quality because the computer at my workplace only has Microsoft Paint. -grumbles.

MS Office Assistant ain’t so smart after all.

And if you’re wondering how all these pictures got here, I emailed them pictures to my personal email account (I only have email access but no web access) and only managed to write this from home.

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