Internship updates.
Yesh, boring topic, I know. But that’s basically the only thing that has taken over my life lately. The last time I’ve seen my friends had been … well, apparently I forgot when.
On top of working on one mySQL report after another, my dear friends had kept me sane by flooding my company inbox with tonnes of emails to keep me occupied.
Although one email in particular had made me laugh out loud, causing a fellow sitting nearby to shoot me a questioning glace - of which I had to cover up by pretending to be slogging at my desk, thinking that hopefully, I can cook up some excuse that the work is making me go nuts. (Hah, likely story.)
And strangely, I seem to be the only one in the office who seems to be feeling the cold. The guys just sit there, working in their shirts and dress pants. (Well, they ARE guys after all.) And the ladies are dressed in normal wear. However, yours truly is decked out in a fleece hooded sweater at her desk, with the hood pulled over my head most of the time to prevent myself from freezing to death.
Of course, I got laughed at.
“You think that this is cold? This is already considered not too bad. You should go and try entering the server room. Now, that is what I call cold!”
Then again, the above statement did come from a guy. And to guys in general, ‘warm’ is comparable to being in a room with the temperature set at 22 degrees celsius.
I would say that I am quite enjoying my internship now, although there are still some aspects of it which I hate - on top of having to crawl out of bed in the unearthly hours of the morning, and my handphone cum alarm clock being rather battered from the enraged abuse of yours truly.
Plenty of people who are willing to help whenever I get stuck at a dumb mySQL query that refuses to work even though it is correct syntax-wise. Otherwise, I was on my own, sitting by the machine, churning out report after report.
My Assistant Manager has begun to refer to me as a ‘problem child’ - mainly because I was working so fast to an extent that she is running out of things for me to do. Apparently, I had completed the same amount of work in one and a half weeks for what has been initially expected to be completed in three.
This is a first. -raises eyebrows.
Ah well, my second week of internship has almost come to a close. Eight more weeks to go.
Meanwhile, I am sulking because I’ve just missed out on a chance to go on a two-week trip to Europe with my cousin, all because of this dumb internship. No leave. -mutters.
While being stuck at work with no internet access, (which also means that MSN chatting and other remote forms of entertainment apart from Windows Solitaire is out) and thus being completely blocked out from the outside world, I decided to toggle around with my company email address - and realized that it could actually receive messages from outside.
Quite perplexed at how this can be so considering there is no internet access (or any wireless connections nearby that I can leech on - yes, I’ve tried that), I more or less deduced that since I am connected to the company intranet, the said intranet is able to route my message to it’s intended recipients outside.
So - people who already know my company email address, please please pleeeeeease flood me with messages during work hours. (You know who you are!)
But before I realized all that - yours truly, lonely and bored, resorted to “chatting” with the database server I was running mySQL statements on.
Just to see how it would respond. Yes, I was thaaaaaaat desperate for some form of communication, even if it is with an inanimate object.
But nooooo, the database server simply ignored all my messages.
Until the database server decided that it’s had enough of me and wanted me to get lost.
:(
Meanwhile, something that really made my day yesterday - Assistant Manager informed me that since there is no need for interns to dress ‘formally’ for work, I can thus show up at my workplace in jeans and tees! (Yaaaay!)
Blister-inducing shoes, BE GONE. I’m wearing my Birkenstocks to work. Hah!
My second day of internship so far, with another seven and a half weeks to go.
Although I would really like to say that I am enjoying it, I would be lying. To be very honest - I am not at all happy there.
No conducive working environment - the air conditioning is so bloody cold that even when I am nicely bundled in a sweater, I still feel as though I am in the arctics. No private cubicle of my own, and instead having to share a desk with two other people.
And the worst part of all? There is no internet access.
No bloody internet access. This is an IT-related job, so I found this rather ridiculous. Additionally, I am working on SQL codes and the online search engines is usually where I head to whenever I get stuck. Needless to say, I found myself getting pretty frustrated when I got stumped on a particular problem this afternoon with nowhere to go for help. (The internet is my number one lifeline when it comes to debugging.)
Yesterday - first day of work.
I left my home with plenty of time to spare, in addition to the fact that I had a direct bus to my workplace. Of course, I managed to reach the main gate of the office with fifteen minutes to spare.
Apparently, security in the area was very tight (this is Singapore’s national airline, after all) and so I had to register myself at the guard house prior to entering the area. Identified myself as the new intern but when the guard attempted to look up my details on the system, he discovered that someone had entered my NRIC wrongly. As a result, I was detained for an additional twenty minutes and when I finally reached the office - I was ten minutes late.
Not good for a first day at work, eh?
Today - second day at work.
Was relocated to another area which was rather secluded within an industrial estate. Since it was harder to find my way there, I left even earlier. (Which meant getting up earlier, a shorter sleep, resulting in an extremely grumpy yours truly.)
Weather was pretty bad this morning, with a thunderstorm in progress.
Decided to switch to a pair of slip-ons this morning as a replacement for my maryjanes (which I wore the day before) since the latter was causing me more blisters.
Big mistake.
Due to the weather, the slip-ons had become very, very slippery to an extent that I was teetering with every step I took. The long walk to the new workplace just made things even worse.
Although there was a another bus which I could switch to in order to make my way there, the bus had just left when I alighted at the bus stop from the previous bus I took. So, I was left with no choice but to walk.
Trying to walk in the rain on a pair of slip-ons with a non-existent grip is one of the trickiest things I ever had to do. I fell off my slip-ons and landed in the mud - twice, resulting in an extremely wet pair of pants and soon realized that in order to get there in one piece, I had to take very small steps.
So, I walked slooooooowly. But still, I was in danger of slipping ever so often. After walking a short distance, I realized that I was running late for work (the second time in a row) and decided to walk faster. That was when I fell again.
I ended up removing the slip-ons and walking the remaining distance to the workplace barefoot.
And I am not exaggerating when I say that I am able to walk up to three times faster barefooted than with those slip-ons. Comfortable as they may be, they are just not the correct choice for this kind of weather.
Of course, I managed to attract a fair bit of attention. A truckload full of Bangladeshi workers drove past and the whole lot of them laughed at me, while I grunted and walked on. And when I finally reached the workplace, I was met with bewildered looks from the two security guards on duty.
I still ended up being five minutes late.
As a whole, spending 8.30am-5.30pm with my bum stuck on a chair does not appeal to me at all. In fact, I am really getting pretty angsty despite it being only my second day of work with a loooooong way to go.
Plus, I really hate having to be decked out in dress pants (or an A-line pencil skirt or other formal what-have-yous), blouses and uncomfortable shoes for five days a week. I abhor having to adhere to a dress code that is so stiff and unpractical. Dress to impress, my arse.
Pretty much sums up how corporate life is just not for me. Give me journalism any day - something which allows me to run around. Something exciting.
At the moment, I am getting crankier because I am trying to cool off (after a pretty bad day) by watching mobTV but the darn site just refuses to load. And the thought of going to bed just isn’t appealing to me as much because once I wake up, it’ll be time for work again. (Shows how much I loathe it, eh?)
I am really contemplating switching to another internship.
Ahhhhh, fuuucccccck it.