jacktan.org

no i didn’t find a new job…

it’s just a temporary part time job helping trond in his father’s company doing some data entry.

low tech, low brain cell job but they are paying me $8 per hour for data entry and i’m free anyway so why not.

the slower i do, the more pay i get

just kidding!

trond picked me up from my place at around 9.30am and drove me to his office…

even got chauffeur to and fro

after all these years knowing about his dad’s multi-international company with loads of other companies below the parent company, i expected their office to be nice and well furnished…something like all those big companies out there but how wrong i was.

it was a shabby looking warehouse residing opposite saftimi, i would say, probably about 15-20 minutes walk to the nearest bus stop or to the main road.

and shabby was an understatement.

perhaps i had too high an expectation for the place but it just doesn’t fit the impression of what i have judging from trond and his parents.

oh well, back to the story…

sat down and tried logging into their network with my laptop but somehow i keep getting weird errors that prevented me from logging in, we (trond and i) probably tried for over an hour before i was able to login,

reason for unable to do so in the first place…

my laptop’s date was 1 day ahead of time.

duh!

before we realised, it was already lunch time, decided to go out to get some food when trond’s father and his 2 uncles came out of the building and wanted to go eat with us.

awkward!

went to some eatery behind burger king just opposite saftimi and the food there really sucked!

i ordered the teriyaki chicken rice and it looked more like porridge when it arrived, tasted worse than it looks.

everyone else on the table ordered seafood fried rice and judging by the looks on their faces when they ate it, i can tell horrible is an understatement.

was already close to 1.30pm when we got back, didn’t realised that we were out for nearly 2 hours.

finally got started on what i was supposed to do in the first place…data entry!

i’ve never actually done data entry before today and i swear it’s the most boring job ever!

the company was migrating from an old customer relations management (crm) system to a new one and something went wrong during the migration that created the job opportunity for me.

i can’t believe i actually sat there for over 4 hours jamming non stop on the ctrl key, cut paste click cut paste click cut paste click…

they probably could hire a “mentally challenged” person and pay them 1/2 the amount they are paying me and still get the job done but who am i to complain, i’m happy with the $8 per hour job just to do something no-brainer.

and of course i could irc, msn and blog, how else would i be blogging now?

i’ve heard of people rushing off from work but i’ve never actually seen it…literately… until today of course.

the aunties whom i was stationed with started packing at 5pm, started queuing at the punch out counter at 5.15pm and within seconds from 5.30pm, the whole 1st level was a dead place.

i was left alone with just another staff who was also waiting for trond.

went up to the 2nd floor where trond’s office is since he still had some work to do and so here am i, blogging from my laptop and still being paid while waiting for trond to be done.

actually his work was just to watch over the IT guy and made sure he finished some server migration properly.

i’ll probably bring my camera in on friday when i come back to work, got loads of pictures that i wanna take, from the ancient 24 port switches to the ancient typewriter that they are still using to the stockpile of tidbits that will make the singapore reserve look pathetic.

however, the atmosphere in his company is very different from companies i’ve worked in before. i sense no politics, no rivalry, no backstabbing within the small office itself, just plenty of gossips and more gossips and more more gossips.

serious!

in my 27 years of walking on this planet, i’ve never heard as much gossip as today, just in 1 day,

from the brands of clothes they buy to the sweeper’s wife’s shampoo…

i almost went crazy eavesdropping on their conversations.

i didn’t want to eavesdrop, i didn’t have a choice since i was sitting right smack in the middle of the office.

it’s almost 7pm now and i got a dinner appointment at 7.30pm, let’s hope trond will send me over.

//update//

ended up staying in the office till 8.15pm and only got a lift to the mrt station.

managed to take a picture of the ancient typewriter with my phone.

so theoretically, my punch card says i worked for 11 hours (10 hours minus lunch) but i think i only put in about 3-4 hours of real work,

and judging from the amount of data they need to change, i’ll probably be there for at least another 3-4 days.

$80 a day, not bad for a part time job eh?