Firsts

They say you never forget your first, but I have.

First day at the office, I mean.

For all the fear and trepidation that precedes starting work at a new place, in a strange office with new colleagues, after the fourth year there you kind of forget how it all started.

That knowledge, however, does little to assuage the above-mentioned fear and trepidation. In fact, right up to the time when I actually step into the office, flashbacks from my first day at school play in my mind like a bad Spice Girls earworm, and the similarities to work are striking to say the least.

What if the other kids don't like me? Will the teacher like my homework? Where will I go for recess? If I don't go with the other kids, will they think I'm being snobby? And so on and so forth.

In my most recent situation, the first day saw me clomping around the entire office in boots that echoed my footsteps far louder than I liked. And shaking hands and saying "hi," to someone I forgot I was just introduced to not 5 mins before. Not to mention wandering aimlessly looking for the water cooler (with each clomping step punctuating my helplessness for the world to hear).

But at the end of the day, when all's said and done, it really wasn't that bad.

Oh well, one day down, another 1,459 more to go till I forget all about yesterday.

So, tell me, what was YOUR first day like?

Words don't come easy

"They're just words."

I honestly cannot think of any phrase more demeaning or erroneous than that. Except, maybe, if Custer had uttered, "They're just Indians," at Little Bighorn. Unfortunately, unlike Custer who was proven wrong in hours, this particular misconception has not only lasted, but even flourished, especially in recent years.

Blame it on everyone from the fast food generation who want everything quick (why waste time reading when you can just look at a picture?) to the Disney babies who learn their fairytales from oversimplified cartoons rather than Goose and Grimm.

Or we can blame ourselves.

How often have we forgone doing a smart, effective ad in favour of one that just looks good? Or substituted poignant words for senseless visuals in the misguided belief that they sell better?

Have we truly forgotten the power of words and what they can do to the soul? After all, where else is the old axiom of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts truer than here?

Alone, they are mere letters, filled with potential but lacking meaning or significance. Put together properly, they can be a powerful statement that draws out the best and worst in humanity.


Fear.
"I'm sorry. It's inoperable."

Forgiveness.
"I love you. Please give me another chance."

Distrust.
"It's because of them that we're losing our jobs."

Resolve.
"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender..."


Just words, indeed.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Musings from Jakarta

1) Need to learn defensive driving? Why take a course? Just drive for a couple of days here! Provided, of course, that you don't wind up in a 4hr jam. Wait. It just occured to me that if I were to say 4hr jam in bahasa, wouldn't that be 4 jam jam?

2) Suspicious big ass stain under my hotel room's comforter, near the head. There are shower curtains instead of glass doors. Sink drainage is rusty. Trying not to freak out. Have taken to sleeping on the comforter and breadthwise, at the foot of the bed. Thank goodness the aircon, even though set to cold, is only cool and thus negated the need for me to seek warmth under said icky comforter. Blessing in disguise indeed. Oh, and BOTH towels have bloodstains on them. WTF?? Hello, can I see the 5 stars you claim to have, please?

3) Found out that if you can make just 2 meetings in a day, it's already damn good since it takes hours to travel through the jams. So people take to scheduling meetings in malls so they can attend to all their appointments in one place.

4) The staff here have proven to be surprisingly and incredibly nonchalant when you're tearing pages out of a restaurant's magazine or helping yourself to a dozen spoons at a yoghurt shop. And no, I did neither of those things.

5) There are just too many damn zeros in their notes!! Even paying for groceries I think I paid the cashier a couple of zeros short. Cue fumbled panicking, ugly stares, and lots of notes flying all over the place. Debit MasterCard, where art thou??

6) I really, really, really miss beer.

7) As an aside to point 2, I might have been overly harsh. A lot of things I find icky are probably very acceptable to other people. After all, the staff at the hotel are very nice. Bedsheet and towel stains aside, the service is pretty good. Room service burger was below par but hey, it was delivered with a smile and that's good enough (kinda) for me.

8) What do people buy as souvenirs from here? The only things I can think of to buy back are either not available in the city or illegal to bring back. Baffling. There's always indomee but I have it on good authority that I can get all the flavours available here at City Plaza back home.

9) On my first day here, I missed Twitter so much, I started imagining what the people I follow might be tweeting about so I wouldn't feel so disconnected. "Oh, so-and-so had this for lunch" and such. Bleargh. The subsequent days my mind was occupied more with just wondering when traffic would start moving again.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cab me not

Whoever said power was in the hands of the consumers obviously hasn't tried taking a cab in this country.

Let's do a quick list, shall we?

1) No matter what the cab companies say, their drivers still inexorably hold the power to decline paying customers. "Ha?! Ang Mo Kio? No no!! I going Ju-long! Cannot cannot!!"

2) The preceding point, of course, is working on the assumption that you were even able to get into the cab to begin with. You know all those empty cabs zipping by packed taxi stands? One theory is that they're waiting for irate customers to call for a cab and incur the booking fee. I think they're just mean bastards.

3) Again, pertaining to the Ang Mo Kio - Ju-long conundrum, I believe I've previously posted about cabbies who take customers as street walkers. They cruise by, pull up next to you, wind down their window and wait for you to lean forward. The offer is made. "Uncle, I'm going Ang Mo Kio, can?". The consideration, and finally the rejection, "Cannot! I going Ju-long." Of course, you can always approach a "pimp" at the more popular taxi stands who will negotiate for you with the cabbie on a (not so) mutually agreeable transaction.

So, what's your horror cab story?


-- Posted from my iPhone

See you soon! Hopefully!

Shortly after I changed my MSN nick to “If I get mugged or die..err..LOVE YOU ALL”, a friend messaged me and:

Friend: *points to your nick*

Friend: going to Jakarta?

Friend: hehee

I say: how do you know?

Friend: are u really!?

I say: yeaaahhhh

Friend: coz that's how i feel when i go to Jakarta


And the conversation followed with a list of “Do Not”s that gave me the impression that I would be safest if I never left the plane for the duration of my stay there.

Wish me luck!

Raising the dead (blog)

And this is what happens when you can't sleep.

You lie in bed and think, "hey, I've been twittering so much lately and haven't blogged in a while!"

So you hit the app store via 3G, pray you haven't exceeded your monthly data quota yet, pay USD$2.99 for a blogging app, and start typing a post on a little keyboard that's right now going "dink dink dink" incessantly.

Kinda think about it, I'm actually getting more proficient using this onscreen keyboard. Go, me.

And now to bed, perchance to dream, most likely to drool.

Goodnight, World.


-- Posted from my iPhone