1st day

My first day at work went well, in general. Initially it seemed like nothing was going right for me. My stomach felt queasy and I didn't feel too good. Upon reaching the MRT station, I thought I'd forgotten to bring my cellphone out with me. Usually I can still cope with 'no cellphone' but not having any mode of communication with familiar people on my first day at work is a crappy feeling. My bag's zip got stuck and I spent the whole morning trying to separated the zip from the cloth, to no avail. Finally reached the office and reported to HR. There were 3 other 'new' people in the room. I'm assuming they are contract employees too. I quickly did an assessment of them. One of them is the 'cold' type. From my observation, this type of people are usually either very bitchy or very loyal. Another looked kinda lian-ish. She had thick eye liner drawn on both her upper and lower eyelid. Basically she appeared very lian to me. Sorry for judging by appearance but as I've mentioned before, appearance is usually the first impression formed. The last one. She looked like she just got out of school. She looked as if she was doing a temp job during her school vacation. Maybe she really is, I don't know. Anyway, these don't matter 'cos they reported to another department and I probably won't get the chance to interact with them in the future.

We collected our pass and they went to report to their boss while I was sent to one department then to another like a ball. Yeah 'cos my boss wasn't around. My boss's subordinate (a manager), who was the lady who interviewed me in the 1st round, didn't know what to do with me also. She had to check her email for instructions on where to send me to. So she checked her email and sent me over to the 19th floor. I had to take the lift down and then up again 'cos different storeys had to take different lifts. It was a little disorienting for me. Finally sent to the project IT room, which had about 20 people. The Swiss lady placed in charge of me, Ms S, didn't quite know what I should be doing either but she gave me a few simple tasks to do and told me to surf the company's intranet in my free time. This IT project has been going on for the past one year...so it is kinda strange that I was hired to help only nearing the end of the project. I thought the company intranet was very informative. It listed out all the different departments and a brief description of what each does. Very good. An email account was given to me and a lady helped me set up my printer. Haha, I have a company email account. How cool. Received 2 emails no long after setting up my account. One from the manager who interviewed me apologised for the disorganisation and told me to feel free to ask her anything if I need help. How nice of her. The lady who helped me set up my printer sent me an email too that would add a printer to my list. She ended off the email by welcoming me to the company. The people were nice. Not overly friendly but friendly enough. :)

Ms S invited me to lunch with her fellow Swiss colleagues and herself but I gave that a miss. I thought it was really nice of her to ask 'tho. So why didn't I wanna go? I was kinda stressed then, with the 'bad start' to my day and everything. Plus, I cannot really understand their English and there wasn't any Asian in their lunch clique. I felt a little out of place lor. I'm sure they would have been kind to me...but the whole introduction thing was a little tiring. I needed some time off to rest. Walked around the area, sat down and ate lunch alone. It was quite rejuvenating but yeah, I'd still rather have lunch buddies (See, I'm sociable!).

You know bcos I was sent to so many different floors the whole morning, I couldn't quite remember which floor the IT project room is on? LOL. Thank God I met 2 girls who worked with me, inside the lift. They helped me press the lift button to our office's storey and introduced themselves to me. Nice people. Met the HR person who helped me with my application forms in the wash room after that. After finding out that I hadn't found any lunch buddies, she offered to have lunch with me sometimes. How nice of her. I don't know if that will happen but the fact that she offered was nice enough. :) Anyway, it is always helpful to establish friendly relations with the HR people. They know everyone in the company.

Attended meetings with Swiss lady after that. I was supposed to take minutes but bcos I didn't know what was going on, I sat in to observe. They used so many abbreviations and codes throughout the meeting so obviously I didn't understand what they were talking about. It's kinda difficult taking down minutes when I don't even know what is considered important. Not sure if I will be in charge of minutes in the future 'cos right now, I don't think I would be a good minute taker. They sounded like they were speaking Greek. However if I should familiarise myself with all their codes and whatever, maybe I could help out with minute taking. Not sure yet. The meetings were by far, the most interesting. This was the first time I've attended a company meeting and seen how a overseas phone conference was conducted. Met some of the bigwigs in the company involved in the project. Observed them. One of them didn't bother applying make-up, which I thought was quite shocking. Blows my mind away that someone of that status would step out of her home looking like that. I don't know what to say. I'm still digesting a lot of things I observed today.

I'm actually darn tired so I dunno what I'm typing. I'm going to bed soon. Night.