My interesting life as an intern

It’s my 4th week into being in a finance operations department and I feel accomplished for remaining sane and madly in love with numbers and MS Excel.

Having the extensive experience of being in the department for 3 weeks, it is impossible to resist the urge to share this wonderful knowledge of an average accounting workplace. How else better than to share it in this unoriginal classic, boredom-induced brilliant you-know-you-are-this-bozo-when-that-happens way?

You know you’ve been working in an office for too long when:

1. You lament leaving for lunch 5 minutes past lunch time.
2. You become Cinderella at the stroke of 2pm.
3. Returning to office 10 minutes past lunch hour makes you feel as ecstatic as a teenager beating curfew.
4. And then you leave office way past working hours.
5. And occasionally, way before.
6. You no longer think that the crazy old lady who peers into your cubicle looking for evil is actually the disciplinary mistress hoping to catch you MSN-ing.

You know it’s the finance department you’ve been in when:

1. You no longer break your toe as you sit and stretch your legs.
2. Instead, you rest your legs on the piles of documents under your table and eat breakfast.
3. You no longer marvel at the construction of 3-inch files each packed with documents 7 inches thick.
4. You actually KNOW precisely how to achieve that engineering feat.
5. It has become second nature, not a feat.
6. No, it’s a hobby.
7. You have such extensive understanding of numbers you know the precise payout of all local lottery forms.
8. Your love for numbers is so strong you cannot resist discussing the lottery at the top of your voice.
9. You no longer bump into the cases of documents lined along the narrow corridors of the labyrinth-like workplace.
10. In fact, you know where to locate documents along those narrow corridors of the labyrinth-like workplace.
11. And not get lost.
12. You gave up asking for soft copies of documents.
13. You believe in miracles when a colleague passes you a 3.5 inch floppy diskette with a soft copy of something.
14. Pressing the calculator to compute numbers you see on the excel spreadsheet on your computer monitor feels normal.
15. So normal it becomes a habit.
16. You are obsessive compulsive about the cents in million dollar transactions.
17. You know what each 3 or 4 number code in the 24 number account number means.
18. You can name the account from that string of numbers.
19. And feel in a superhuman way when journal entries have been posted to the wrong accounts.

天下无双

The China version of 神雕侠侣 is the best I’ve watched. Absolutely beautifully made and the best casting so far. It’s obvious the amount of effort put into making the drama series, something that’s always lacking in the new Hong Kong dramas. And by this I refer to the whole series of 金庸 dramas that China made.

Even the theme song is so good.

穿越红尘的悲欢惆怅
和你贴心的流浪
刺透遍野的青山和荒凉
有你的梦伴着花香飞翔

今生因你痴狂 此爱天下无双
剑的影子 水的波光
只是过往
是过往

今生因你痴狂 此爱天下无双
如果还有贴心的流浪
枯萎了容颜难以忘
难遗忘
—《天下无双》神雕侠侣主题曲

Negative Feelings

“I don’t want her to go to a good school and pick up selfish ways.”

She just didn’t add “just like you did”, but it was explicit enough.

First it was indignation,
Then hurt,
And now a mess of emotions.

I didn’t think into the glaring stereotype or try to disprove anything. I shut out the hurt of misunderstanding and her lack of interest in finding out who I am. I jumped out of the downward spiral of rationalization for selfish behavior.

And so I’m only left with the question, am I selfish?

By asking that, I know I’m really just trying to find arguments to convince myself that I’m not; or to have friends tell me I’m not. Yet I can neither convince myself, nor see hope that someone might really believe so.

My condescending attitude, unjustified arrogance and biting sarcasm is long known to me, my friends and is often obvious even to brief acquaintances. It is something I’ve always loved and hated about myself.

Yet at times like this, when I’m told straight in the face of having an attribute I dreadfully detest and look down upon in others, it really hit hard.

But I won’t let it bog me down, no way. This emotion is only transient because the me that rejects social institutionalisation will soon bring back reason and kick out all this negativity. Yes, I feel myself coming back as I write.

Altruism is a virtue too noble for me, I know.
But neither do I have the supremacy to be one of the few who are truly selfish.

Stop trying so hard to hurt me.

Being Deaf

and it’s not only in the too-much-loud-music sense.

Me: “Can you turn up the volume please? I can barely hear it.”
Weizhen: “It’s on maximum.”

That’s one thing. But the new problem, is that I can’t seem to understand what I can hear.

The pleasant lady who answered my call for a pizza order asked me if she could call me back in a while, I rattered on about my pizza order. When she asked for my postal code, I gave her my home phone number. When she told me about the pizza types on promotion, I didn’t catch a word of the pizza descriptions. Thank goodness I’ve already decided on what to order.

And I know I could hear her, and she didn’t have an accent. I just couldn’t understand it – it was like a foreign language.

Many times, the person on the other end of the line talks for 30 seconds while I panicked. When it was repeated, I tried too hard to hear and like trying too hard to think, it causes a mental blockage. By the time it was repeated for the 3rd time, embarrassment and frustration kicked in which made it impossible to understand anything.

“Nevermind. I’ll tell you when I see you in person.”

Please don’t be too bothered if I have a blank look on my face when you try to tell me something. It happens from time to time (although not so often when talking in person). All I see is a talking head blabbering in a language I don’t understand. It’s not the accent or the bad hair day, just my mental language blockage acting up again.

I blame it on MSN, SMS, Email, too much blog and blog comments reading, and more recently, Facebook. Add my non-preference for speech as a medium of communication, and you get my problem.

Or maybe, it’s aging. The way kids always pick up language better, while the adults can’t spell?

Just like how I watched myself lose the ability to converse in Hokkien. From laughing at my mum’s bad Hokkien, to understanding a fraction of it when I hear her speak to a family friend, and finally, it becomes foreign.

Soon, I’ll have to put a whiteboard and marker in my bag.

On Civilization

Last night, just before I went to sleep, I glanced out the window and thought I saw a star.
A very bright star.
But it disappeared once I shifted,

and I realise it’s just a reflection of light off the tip of the antenna on the next HDB block.

What can I say? City Life.

Don’t get me wrong though, I love city life, for the insane pace of life, the bustling activities and the wide varity of entertainment.

I don’t understand why some people aspire to live on a farm in the wilderness or rush to a beach location or trek in the forest or drive through endless highways of nothingness on both sides.

I enjoy civilization.

That rock-cut church in Ethiopia, amazing.

And I can go on…
The ruins of ancient cities, the treasure laden tombs of past kings, the multi-storey communal caves people built to live in to hide from enemies in wartime, the thousand years of architectural evolution, the thousand-year-old jewellery and cosmetics, the broken bits of vases, masts and anchors from sunken ships, that ancient gunpowder laden missile, the rich cultures of populations of people, the cave drawings, the poems, music, musical instruments, philosophical teachings, the scientific discoveries, the modern inventions, the domestication of animals, the millions of ways to prepare food…

I am fascinated when I read of things made by people. I am intrigued by the ability of people to create, which is learned and improved upon over tens of thousands of years of evolution. I would never choose to go to a natural heritage location over a place that shows people, their culture and their creations. It is the dirty street in a 3rd world country over the Grand Canyon.

“But the creations of Man are small compared to the creations of God!”, some might say. With all due respect, if the heaven and earth, the mountains and seas, the rivers and streams were all created by God, he is really great. But what amazes me, is how small a man is, yet how much greatness he can create when Man in numbers, put the effort and time to discover and learn about their environment and add on articles that reflect their beliefs and aspirations.

Living in the city is living at the front of modernization and human development. Some call the city “materialistic”. It is materialistic. The city values human creations that up the standard of living of people. Making all these creations commercial entities that are sold as commodities may not be the best way to value them, but the market puts a value to them nonetheless, where people who don’t appreciate scoff at them.

As much as it means that stars are but reflections off a man-made structure or a passing plane, I’m glad that I do not need to rely on the moon and the stars for lighting at night.

Re: The Result of Spoon-Feeding

My comment for The Result of Spoon Feeding:

“I like the slogan “Teach less, Learn more.”

Teachers should really be there to instill interest in the subject and facilitate learning. It is not so much about knowledge transfer whether on the foundational or advanced level. Worse, it is not about preparing the students for exams. Although that may be the expectations of Singaporean parents on teachers, and the responsibility that Singaporean teachers shoulder, that is, in my opinion, not the spirit of teaching.

I’ve had teachers who inspired me into being so interested in the subject I google for information outside of the textbook on the topics I learn in class. I even pick books related to the subject for leisure reading. That’s what I call a real teacher.

Granted, such teachers are few and far between. A failed school attempt at instilling independent learning may not mean that all is lost. At least, it shows that they’re recognizing it, just like what the slogan “Teach Less, Learn More.” implies.

As much as I would love teachers who could instill interest, it is understandable that instilling interest in students is extremely difficult to do. Despite many attempts and much enthusiam in doing so, not all teachers succeed.

Teachers are also in a constant independent learning process.”

SMU Loves Newspapers!

Was crossing the road towards SMU with these 2 Caucasian ladies.

One pointed at the SMU building to the other,

“Look! That is…(I didn’t catch the description)”

“Wow! That’s cool! I love it!… But why is there newspaper all over the wall?” (referring to the newspaper pasted in neat strips on the exterior wall)

“Hmm…”

“They finished the wall with newspapers?”

“They must really like newspapers!”

They’re painting the wall in stripes of different shades, stupid.

*Update
[lindzee zhenzi] says (10:37 PM):
u should have kindly pointed it out to them
oiying:: says (10:37 PM):
i was too busy sniggering