- Hullo, you got speak Chinese? -

So I've started work again, this time for a longer duration. I've only been here a week, but it's felt like a year. But fraternising with the people here has brought me closer to my roots. Less academics, less hoity-toity, less affected accents.
And so the more Hokkien me (as opposed to Hokkien mee) comes out.

I came to work last Monday all eager to shape the fiscal strategies of the nation. Must increase employment. Must reduce taxes. Must increase corporate governance.

Then they put me in the Finance section, so I geared myself up for some analysis of figures, some good ol' number-crunching. I rubbed my hands in glee... until I realised Finance was super technical, and it primarily involved other people coming to claim money for expenses. I stopped rubbing my hands and started wiping the tears away.
Plus I'd only arrived back in Singapore from London, the land of the 7-hour time difference, a day ago, and my incessant yawning was irrepressible. So the tears were real.

Must.... stay... awake.

No matter, I can learn something from everywhere I go and everything I do, I told myself (and I believed it).
There was always some great life lesson of a higher order that I failed to see initially, but which I would miraculously understand at the end as all the pieces came together.
There was always some underlying purpose for my presence everywhere, some value I would be able to extract from every situation.
This time was no different. This time I learnt something they cannot teach you elsewhere.
I learnt how to fall asleep at work without getting caught.

For an entire week, my boss decides not to give me any substantial work to do. I think it's mostly because I can't do any of it anyway.
So for one whole week I dress nice nice come office and sleep. Ni nao hyar lah.

There's a recreational room on my floor with a pool table and table football in it. For some funny reason the other interns, who happen to be on other floors, are all even freer than me, so they're perpetually in that room dunno doing what. They keep bugging me to go and play with them.
Eh, people working leh. Correction, people supposed to be working leh.
Problem is, here the dividers separating cubicles are all very low, and it just happens that my boss is seated behind me, so every time he stands up he can see what I'm doing. Or that I'm not around. Ah thanks ah.
I decide that it would only be prudent for me to at least appear to be at my cubicle as much as possible. So I end up sitting in front of my computer every day doing absolutely jacks***, with an Excel spreadsheet open in front of me, trying not to nod or let anything come out of my mouth while my eyes get acquainted with the back of their lids.

And everyone knows I'm wayang-ing. But no one says anything because no one has any alternative for me. So we maintain our unspoken agreement -- we agree that they won't speak to me in case they wake me up.

My counterpart somewhere else Chows tells me it's normal for an intern to have a slow start. He tells me he's already finished two books. I tell him that's cos his boss doesn't sit behind him.

Well actually my boss did give me something on my second day, a project I thought I could handle until he told me to liaise with 2 ladies upstairs who're doing the same work. So I call one of them to arrange for a meeting.

Fine, she says, the more people the merrier, the less our work.
Good, let's meet up.
NEXT WEEK. On Monday.
AT 5.30 PM.

Siah lah, then what you want me to do for the rest of the week??
I put down the phone and let my eyelids come down again.

The other interns even more power. Here's a summary of a routine day for them:
8.30 - come to work to wayang
9.30 - go play pool
10.30 - mid-morning coffee break
11.15 - go back office, wayang some more
12.30 - lunch break, which is supposed to last one hour
2.00 - return to "WORK"
3.00 - call Jonathan. "Jon, can you come and open the door to the pool room for us."
4.00 - stop playing pool, go for tea.
5.00 - go back to wayang-ing
5.30 - go home

Anyway the work here is so technical and requires so much expertise that I can't help them, despite my most heartfelt pleas to them to give me a bit of work so I won't go out of my mind. And believe me, I HAVE been begging them.
Besides, they're all so busy that none of them has the time of day to teach / humour / babysit me. So I humour myself. Don't think dirty.

At least the people here have been nice and friendly and I spend most of my time talking rooster with them. Interestingly enough, since my arrival there have been rumours and comments zipping around the workplace. Thanks a lot, sincerely, but I hate to say that once again, as has characterised the last 21 years, you're the wrong damn crowd. Blardy hell.
Somehow everywhere I go that has a large group of Singaporeans, people have an incredible knack of breaking into Mandarin. We sound like a gaggle of geese, nattering away in rapidfire Chinese. And my boss is Indian.

Thanks ah. Damn sensitive, man, you all.

And as is always the case, I'm shot a fusillade of questions.
Eh, boy, where you study?
What year? You how old? Eh? How com- oh, neh serve army ah? Why?
Wah, that one score-lar leh. Score-laaaarrr. Score-laaaarrr.
Score your lam par lah.

By the end of the week I suppose my boss had caught on to the fact that I'd actually been taking up valuable oxygen in the office and while I was at it I may as well get some stuff done.
So I got an assignment, but one which is IMPOSSIBLE to do.
It's not difficult, but I have little data, and am not allowed to go around asking people because it involves sensitive issues.
I know it's quite sketchy for you, he says, so you really have to go into the whole process and imagine it happening.

DAMN RIGHT IT'S SKETCHY. You think I what, Professor X ah?
But actually he's really a very very nice and hardworking chap, merely a victim of circumstance and misfortune. The misfortune of having an intern that he doesn't need. Or want.
So I go back to trying to get myself adjusted to London time.

I come to work and sleep so much, then go home cannot sleep. Nar hyar lah.

Later that day, a temp staff member Shon and I decide we can no longer take the abject boredom (does the phrase ~cruel and unusual punishment~ mean anything to you?) and decide to head out to a neighbouring building for some coffee.
Where got workers go Coffee Bean for half an hour in the middle of work one?? Nar hyar lah!

The next week, I finally get to meet the 2 ladies who could potentially kickstart my 6-week career (or whatever is left of it), to discuss the thing we're supposed to discuss (I sleep so much, sleep until forget discuss what also). I let them get the ball rolling, and wait for my chance to give my input. I wait and I wait, until I see my window of opportunity to show I'm not just a space-waster. But no.

They talk talk talk talk talk. I try to talk, they refuse to let me talk. They talk some more.
I never knew such tiny girls could talk so much.
You big. You good. I scared you.
I only intern. Neh mind.