And it just got better.


I’m surviving, I think. It’s the sort of week you get that resembles the first days on a deserted island where you don’t have your own calendar and didn’t know that coconuts are strong laxatives. And you get your rain and shine which you try to keep away with whatever strands of palm leaves you can get and you surely don’t know how to make a fire. Yet.


But as surviving goes you adept and surely, just surely, at one point I would know that if you rub a stick over a handful of dry leaves you might just get your fire.


Let’s see; first week of the year, first three days on the job (industrial training) and a weekend with no parents plus construction work (cement pavement) happening at the garden. Lots to talk about, innit? Well I’ll start by pulling a leaf out of my fellow blogging friends, notably The One on a Retarded Journey (Cartoon Chronicals) and the Twisted Trainsistor, and go along depicting the brief details of my past week by categories of events/incidents/accidents/


To which, to start with:

Industrial Training

I have to admit; I woke up on Wednesday morning, took the train, took the LRT and took the bus to the office telling myself that I’ll be at a somewhat small office doing anything but journalism and having things easy in a way but disappointing in another. And I was right, somehow, because the office is somewhat small, and I’ve been doing anything but journalism, but what I didn’t count on was that being one who (currently) has to market himself based solely on his (deplorable) skills to write, I wouldn’t be able to have it easy.


In fact, I have it easy in the certain things that I do, like, what? Typing letters and a daily update? Cake. Not cake when having to do a lot of it.


And somehow Ji Lin and I are put into a few major projects, where there’s considerably more work to do compared to the other fellow interns (from PD block), and it just keeps piling up somehow, and now it feels like there’s too much for me to keep track.


Still, it’s an interesting first 3 days. Friendly senior colleagues, and free wireless to secretly DL songs when no one’s looking. My boss, Joe (which I will now refer to as the Bossman) is a nice person, which I would likened to a soft-speaking, more polite and ambitious Joey Tribbiani (in looks), the sort of people with high hopes and a set way to get things done. But he works us off like we’re slaves (technically, on an RM300 allowance, we ARE slaves). Nice dude, but evil. Sigh


There’s Kiwi, my supervisor (I like to think, though more or less Ji Lin and I are under both Kiwi and Joe), which is… how do I put her? Cute and playful and funny but gets the work done like she’s the roman empress. Not tyrannical, not harsh or brutal, but she gets it done with finesse.


Over the three days I’ve been doing copywriting, letters, webpage texts, minutes of meetings, R & D and a whole lot of typing. There’s a lot to tell, but I’m too lazy at the moment, and also because there’s;


Car Problems:


Tyres busting.

Battery weakling. Two days stranded when I arrived back to town to find my car wouldn’t start so I have to call an exasperated dad.

Side-mirror-a-falling. Someone must’ve clipped it. Drove two nights without a side mirror and it is annoying.

Parked Cars a-scraping. Was giving way to an oncoming car and SCREACHEeee

Shitty guys repairing. Two hours at the repair shop waiting for people to come and fix my car and being treated like I was sitting there making trouble. Way to go.

Five golden rings…


Parents. Not. Home:


No. One. Feeding. Dog. Come. Home. Mess. Shit. People. Cement. Garden. Help. Move. Stuff. Tired. Bye. Rest. Day. Ps2. Controllers. Broke. Damn. Nothing. Else. Dead. Bored. Work. Tomorrow. Rush. Home. Feed. Pets. Sigh.

Grant Proposal.

Something that I have to read over on the weekend but I haven’t, because vista won’t open it properly and it’s all jumbled up. Nuts.



Add all of that to a lot of rain and a couple of bad luck, like going to work on your first day with Milo stains on your shirt, and getting major train delays while feeling tired out because the bossman kept us up late at work.


Ah, but I hate to sound like I’m whining; it’s been an interesting week; I’m tired but I’m feeling lively, and sometimes I can’t help but feel useful. Not bad.


To round this post, a kitten crawled up the drain today and got stuck at the gutter (or, rather, the drain where the water from my washing machine goes), and throughout the morning I heard mewing like it was coming from the walls but didn’t pay too much attention; you get cats at the back-alley behind the house too often to care.


Then it rained and I was cleaning up the trash behind when it mewed again, so cousin Ivan and I opened the gutter hole and the kitten was there, wet but strangely calm. It crawled out of the hole and I wrapped him up in an old shirt. After the rain I was thinking of asking some neighbours if they wanted a kitten, but when I got to the back-alley the mother was there peeking into the gutter, so I placed the kitten near where the gutter was and the mother came back soon after to pick it up.


I haven’t heard any mewing since, so I guess it’s good.