Suddenly, Students Academic Office sent me an e-mail which stated that they have sent the remittance concerning my part time job salary and that was my first salary that I ever had.. Around the commencement of the semester, I joined a part time job as a student helper in Center for Advanced Numerical Engineering Stimulation or CANES for seven hours. Especially, I helped preparing the URECA presentation for the students. I just used power point and Photoshop to check the students’ posters.

Now, I know that working is so difficult. We should go out from our comfort zone. We should be ready if our boss is disappointed with what we have done and I experienced it already when I worked. I was rather careless when I worked those posters. At that time, I neglected the fonts in the poster. I was thinking that the color blue is all the same. So, I used the different blue color fonts in each poster. It means I changed the standard form of the poster. Then, I brought those back and changed all. It seemed that they were disappointed. Then, they didn’t use me again and I was fired. But, I was happy because I was free of anything. LOL…

Well, I think I could learn something from this. Working in Singapore is so hard and the kiasu (Hokkien, fear to loose) mood surrounds us all. This is like what my friend, Maria, said that the Singapore workers are competitive. They did it so they can get the promotion faster. That was what she said last night on the bus when we went home from Jurong Point to buy some food (and “jalan2” also). Currently she works in OCBC Bank for internship there and she had experienced how competitive the workplace is. For that reason, we should do our best in everything we do. Trying to be as professional as possible is the answer. Doing everything like you do it for God.

I just got 42 bucks for seven hours. But, it stole my time to study too much at that time. Working here seems to be nothing. You can get money easily per hour even you only do something strange like doing powerpoint poster or just waiting as a shop assistant where you only wait a shop (and sometimes doing nothing ). But, the point is professionalism. When the boss remunerates us and he is willing to pay us, it means that he need us to be professional. Earning money here is rather easy but the professionalism and the effort to make our boss happy is rather difficult also. My friend told me that there was someone who could earn $3000 dollar after he spent his holiday here for three months and worked in a company outside campus. That was same as the salary of Indonesian’s teacher for 1 year. But, I think that was different case, the price of food here is expensive so that was enough to live here for some months only. But, I think he could go overseas with those money.

I think that’s all. But, I don’t suggest working in the period of study here. It will disturb much. I experienced it. That was perhaps the reason I didn’t perform well when I worked (difficult to choose the priority).

Labels: Lifestyle