I woke up early on Monday morning at 6:40am. It had been quite some time since the last time I wake up that early. Not to mention I slept at 2:30.

I quickly dressed myself up with the long sleeve Padini shirt I bought on Saturday with Daphne, and a pair of G2000 pants. I then added a bit of not-so-unpleasant smell from the newly bought Mont Blanc Starwalker, for the first time. The Crocodile shoes look old, but they still function well, as shoes. Double checking the stuffs inside my “Versace” bag, I quietly locked the door and went out.

It’s my first day of internship, as a mechanical engineer.

Bus 359 didn’t take very long to come; neither did it take very long to reach the bus interchange, where I am supposed to wait for my company shuttle bus. I was early, indeed. It was only 7am, it’s another 30 minutes before the bus come. But I’d rather spend the extra time for a Filet-O-Fish than dreaming on my bed. I can’t risk my punctuality on the first day of work.

I had some small trouble finding the bus. First of all it’s not at where the HR Manger told me it would be at. And neither is it the blue Comfort bus she told me it would be. Even worse, the driver forgot to paste the company name behind the windscreen. But like in all the movies, I managed to find the correct bus. The first few lines of this paragraph only wasted me few minutes and added some fun for your reading pleasure.

Journey to company is short. Despite the heavy traffic in the morning, the bus only took 15 minutes. I’d rather not cycle to there, which is 5km from my house. Upslopes and downslopes are the reasons.

Ms HR Manager was on the bus too. I was not so surprised as that was the only company shuttle bus, but was still wondering why she never drive to work.

Ms HR Manager led me to level 2 and gave me a formal Letter of Acceptance. Later she asked a clerk to show me my table, and introduced me to my colleagues, the fellow engineers.

I got a table of my own, as expected, with a CRT monitor and some other documents. I was told to sit down and wait for someone to come, whose name I didn’t hear clearly.

After 20 minutes of browsing the documents on my table and trying to guess the computer password, still no one came to entertain me. Hesitated for a while I called Ms HR Manager.

She quickly came downstairs and called me to a small office room nearby, that’s where the Engineering Department Head Dr. Ng stays at. In the room there is another gentleman whom later became my supervisor, Mr. Zhao. We had a short discussion in Dr. Ng’s room. From their language, I quickly noticed that Dr. Ng is a Malaysian and Mr. Zhao is from China. Dr. Ng gave me a brief intro on my training details and told me clearly that they are not expecting anything from me, as in contributions to the company. It’s because my internship lasts only 10 weeks, which is not enough to complete any projects.

Mr. Zhao gave me a stack of well filed documents. It’s my first “textbook” here, the “ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code”.  He pointed out few chapters and asked me to read through.

I found after reading a few pages that the ‘vessel’ here doesn’t mean ship, it’s a tank used to carry gas or liquid. The documents gave very detailed instruction on how to design and build a vessel. The materials can be used, the thickness of the shell wall, the shape of the heads (ends of the container). There are also parts talking about how to weld container components together and add stiffeners to increase the strength.

Ok, that’s kind of boring for non-engineer readers.  

Mr. Zhao’s table is right beside mine, with a short separator in between. But I don’t think it’s polite to talk to him across the “wall”, so every time I have question, I walk a big around to his side and ask.

Lunch break is from 12 to 1. I walked to a hawker centre few hundred meters away with Mr. Zhao. It’s likely to be the only place selling food in this industrial area, selling all kinds of food, to all kinds of people. We packed our food and went back to eat in the company as he suggested. It’s very warm and crowded inside the hawker centre.

Through the lunch time conversation I found out that Mr. Zhao is from Nanjing. He is very experienced in pressure vessel design and hand been working on it for more than a decade before he came to Singapore a year ago. He also got a 10-years old kid in China, and is considering whether to bring him/her over or not.

Mr. Zhao is very friendly and always willing to answer my questions. I didn’t want to disturb him too often as he got his own works to do, so I wrote down few questions and ask together.

The documents start to get boring and the after lunch sleepiness began to attack me, I tried hard not to fall asleep. Struggled until 3pm counting down to the end of work, I started to feel awake. For the last 2 hours at work I was rather efficient.

Shuttle bus was waiting outside when we step out of the office at 5pm. There is another bus at 7pm, for the hardworking ones and those who forgot to set alarm before their afternoon nap.

First day of work ended smoothly. After returning a book for Daphne and eating dinner at Kopitiam, I went back home to slack.

I should have slept early last night, I told myself this morning, but that didn’t happen. Although I tried very hard to get on bed at 12:30am, it’s still considered late for working people.

This blog entry is getting long, but if I stop now, I will have to blog about 2 days tomorrow. So let’s finish it today.

I decided to wear a less formal short sleeve shirt today, since there is no strict dress code and there were even people who wear t-shirt to work. But I really should have worn t-shirt today too.

Heavy rain started soon after I left home this morning. The punishment for me not bringing umbrella is that the shuttle bus stop is not connected to the bus interchange by shelters. The thin slice of free newspaper I intended to read didn’t help much, I was half soaked when the bus came.

Looking at the bright side, I managed to get on the bus. So I don’t need to fight for taxi in a rainy morning during the peak hour. It’s really cold in the office today. Only after I dried my cloths with my body warmth then I realized that the thermostat was set to 18 degrees.

The department admin Weiting was absent yesterday, she talked to me today and got me some stationeries, and a calculator too. I feel happy receiving the unexpected stock, although everyone else must have gotten the same items.

I started to feel sleepy again, same as yesterday. And at 3pm, again, I became awake. That’s weird. Maybe the 2 cups of coffee I drank in the afternoon helped, I shall try to drink tomorrow early in the morning.

Today a fellow engineering approached and talked to me. He might be from India, and I didn’t get his name. He’s friendly, asked about my background and we talked about the work stuffs. Ms HR Manager is friendly too, she had been giving me the motherly care. Dr. Ng is a nice person, he doesn’t talk loud and from the way he talk you know he got the standard of a department head.

In another office is a manager under Dr. Ng. I see him more often because he came out and discuss with other engineers. But I don’t really like him. He looks like an Ah Beng, he talks loud like an Ah Beng, and hmm, maybe he is good at work, I’m yet to find out about that.

Mr. Zhao told me that I will shift to another table tomorrow. An engineer is leaving and the computer on his table has the software that I need to learn. Hopefully there’s internet too, although it’s not likely to happen.

Ok, I’ll try to sleep by 11pm today, 8 hours of sleep is what I need!

And I miss my BB too!