On Monday, my first day in the office, I discovered that my desk had been double-booked and that there was, in fact, nothing at all for me. Today, I went in to be assigned a so-called "hot desk" until a permanent (and presumably cooler) one can be found...
---
You fly 6770 miles to a tiny dot in the Indian Ocean, an island less than half the size of London. You squirrel around through the hazy alleys to your workplace, which comprises three separate buildings, each with 11 floors of office space. In one of these buildings, on one of these floors, you arrive at a desk full of other students that don't look like they are from Singapore. You are advised to find a temporary seat somewhere among them while HR searches its soul for a permanent space for you. You attempt to mingle with some of the regulars: Ola, who is from Poland but studying under UCL in London (the de facto boss of this group of friends); Andrew, a Briton, also from UCL; Aled, from the University of Liverpool; Ceilidh from Australia; one or two other international people not from the region; and one bloke called Sam...from Southampton, a PhD student in ECS who tells you he used to sit next to one of your ECS supervisors while the latter was a mere postdoc (and who thinks the other one is a bit weird). Of all the places in the world or the city or the research institute that he could now have been sitting, he ended up sitting right behind me on this here tiny dot.
That was how I met some of my fellow ARAP (A*STAR Research Attachment Programme) students. I don't think I'd call them a group, exactly, because they're all working under different supervisors, but it seems that I will be sitting with them for now. They seem good fun, so it would be nice to be assigned a permanent seat that way. Ola, the top cat, described Geylang, the district in which I live, as "durians and blowjobs". I have tried neither, but I certainly hope she didn't mean that people attempt to juggle both at the same time...
My travails last year at the hands of ECS will be well known to you all by now. That was why it took until June before I did a day of practical work. It now transpires that the same problems that plagued me in Southampton have followed me here, but much worse! Namely, in Southampton, I couldn't get into the cleanroom for months; here, there isn't yet a finished cleanroom for me to get into! Dr Teng believes that IMRE's cleanroom will not be ready until January, but Sam, the fellow Southamptonite, said he had on good authority that it could be later yet. Either way, my transfer report is due in December and will apparently now be written on the topic of a single, half-finished transistor...
Today I had been pencilled in for an appointment at the Ministry of Manpower (MoM) for the issuance of my Temporary Employment Pass (TEP), which is in effect a visa. Armed with this TEP on your person, you can open a bank account and start going about life without the looming threat of leaving your passport on the MRT or of bureaucracy stamping on your day. This appointment very sadly happened to coincide with the new health & safety briefing that was delivered to all the staff and students at Fusionopolis 2. Making my best show of disappointment, I mentioned this clash to the HR lady, who, unbeknown to me, set about rearranging my TEP appointment at the MoM so that I could healthily and safely attend the H&S lecture instead! Me and my big mouth! Let that be a lesson to you: health & safety bureaucrats will yield to the whims of no government.
---
By
The Imperial Orange.
7th October 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment