Truths about the Island (and I don’t mean the one that Jack and Kate are stuck on)
Efficient (ee-FI-shee-ant): producing a result for the lowest cost possible.So its 10:25am and I'm sitting in a shop-house on club street, famous for its food and shopping. The client’s place is stuck in between a Puma outlet and a funky shop that reminds me of a place you would find in subi selling home wares. Wicked lamps and odd shaped vases. Very cool if u can afford to splash out 600 bucks for a glass bowl, whose purpose would be only to sit on a table and look pretty. Getting back to the point I'm trying to make, it’s now 10:27 and the finance manager is still not in, I'm blogging, the accountant is playing with the air-con and the accounts clerk is…filing her nails. The moral of the story u ask? Well let me say it again: it’s now 10:27 and the finance manager is still not in, I'm blogging, the accountant is playing with the air-con and the accounts clerk is filing her nails. Doesn’t anything seem odd to u?? Anything?!?! Well if u answered: why aren’t all these people doing any work? You would be *ding ding ding* ….absolutely correct! Someone who had worked in both Australia and Singapore once told me that “the reason why Singaporeans work so late is because they are inefficient.” NOOOO WAY! After he said that, I started to think how true it was. We come to work at 9:30, put our things down, go buy breakfast, being sure not to walk too fast otherwise our make up will run from the sweat, come back and eat it, throw away the rubbish, start our computer, put in our headphones, and its suddenly 10:30. By the time we start any work it’s almost time for lunch! I say “WE” because I think I have been sucked into the way of life, I have been captured and brainwashed, otherwise why would I have come into work at 9:30, put down my yoga bag and walked up the road to buy a vegetable pau from 7-eleven, come back and ate it, then started my computer, took my ipod out from my bag and picked a song? When I was working in Perth I was at the client’s place at 8:30 sharp, earlier sometimes, we had lunch which was exactly 1 hr and went home at 5:30pm on the dot. That’s 8 solid hrs of work in one day- what we get paid for. There is no chit chat throughout working hrs, no gossip about who is going to resign, who is going out with which manager. In Singapore I don’t leave till 8:30pm, sometimes 9:30 to make up for the mindless chatter that occurs throughout the day. At the end of it I'm still working 8 hrs, not too sure if it’s solid or not, but never-the-less 8 hrs- what we get paid for. Now for the voting poll: would you rather work 8:30 – 5:30 (a total of 9 hrs) or 9:30 – 9:30 (for a total of 12 hrs)? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which would be the obvious choice. However, Singapore who prides itself on its education system, having some of the smartest young mathematicians in the world- close to genius, where you get bragging rights if you to go to university in Singapore, they are still picking the latter. Who’s the genius now?
Lo and behold, its 11:15, almost lunchtime J and I have still need to complete my updated resume.
aimless ramblings at 7:26 PM
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