The first week of work

The  first week of work in Shanghai from the 06/02/06  to the 10/06/02:

Now that a week has almost gone, i have definitely lost the depressing mood that i had at the beginning of last week.   I do remember though that the first week of work was when i started missing Singapore.  

First, throughout the meetings for the day, i have not heard anything about the wastewater plant that i was told that i am coming to Shanghai to do.  Finally when i had the chance to talk to Virginia herself, of course i was told to help out in the marketing or what even the Manager Martin had for me t o do.   She did say something along the lines of they are still in the midst of discussing about the wastewater plant project and lots of administration stuff to do for the project.   I was also told that i will be taking over Edwin for the Kunshan project where they are building a office block.
She just simply stated a “  You know it's business, it's unpredictable”.    Let's just put it this way, she is saying that to explain to me why I am not getting a chance to work on my wastewater treatment plant yet.  Maybe that's a point learnt.

Let me share my side of the story – of course i can't force her to start investing in a wastewater treatment plant.  Just to come to this NOC program, i had to extend my studies by another year whereas most of my NOC batch just do so for  another semester due to some module mapping problem.   Also, as i am the last batch for environmental engineers per say, i am not only leaving behind my EV class( where having a fixed class is a privilege in NUS) but also taking on the risk for my final year project where i may have to do with my current juniors who are taking on more Civil Engineering modules that i didn't take and thus may have problem coping with in the future.  This  company was also the fourth company that i interviewed for and the only reason i accepted was the possibility of doing something related to my field.  In short, i was ready to give up NOC if  I can not find anything related to the environment to do.  Hence, can the world out there understand my frustration?

Some people tell me, never mind, whatever you do here – you can  get plenty of exposure.  However, i am not  one of those peeps who haven't figure out what they want to do with their life. I am pretty clear in the sense that i want to do something related to the environment – just a matter of being in the research field or the engineering field.   Therefore, i do not wish for any of this kind of exposure.

Let us recap my feelings about my boss so far:

1. I feel that there is not enough welfare for the staff – first, in order to avoid taxes, my official pay is 800 RMB and hence in order to get the complete amount of 1500(originally), i have to come up receipts and of course that is only for certain categories like mobile and transport.  Not withstanding the inconvenience to the staff, but it of course may shape my shopping habits just to get my pay; secondly, there is no or lack of heating in the staff office.  Can you imagine working the whole day at the temperature of below 10 degree Celsius , though it is indoors?  Though most of the time only my fingers are freezing  but it ain't exactly a good feeling when you have to type; lastly, when there was a new staff and there was a lack of chair.  I went to her office to get one of those roller office chairs, but she told me to get one of those chairs that  we used in the meeting room that  actually can be used for decoration of the balcony.  Honestly, i don't know how much the chairs in her room cost but personally to me, a leader is to lead by example and that means trying to give the best to your men and take on the most shit.  May i add that there is a lack of computers in the office also?  How do we work like this?  Hmm...

Marcus