it’s awfully quiet. deafeningly quiet. only the occasional coughs, sniffs, flip of paper, or a quick phone call. i spent the morning observing my new environment, half the afternoon waiting for my assigned notebook and stationery while trying hard to stay awake; and now just reading up on a client’s profile.
the office is nice and has a creative-smart look about it that i like. my desk is by a full-length window overlooking a huge expanse of the city below. the scenary is breathtaking. my desk is empty and wide. my new notebook is an old IBM model that’s prob just 13-inch – the windows OS is in chinese. after signing a loan form, i was given one ball-point pen, one felt-tip pen, one stapler, a box of binder clips and a box of paper clips. they also gave me the company’s organiser as a complimentary gift. when i asked for a mouse, the IT fella just said that was “for me to settle”.
my new colleagues are still distant. only sarah, a local gal who sits behind me is enthusiastically wanting to do things together after office hours.
the chinese work environment is weird because of the language barrier. but my supervisor, brian is malaysian, and talking to him is comfortable because he’s obviously worse at chinese than i am. there’s still some getting used to, esp with colleagues who are sitting in the other departments (mine is in the isolated half). but i sometimes suspect they hate me, just with the way they ignore me or roll their eyes up whenever i ask them for something. as if they knew i was foreign and didn’t welcome me.
joa and i moved into our new apartment on chunxiu lane. there’s no other tenants as yet so we have the whole apartment to ourselves. as a christianing ritual, we walked around the apartment naked, and took a shower with the bathroom door open. the view from our room was amazing too and joa stood at the balcony, butt naked and hollered out to the buildings below. it was funny. we dun have curtains in our bedroom so we are awoken earlier than usual. but it’s sunny and warm, so hugging in bed was just paradise.
he leaves for shanghai on wed for two weeks. i’m horrified at the thought of going home alone. the job is still new and strange to me and i wish i had more support especially with the first few weeks. and more so with a new and empty house.
