Been a quiet week at work (last week). Been confined to my work station (desk, cell, jail? refer to previous post) mostly for the entire week bar lunch and the occasional toilet break or breaks for tea. And before you perceive this as easy, mundane tasks, I've not been doing nothing and rotting at work or taking naps while getting paid (which is something i am pretty sure we all would love to do), its just that most of my duties for the week has been desk and office bound.
Well to start the week, it was mostly slow given that i was mostly doing ad-hoc and administrative duties for my mentors to relieve them off their workload. I know some might view "ad-hoc" and "administrative" work as mostly mundane or nonsensical chores, but they are important. It must be done in a correct, professional and hopefully efficient manner. The phrase "learn to walk before you run" certainly applies here. Doing these seemingly mundane but mandatory tasks shapes one's discipline and basics in performing future roles. And thankfully i had this little fella to company me through these tough times..
(Painful sitting position in the 2nd picture, note the other little guy in the background, can't remember all the names of these cartoon or toy characters, don't think they are famous anyway)
My week got a little more interesting and spicy in the latter half when i started to dabble with Media Monitoring. Since I've never done this before in a work environment in my previous jobs, I was looking forward to this task with some enthusiasm and to try something different from the repetitive things that i was performing in the past few days. I cheerfully went to grab the newspapers from the corporate communications department and sort to split the workload with one of my senior. There was just one minor problem though after we had split the workload, I realised that she had quickly taken all the English newspapers while leaving me with the Chinese ones to do media monitoring (since both of us would rather read in english, smart move by her). And while not exactly ideal, I thus began my first ever media monitoring task with Chinese as the medium language.
(One of the newspaper which i was working with for Media Monitoring. For the curious Non-Chinese reading you, headline in red reads "Civil Servants to get a reduce year-end bonus compared to last year")
So i basically looked through the news for the past 3-4 days and scanned any relevant ones to the association. That task alone took me 3 hours or more, please do not ever believe anyone who says that Media Monitoring is a simple, mundane task that can be completed in a matter of minutes, whoever said that, is either really competent/experienced or an outright liar. Media Monitoring requires much more work and concentration then one initially expects. And oh, on a sidenote, while browsing through the Chinese Newspapers, i also noticed there's a lot on business news and news about the China economy. It seems that Chinese papers have a tendency to focus more on economic news and news on China, more so it seems than the local English papers which has a more diverse coverage including sports, social news, etc.
On a positive note, i ended the week with a briefing on an upcoming event in detail. Note from my first posting that i was INVOLVED in an event on the day itself, now i am being briefed on the PREPARATION works on an upcoming event. Please never mix up the two, it takes much much more work to PREPARE for an event then to merely show up on the day itself and be INVOLVED in it. Did learn quite a bit from the briefing though, senior was nice and patiently explained the various process and procedures that needs to be done for the event as well as what various liaising personnel that will need to be contacted to make things happen for the PREPARATION of the event. Patience is really needed in training a newbie like me for such tasks. I really appreciate and would like the thank my 3 seniors and supervisor for being so patient with me (something you might not get to experience in a realistic and sometimes cruel working environment these days)
Next week, I'll be dabbling with EDM blasts and other preparation works for other events as well. After a slow start to the week, it seems that the year-end peak period really is here and I can't wait to find out how the new working week would turn out to be as i foresee many opportunities to learn and experience new things. Stay tuned! (If you managed to stay awake after reading this wall of text)
Signing off,
Nick Chia
Curtin Singapore
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