Bye Bye Singapore - 13 Days
This post is all typed by ME! Not copy and paste de.
After completion of my attachment, and that space of time before Fusion, been going back to school almost everyday. Whenever people ask, "thought you already finish everything liao, how come still need to go back school?" Well, one of the reasons is to work on the F1 project. But the main reason is to go back school find friends, macham gathering like that, and also for viwawa!
Ever since the end of the Fusion up till now, already stopped going back to school everyday. Taking the time to rest at home before the Japan trip, cos, after I come back, will only be able to rest for another 1/2 days before starting work at NYP. Gonna be working as a temp staff there before going off to serving the country. Also, been taking quite abit of time reminiscing about the past.
Still remember my secondary school days. People always say, that the friends you make in secondary school, will more likely than not become your life-long friends. How true. Still remember so vividly all the kuku stuff we did back then. All our early morning classroom soccer games, singing chinese version of the school song, ECS, in-between chapteh/sepak-takraw/toilet excursions, fitness corner (swinging from the low rope, climb up low wall, climb up monkey bar sit), sneaking out of school for lunch before extra lessons, bowling sessions during O level prelims...
I guess I will forever remember sneaking out of school for lunch. After 4yrs in the school, its not exactly hard to start feeling sick of the canteen food, thus, during sec4 that time, always sneak out of school for lunch. Kena caught quite a few times as well, but all the time we were just let off. But got one incident, I believe will forever be etched in my memory. There was this once, while we were eating at the coffeeshop opposite ABC supermarket there. Eat halfway, saw one group of teachers come over. Can't quite remember who all of them were, only remember got Chen Tat Wei, cos he was the only one that approached us. That time really thought, finish la this time, kena discipline committee teacher some more. But he came over and act friendly with us, tell us no problem, they understand this and that, but still ask us for our class., but say he won't tell anyone. Liar! Don't know how many people he told, but all of us know he told our chemistry teacher, Ramesh. Next day in class, when ask people to answer question, auto ask, "those 4 boys who were caught eating at the coffeeshop yesterday, please stand up." And then proceeded to make jokes of us, Shifeng the shi fu teach us how to eat, than me steal qing food eat, no wonder he so skinny.... Fond fond memories.
After the O levels, out of the 7 of us, 5 decided to go JC. I decided to go for the poly route. Nowadays, I really like looking back and admire the change since my 1st year in poly. The only 1 of the 7 that went to NYP, the other poly guy went to SP. Away from all my friends, forced to adapt. Also, timing of holidays almost always different. Whenever I on holiday, they most probably still having school. So what do I do with that time? Go work part time.
Went and looked for waiter job, cos I know, waiter job got shorter hours compared to working in sales. Worked at Ajisen ramen(hate it) as well as Raku Ninja. Raku somehow makes my time at Ajisen seem pleasant. At Raku, I was scolded, ordered around, criticized, made to wash dishes, work as kitchen helper, all for just $5/hr. Thats why after during the last semester break, I decided to not work anymore, instead, to really enjoy my holiday. That was also the period before 4 of my secondary school buddies enter NS. Every morning we went to the gym, went for lunch, every night Talk Cock Session, as well as the countless outings and good food eating, and also the outings with Alvin they all. At least I had the chance to appreciate what it feels like to really enjoy holiday as a poly student.
End of that holiday, went on to year 3, lessons first, and after, final year project and attachment.
For my FYP, I got the chance to work on NYP's Singapore F1 project. Whenever everyone hears about it, most probably will go, "woahhh F1 wor, so cooool." It sure sounds cool, but the blood, sweat and tears aren't. A 4man team, but 1man working. I was the first batch that worked on that project. Everything had to be built up from scratch, all the buildings and landmarks, experimenting and researching on how stuff works and all the plug-ins needed. The number of times I had to stay overnight in school to work. The most memorable of which was the day before the Singapore Tourism Board came to visit. In order to rush out one of the landmarks I was working on, I stayed overnight without a permit. Because I didn't have the permit, I was chased off by the Technical Officer and threatened, yes THREATENED, to leave. I went to hide somewhere waiting for the coast is clear phone call from my friends. Managed to get it out in time for the visit. BUT, guess who takes the credit, not me, the school. I hated that project. Countless times I approached Olivier asking him to pull me out of the project, only to be denied time after time. Another requirement of the project was that I had to go down personally to the different landmarks and take videos to use as reference material. So there I went, with camera in hand. And, almost everywhere I went, I was confronted by the security guard. I guess I can't blame them, I believe I looked like a terrorist, taking pictures of every detail of those places. And every time, whenever I look over at the other studio and see the projects done, projects that are directly relevant to what we were trained for. And seeing people like Melvin Chow, who I always believe, doesn't deserve to be there. I mean, I had been working so hard throughout the 3years, burning the midnight oil on countless occasions, compared to someone who has been slacking all the way through. But then, you may wonder why I continued to work so hard, well, one of the main reasons is none other than grading. I want to get a good grade. I want to get a good enough GPA for me to enter a local university. Also, I was able to look forward to my attachment. Initially, I was supposed to be doing my attachment at Imagi. Its an animation house based all the way in HK and its the company that did the animation for TMNT. For a ninja turtles fanboy like me, having that opportunity was even better than strike TOTO. It means that my skills are recognized. Well, why do I say initially? Cos I did not get the chance to go there. Why? From what I heard, its because the company didn't want to spend money on an intern as they instead approached me directly and offered me 11,000hk for full time employment. Well, I can't take that offer up since my country needs me. When I received the news that I wouldn't be able to get that dream attachment, I literally felt like giving up. I saw no point in me working any longer more for that project. But still, I carried on and saw it through. There was once when I talked to Limly about my situation, and he told me something like, "we need to have good students in any of the projects, so in case there are slackers or whatever, there will always be at least one good student working and ensuring the project progresses, and most probably, Olivier sees you(that's me) as one of those good students" During the final presentation. We were blasted and criticized by the independent markers. Well, the project then really looked like crap. The sizes scaling was all completely wrong, the stuff that were done by the other people in the group looked horrible. Never in my 3 years in the school, have I been through something like that. And that feeling. I worked so hard, and I still had to pay because some idiots decide to just bochup about the entire project. There were, however, 4 events during that period that helped me in carrying on and moving forward, in chronological order, 1) THAT prata session, 2) Sheng's birthday celebration, 3) GMM autograph session and 4) my birthday(thanks for every thing guys). Oh, and not forgetting all the outings we had, where I was able to put aside everything and just enjoy.
After FYP, I was posted to Sparky Animation for my attachment. During attachment time, I still went back to school every now and than to kaypo on the project.
There's this saying, every gray cloud has a silver lining. Well, its true. On the last day of school, I returned to school to meet up with the rest of my course for dinner. It was also the day of the final presentation for the 2nd batch working on the F1 project. After the presentation, Olivier approached me and asked if I was willing to come back and help out on the project, to polish it up and such before Fusion. I was the only 1 from the first batch that got invited back. And also, he asked me about hows attachment and stuff. Told him that they had offered me to stay on and continue work, this time, paying me 1.5k per month. He claimed that it was too low. I than told him that I was gonna be working for Ken at $5/hr. He thinks its the rate of McDonalds. Thus I ask him if there was any chance I could come back and work. He checked it out for me. First, he told me that it would be hard, as it will need around 3months to process my application and such, and may therefore, leave only around a month or so before my enlistment where I can work. He could have stopped there and done nothing and I wouldn't blame him. But, he still went and found a way for me to return to work, as a temp staff, where all the application processing would be done internally. Woohoo! Also, I'm currently still working for Ken, as an event based part-timer. Ken was someone I knew through the F1 project as well. His maths by the way, is awesome. Salary can round up from $80 to $100.
Gotta stop here. This post is getting too long.
Bye bye Singapore, Hello Japan




