36th entry - Some thoughts about working life

In 3 weeks' time, I am supposed to start work at a new office. This will be my 4th job since I started work in Feb 2001. Technically I have not left my first employer, but the nature of the work is expected to be different from my previous deployments. On one hand, I am happy for the change - in a way I had chosen it, after all; on the other hand, I am also worried because I do not have any clue what I will be getting myself into.

My first job was dealing with policy development. It gave me my first taste of working life, as well as exposure to different styles of management. Over a period of slightly over two years, I had to work with 5 different bosses: an impatient tyrant; a laid-back dreamer; a kind and fair leader; a selfish bastard; and a EQ-deficient/socially-awkward high-flyer. The most memorable times were spent outside of office, either during lunch or after work, playing badminton or going to the gym or just chilling out with a few colleagues over dinner.

During this period, I experienced one office relocation, got involved in one new love relationship (and several failed short-term ones in between), and went on four short trips with my colleagues (1 to Sydney and Canberra on official business, which was my first visit to Australia; 1 to a fishing resort on Bintan Island, Indonesia; and visits to Malacca en route to a durian plantation as well as to Redang Island, a beach resort in a northern Malaysian state).

In 2003, I applied to an internal job-posting ad and got recruited by a prestigious department as a research analyst. The work was interesting and high-profile but the workload was a nightmare. I had to count the number of Sundays that I did not have to return to the office. The main attraction of the work was an opportunity to get a higher salary, but in the end I decided that it was not worth the effort. It was here that I learnt a great deal about office politics and to avoid the snares of people who will do anything in their means to get ahead or save their skin, even if it required them to abandon their sense of morality.

Even in this cut-throat environment, I managed to make a few good friends, such as KC@FK. I also managed to learn line-dancing, which not only allowed me to do some light exercise but also to expand my social circle. There were many occasions when I looked back at my short 1.5-year stint here and wondered whether I had any regrets. The answer that confronted me was always negative: in spite of the workload and office politics, it was an eye-opening experience that I would not have gotten if I had remained at my first post. It was also my job with this office that gave me my first unforgettable visit to Israel.

At present, I am a research analyst at another department. While there is no difference in terms of job title, the job nature of my current position is quite different from that of the last one as there is more team and project-type work involved. The workload here is much more manageable, and the working environment was more pleasant after our office relocated to a convenient part of town. Major perks that I have enjoyed here are the visits to Jakarta (in which I stayed at the comfortable 5-star Grand Hyatt Hotel and was chaffeured around in luxury cars), Israel (my second one) and Sydney/Canberra (also my second). It is also in this department that I am able to go home practically on time everyday, and go for gym regularly and even swimming during extended lunch breaks. The exposure was also fantastic - in the course of my work I am given the opportunity to meet many kinds people working in different offices.

Sadly, nothing is perfect. My bosses here are quite unprofessional and selfish. They do not care about staff development because everyone is here for a limited 2-year period ("on loan" or secondment from another department) and we all knew that our efforts here are not going to get recognised by our parent departments. Nobody really respects the director and everyone finds his deputy a pain in the ass. The managers are either clock-watching, minimal-work performers or ambitious, pretentious and prideful over-achievers.

The current situation is not the worst yet; things are only going to get worse with the "next generation". My replacement (since I am due to leave) is a reclusive wierdo with a out-of-this-world appearance to match; her new fellow colleagues include a retired army colonel who talks to us like he is still in the army, an eccentric sailor with a bizzare way of thinking (the director apparently feels that he can think out of the box, which I agree, if off-tangent articulations can also be considered "thinking out of the box"), and an army commando officer whose sole staff work experience was in purchasing generators and training plattoons of men but has been asked now to construct abstract complex "system maps" and perform horizon-scanning (aka professional crystal-ball gazing). And my current supervisor is a first-class bitch whose EQ is negative and whose ego far exceeds her intelligence.

If this office has been a joke for the past 2 years, the joke is only going to get more hilarious.

I really hope that my new office will be something to look forward to, and that its not going to be worse than what I experienced so far. I hope I get to work with some nice colleagues and a good boss, and that they will stay. I hope the job will be interesting and challenging but not too heavy in terms of workload. But a perfect job does not exist in this world, does it?