Friday, June 27, 2008
It turned out that this is my 100th post!!!
Yay!!!
but yesterday..
I was annoyed..
Haiz..not another rant plz!!!
It seemed that recently I've been on the down side of life..
and after looking at my friends' blog, I realised that I have no reason to complain cos some of them are even in a worse situation than me..
I'm not going to spoil my 100th with pathetic rants and complaints..
So yeah..
My summer placement as a student engineer in an engineering consultancy company started on Monday..
I was so looking forward to my first day that I could not sleep in the morning..
I woke up at 6am which was definitely rare considering how I always have to rush to uni or when going out with friends..
It was very daunting at first because my supervisor started to give me a very quick lessons on power plants..
I was, at that point, worried that I would have to recall all those thermodynamics that I'd learn..
but well..
It turned out that you wouldn't need all the things you learnt in uni..
You just have to make sure that you know the basic definition and how the concept works..
So, my supervisor went on and on about gas turbine, steam turbine, coal-fired, and wood-fired power plant..
and there was so much information for me to process which made me think about the days to come..
but fortunately..
he was on holiday for the rest of the week..
He had asked me to look into the difference between using bag filter and ESP (Electrostatic Precipitator) for the rest of the week!!
but I finished on Tuesday and apparently, it exceeded their expectation..??
The problem itself is simple because my supervisor had explained to me most of the things..
so I just had to simulate it in a software and confirmed what he said..
but I think I understood why they did not expect me to finish very soon..
I have always thought that you need to be very hard-working when you go to work in order to impress your colleagues and managers..
but the situation is different here..
I remembered how my sister used to tell me that in her company, nobody left the office before 6pm..
Sometimes, they were not actually working on their tasks..
They were actually competing with each other who would go back the latest..
so that they could boast to their colleagues after that..
but here..
nobody really cares what you are doing in the office..
When my supervisor said the working hour is flexible, I had no idea what it meant until the second day when I saw one of my colleagues arrived at almost 11 am..
There is no strict regulation saying that you have to work until 5pm as well..
I was surprised to see the other student intern leaving at 4.30 pm on her first day of work!!
And the funny thing is that my colleagues were actually worried that I overworked..
Comparing what I heard from my nee-san with what I witnessed tells me one thing..
In Asia, we are so crazy about competition that we start to compare ourselves with our colleagues..
Very often, we would hear so and so go home early for these many occasions or slacked during working time..
in the UK, this type of competition is non-existent..
We are still competing but in a totally different way..
In Asia, you compete by trying to expose your colleagues' mistakes to show that you are good etc..
I concluded that based on what my sister told me and from my own working experience during last summer..
In the UK, we embrace competition by using our colleague to push us up instead of doing survival of the fittest..
I very much like this kind of attitude..
It really shows that producing a quality work at the end of the day is what matters the most..
You don't have to boot-lick your boss which is good because boot-lickers are good-for-nothing people who try to cover their inabilities by putting a false impression..
My first week of placement is going to end today..
and my overall impression now: "I would want to work here after I graduate. Going back to Singapore right after I graduate for work might not be a good idea after all. I would work here for a few years if I could and then look for options elsewhere."
I guess what I wrote today explains why the next iPhone inventor would never come from Asia..
PS: Fresh meat left overnight stinks!!!
Thanks to all the blogs i referred to (countless) for html code help :) (esp. cyn' and sixseven)
Adobe Photoshop Elements for supernatural abilities
