First day of work

Whew! First day of work's finished! It was a bit chaotic but I'm slowly getting into it. I haven't got my mobile phone yet (tomorrow afternoon) and my laptop order was forgotten so it's back to the grubby Internet cafe I've been using or this temporary desktop test machine that I've borrowed. The work environment is nice, the guys are friendly and we get free soft drinks in the fridge. :-) I wonder if the fridge has Coke Zero in it? (Singapore unfortunately does not have this drink)

I had chicken rice for lunch today. I forgot to take a photo but for SGD$5.50, I was given a huge plate of rice, two pieces of chicken breast meat (chopped into smaller pieces), a bowl of soup, a huge plate of broiled Chinese brocolli (sp?) and a small plate of absolutely beautiful chilli sauce. Yumm....my mouth is watering as I think about it again. I think the same dish would have cost in the region of AUD$12 in Melbourne so it's bloody good value.

Nothing much to write except an interesting observation with banking here. Because of the prevalent (sp?) identity fraud/theft in this region (esp. Malaysia), every financial transaction here is doubly/triply checked as if I'm definitely going to steal their money everytime. Same thing with bank accounts...they have to have the exact name as it appears on my passport and identity card so I can't use my English name with my surname as I normally do in Australia. I have to use the full English and Chinese name but somehow still fit it into forms that only accept first names and surname. So for example, if I had an English name John, surname Lee, Chinese name Ah Mat, my passport would have John Lee Ah Mat. If I have to fill in a form with first name and surname, it somehow becomes John Ah Mat Lee. Now how is that even remotely close to my passport name?? Grrr....it reminds me of the time in uni when a university office administrator who thought she knew better and insisted my name was Ah Lee (taking the example above) and refused to change it for the whole year! People like that should be forced to take some cultural lessons and then write their names in reverse alphabetical order, surname as first name and first name as surname.

And after I opened my bank account, I have to make doubly sure that I give the EXACT details of my bank account to HR as a space between numbers or a dash here and there will mean that I won't get paid.

I'm off to dinner with an old college mate. I wonder where she's going to take me for food?? :-p Cya!

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