A Week to My Birthday, But A Company Ruined It [Author's Corner]

It was Friday 14th evening, after finished giving my tuition at CCK, I headed down to Tiong Bahru area. As the clock kept running, I realized that I have an hour to kill, so I decided to sit in Coffee Bean and ordered my favorite drink, Iced Caramel Macchiato.

As the time approached to my interview schedule, I prepared myself before walking to the interview place. When I walked toward the direction that I thought was correct direction, I realized that it was not the right road and I decided to check it in Google Map.

"Fuck My Life!" That's my first reaction when I realized that I was not supposed to go to Tiong Bahru MRT, but Redhill MRT instead. So I decided to take Bus 33 and alighted at Redhill then walked to the interview place. Lucky me that the person in charge who sent me the e-mail asked me to come 30 minutes earlier, so instead of came at 18:00, I reached the interview place at 18:15.

Some people asked me about what company that I attended for this job interview, but I will give a logo clue instead of giving their full name. :)

By the time I reached interview place, one of the staffs handed over me 4-pages form and 2-pages structure questions that I need to fill and answer accordingly. So I tried my best to finish it as soon as possible and I handed the filled form and answered structure question papers about 19:00.

After handed over all of those, I checked my phone and the yellow color on my battery sign alerted me to turn off my phone, because my evening still long since I will have meeting at 8pm in Clarke Quay and also because I could not find any available power sockets around. During waiting time I just realized that there were quite numbers of candidate that waited with me at the same time. It was 7-9 people in the room, excluding myself.

Waited, waited, and waited, until there were only 2 other candidates and me left in waiting room when the previous candidate just finished his interview, but it was already 19:50 (I was bored and I decided to turn on my phone to check any messages and time). But after this, the interviewer was on the phone and walked around when he answered the phone for about 15 minutes, then he called the next person without any "sorry for make you waiting" or so whatever line to the next candidate.

So it was about 20:05, when it was only me and another candidate, called him Mr X, in waiting room. This another candidate handed over his filled form and answered questions papers to the staff after me, so I thought it will be my turn to be called after this, but apparently when the clock showed 20:30 and the interviewer finished with the candidate, the interviewer called Mr X instead of me. My reaction after that was "WTF! Forget it, I have better things to do and I am already fucking late for my meeting". So, I decided to walk out from waiting room and headed down to my meeting in Central @ Clarke Quay. Along the way, I sent an email to person who contacted me to withdraw my job application, since I can't find any staffs around to tell it on their face.

It is not like my first time attended job interview. I could say that I have been through quite some, but from this one I learnt few things:
1. Respect other people time, everyone has their own limit for waiting.
2. "Sorry" is an important word that some people might forgotten sometimes, unnecessary showing that you are inferior from others.
3. Treat your guest(s) with great hospitality as possible as you can provide.
4. Employees attitudes are part of company's image, especially their working culture.

Welcoming Second Half of 2012 with Bus-Car Accident, Hello Singapore! [Author Corner]

Seems like this year my life is getting further beyond the social life drama. Started with mistakenly caught by police towards ending of first half of 2012, while this time I just experienced bus-car accident for the first time in my life.

Call me lazy or what, but I took bus with longer travelling time because I was too tired standing all the way during the journey back home. Well, there was a bad sign when I just reached the bus stop nearby YMCA building in Dhoby Ghaut: bus 502 doesnt pass that bus stop, which surprised me at first. (un)lucky me that there was another bus, 174, which going to Jurong Point, so I took 174 instead of 502.

There was no other bad signs anymore, unless if I want to count high traffic along Bukit Timah area as bad sign of the journey, but I am already get used to with no-moving at all traffic in Jakarta, and I have times that I can spare, thus I didnt even bother to worry about it. I am not pretty sure whether bus 174 driver or the car driver that should be accused as a wrong party during accident, but bus 174 was about to turn right, so it was moving toward the right side of the road, while the car (I think) tried to took over it from the right side as well, and TADAAAAAAAA, I experienced the very first bus-car accident in my life.

At first when I heard the sound, I thought it was the wheel of bus 174 that exploded, but when people who sitting at the back made noises, then I took a look and saw a car that can not move at all, as the picture below.

Is it wrong focus? O.o

Obviously due to this, all of bus 174 passengers need to alight immediately and change to the next available bus. Lucky us, it was not at quiet area of Bukit Timah, but it was in Bukit Batok area that has quite number of buses to choose. As for me I took bus 157. While waiting for bus 157, I tried to take few pictures of accident from bus stop.

while waiting for a bus to change

help reached within 10 minutes, considerably fast?

"Titik Nol" Preview Session: Reminded Me of My Mother, but Showed Director *** [Performing Art]

Knowing director or/and scriptwriter of a performing arts show will give audiences different insight of the play itself. At least, that's what I felt when I watched the preview of "Titik Nol" (monologue version by "Siti") just now in Telok Ayer Performing Arts Centre.

Titik Nol is a play which was originated from a short film by Nicolas Yudifar, who also involves in play production. Earlier, the play was showed in Substation, Singapore from 1st to 3rd March and from 9th to 10th March 2012 in Jakarta for first time within the region.

"Titik Nol" poster/flyer for last March 2012 show

Unfortunately, I was in Indonesia for short-break when it was showed in Singapore and I was in Singapore when it was showed in Jakarta, so the show and me were not fated together back then. But lucky enough for me that few days back, Agnes Christina told me that she will have a closed-preview session in Singapore for the upcoming Titik Nol show which will be held in Yogyakarta. The show in Yogyakarta itself will be held on 29th September 2012. Also, they will bring the show to Bandung and Semarang somewhere in December 2012, but with possibly another format/style.

As a person who just watched it for the first time, I was quite impressed by the actress, Emanorwatty Saleh. It was a monologue version and she needs to tell us the story which was previously played by not only her, but also another Indonesian actor, Agus Nur Amal. During the preview session, I can imagine and feel the situation that they tried to deliver to us as audiences regardless of limitation of props, lighting, and sound system. At personal level, first part of the scenes (older version of Siti) reminds me of my mother, somehow. Nevertheless, there are some areas that still can be improved which were discussed after the preview session among few people who had opportunity to watch, i.e. character development, timeline clarity, etc. The post-preview discussion was partly serving its purpose to give feedback to team prior to their real show.

I would say that it was new and interesting experiences for me attending such session and would like to thanks to Agnes for inviting me to the preview session.

I Need "Words of Affirmation", What About You? [Author Corner]

Some of my friends knew that every Saturday I joined this "secret gathering" from period of February to April 2012. During one of sessions, the discussion about Love and Relationship, and just happened there is this little quiz about knowing of a person Love Language. I never knew that actually there is someone who quantify it in such way and when I tried to google about it, I found that it is already been around since 1992, means it is already for over 20 years.

During the session, I found that my primary love language is "Words of Affirmation" and according to a website, it means

Actions don’t always speak louder than words. If this is your love language, unsolicited compliments mean the world to you. Hearing the words, “I love you,” are important—hearing the reasons behind that love sends your spirits skyward. Insults can leave you shattered and are not easily forgotten.

Well, it is possible that a person has same score for more than one language, just take it as you are a bilingual or maybe even multi-language person. It is kinda good in my opinion understanding what your love language, as you might realize whats the most important for you in relationship and for your partner to know about it, so yourself will be felt more loved by her/him.

If you are curious about the quiz, I tried to consolidate the quiz and the result brief explanation. Simply download following file  (password: egi). Sorry, but the file I protected, so it is Rad-Only file mode.

The Five Language Quiz

There will be 30 pairs of statements. Read the statements and imagine yourself having to choose ONE out of the two statements. Choose one that fits you best, and put "1" under your choice column. I tried to make it easier, so by the time you finish all of the questions, simply go to the Result sheet to find which one is the most dominant.