Temp jobs?

• Jobs with salaries on pay rate system: fixed payment per unit time worked
• Period is non-contractual, thus varies with the amount of work or working hours performed

Why do these?

• In preparation for permanent working life
• Learning about the specific working environment
• Occupy time & earn pocket money
• Understand working life, people
• Experience organisational structures at specific low levels

What temp jobs have you done?

• Not many, about three
• Chauffeur: car driver for a rice merchant whose driving license has been suspended for 6 months
• Packaging worker: packaging finished products for storage & shipping
• Administration assistant: data entry, validator, macro designer, futures student & office runner
• Tuition teacher: for primary & secondary students

Why choose these?

• All occur by chance – first two from job advertisements on the classified section & the third from a friend’s sister’s recommendation
• The tuition teacher appointment is unique – in my NS days, the assignments are sought for me through tuition agents
• I choose these due to whether my circumstances then allow – NS is mostly free, my U holidays are entirely free
• I don’t spend much, so I work only when I feel that I’m ready for a change to my daily rhythm

Tuition teacher?

• As one who helps an adolescent student in school work & grades:

1. Know the student, the family, school & company
2. See the weaknesses & strengths
3. How I (with my own strengths) can help the student
4. Teach the concepts, drill the fundamentals & do exercises
5. Train techniques, correct mistakes & ensure student always remembers

• Pay rate ~ $200-300 / month

Chauffeur?

• Honda driver to a rice merchant in Woodlands
• Doubles as a rice worker – lifting rice sags ranging from tiny 5kg to hefty 50kg
• Been to plenty of places in Singapore, expressways & eating houses
• Eat: pig organs’ soup, mixed meals
• Driving: Honda car, medium lorry; on the road most of the time; learn speeding with safety; edging forward on crowded pedestrian crossings; close all doors when inside parked car; accurate trailer lorry reversal into factory; never stationary when steering the wheel (static coefficient of friction > kinematic coefficient of friction); always overtake without people horning; always ensure that the car is in neutral gear before starting up
• Rice merchant, Mr Vincent Ng: good leader, agile businessman, helpful to workers in distress, fast walker / talker & a superb driver / racer – race & overtake with speed & safety without people horning @ u (think too fast)
• Con: believe a worker’s plight & lent an ill-fated ten dollars; not impose my job rights to timely payment – the salary continuously delayed after my departure

Packaging worker?

• Working for QuarkExpress (a Mac desktop publishing software) packaging office-warehouse in Sime Darby along Bukit Timah Road
• Together with LKF, work from 8-5 with half an hour of lunch break & short breaks in between
• Duties: form cardboard boxes, put CD’s into cases; package the software suit with CD case, manuals, certificates, etc., assemble customer boxes into cartons; seal & certify cartons; stack up & waterproof each stack of cartons; store the components
• People: Nicky Beans, Auntie, other co-workers – U students, lian’s, beng’s
• Learn: hydraulic trolley with steering head at the back – fun turning & navigating; warehousing logistics; smoky environment
• Payment: through agent; first time using timesheets to record working hours & thus to compute payment; cheque payment

Admin assistant?

• An assistant to the financial company
• Job: data entry; data processing; download, update & generate reports; modify & process data for information in other reports, presentations & print-outs; filing; photocopying; Excel macros; VBA programming; Crystal reports; server-client networks: download server files for local processing; backup of information
• People: office environment, women > men, some minor races, outside smokers; many strangers in the city financial centre
• Place: financial hub; eating place – Golden Shoe Centre (Nasi Lemak, Fish Soup rice, Niang Dou Fu, Mixed rice, Japanese meals); many executives
• Pace: fast, efficient, focused, higher stakes, professional (able to deal all sorts of troubles & strangers with a straight face)
• Learn: office mechanics; VBA programming; report generation; trading education; data processing; XML; PC organisation; Internet surfing; games
• Payment: $8/hr, agent, timesheets, literally the freest job to date

Industrial attachment

• IA for six months from 1/2000 to 24/6/2000 @ MEI (beautiful) in Woodlands, a bicycle ride from home
• Learn: Excel templates; office observations; Bangla Bedon; games room (snooker, table tennis, darts, Indonesian lunch); PC organisation; CE works; Autocad drafting & processing; drawing printing & checking; quantity surveying; some brief site visits to Tuas, Lim Chu Kang & Changi; tons of standards, procedures & work tasks
• Blunder: ineffective checking of foundation resulting in the redesign & construction of foundations with the piles always driven in the wrong places
• Payment: 500/month, with any engineering liability incurred by me absorbed by the firm