Punch the Sandbag

Today was the first day of my internship, and of the internships of everybody in my course, and of the internships of many other people not in my course; at the briefing there were easily upwards of a thousand people, and even then some people surely did not attend, especially those who have successfully applied to have their internship carried out overseas.

Suffice it then to say that I will name the company that I work with as K.J. Question, and I will not disclose anything of the company's information here except to say that they deal with edibles. In any case what you'll get is a heap of personal opinion anyway, nothing that could possibly make you want to buy or sell their shares!

Let me therefore go through my description of today's events, and the events behind them, in great and mind-numbing detail.

Now it is the custom of the University that most of the students are, in their third year of study, obliged to take 6 months of the year up in an internship at some company or other, preferably one that pursues a business that is related to their field of study. This will take up either the first or the second half of the year. In my case it's taking up the first half of the year. The companies, in addition, will pay the student a nominal allowance (as opposed to a salary), which usually is above SGD500.

The company I am interning at also sent out emails some time ago, detailing the dress code--shirts or polo tees, jeans or pants (but then in a separate and confusing communique stated "no jeans"), and covered shoes (which I took to mean shoes that cover the top of the foot). Thus I bought a new pair of slacks, because I only have one (plus my jeans and a pair of chinos that I haven't worn in ages and ages), and spent most of last night ironing shirts and shining shoes; more time shining shoes than ironing shirts.

This in turn was due to the fact that I detest polo tees, possibly because my parents made me wear them back when I was younger and more obviously rebellious, and the bitterness of having to wear polo tees when I'd much rather wear "normal" tee-shirts still rankles with me. I don't let go of old grudges easily, I'm afraid, and I bear grudges against polo tees; so I decided that I'd err on the side of over-formality and go in a long-sleeved shirt--the Gorilla left me with loads of those--and slacks, and my leather shoes that the parents gave me.

Those leather shoes, unfortunately, were extremely dirty from my wearing them through mud and sand and grass; so I looked up WikiHow and the Art of Manliness, and began shining those shoes for the first time in about two years; eventually I decided to use the Art of Manliness' advice instead, because I had no warm place to let the polish melt as WikiHow advised. (This morning I saw many small beads on the shoes, but was not sure if they were melted polish or dew.) The shoes took awhile to clean, then to polish, then to shine (this involved me ripping up an old pair of shorts to get a small ball of cotton, which I dampened and then dipped in the polish to apply to the shoe). My hands became extremely sore in the process, and my fingers almost certainly cramped. At any rate they certainly became extremely pained. Ironing the shirts was much easier, as it merely involved me finding out how to turn the iron on and then ironing the shirts.

I slept at around midnight.

I woke at around 6.15am, then ate a bun and had a box of coffee (which I had bought the night before); and then I changed my clothes in the dark, clicked MythMongers and Mousehunt, and then left to catch the bus to the interchange; from there I followed the map that the company had provided to locate the bus stop from which the shuttle bus would depart, and then took it. The shuttle bus was comfortable: cushioned, air-conditioned, and dim; it was, of course, crowded, but that's a rather good thing for a company, isn't it? The ride to the company took about half an hour, during which I dozed off intermittently (even though I drank coffee earlier, I still was sleepy).

The company has a quite nice location; we the interns obtained our visitors' passes, were taken on the tour, filled out forms and were assigned IDs and were taken to see our departments and supervisors, in essence were more or less assimilated; then we had lunch and then briefings (I fell asleep during the safety briefings and so probably have no idea of what to do in case of alien invasion). After the briefing I had more forms to fill, a locker to claim as mine, and safety shoes to get; then I, since I had no work yet to do, was given a manual (about 300 pages!) to read; I read it until 5.00pm, when we began running to return the visitors' passes and then to catch the return shuttle bus.

I arrived back at the interchange around 5.45pm, and was back in the room by 6.15pm; a total of 12 hours spent outside.

It does, however, look like I may be able to keep on swimming, just in the evening instead of in the mornings. But still! Swimming! I resume on, I think, tomorrow or Wednesday. Maybe I shall jog some nights, too.