Second Day in Office

Sitting in front of a Dell Inspiron 6400 running Windoze Vista, the atmosphere is permeated with pleasant aroma of morning coffee and suffocating smells of eau de colognes from the three guys sitting near me. I doubt if they shower at all but just keep applying colognes.

Here I am: officially working for the second day as firmware engineer in a Singapore company.

Things seem to differ from Moto and Intel: no uniform to wear, no dog tag (badge), bigger cube space, more interesting job scope, beer in the fridge (yeah!), no car and have to use the public transport, am an alien in a 'foreign' country, and also, closer to her...

However there are similarities: same mix of people, familiar food, familiar speak (SingLish LAAH!), familiar weather, and familiar set of drill (go to work, go home, sleep, repeat)

This small island is vibrant and very materialistic. It seems to have a magical ability to lure people to just buy, spend, purchase, and suck the last cent from their pockets. There were a few occasions I had some urge to buy, be it a hand phone, a decent Omega watch, or just a crate of beers. I watched myself with amusement and thought about the whole process. The great Singapore Sales has created an atmosphere where most people think there are bargains everywhere. How Singapore can pull this off is what other countries should learn from.

Final thought: Windoze Vista sucks, it doesn't play well with third party products. For example quite a few Java-enabled websites can't be rendered properly even under its own Internet Explorer. I filed a complaint to my boss and am expecting a new XP machine instead, though down to my heart I still hope to get a Linux machine. However since I will work on some FPGAs, the development tools are only available on Windoze boxes. Duh....