No more Mundane to Friday

No more Mundane to Friday

It’s another day at the office. You see the clock ticked to 4pm and it’s time to knock off from work.  You look around and see your colleagues suddenly disappeared. Then you realised you are a tad late to hit the exit door.

After driving through the traffic and heading back to your garage, you can see your kids waiting to crawl all over you. You spend time at the dinner table, catch some shows and hit the bed after putting the kids to bed and have a chit-chat session with your spouse. When you wake up, the routine starts until Friday where you head out to pubs or restaurants to break the daily rhythm. Come weekend, you do what you want to do with your family or friends.

But for me, I have not experienced the office environment or Monday – Friday job ever since I landed in Melbourne. Maybe the stars have had enough of me doing the routines for 15 over years back in Singapore. The only problem was, I lived in a HDB like most Singaporeans do and so I didn’t had the experience to utilise a garage where you park inside your own land.

You see, for me, my job starts at 4pm and finishes at 2am or 5pm and wraps up at 3am. 16 days in a month regardless of weekdays or weekends. No office environment. No personal desk space. No emails to follow up (unless there are some reports to be filled-up). No fix mealtime. No managers or supervisors to check on you (unless there are issues that need to be resolved with extra back-up on the way).

The nature of my job is to show our presence to the public and make sure there are no troublemakers lurking around. I get to meet The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I get the smiles from the general public and the “bird” or the “fuck-off” from the ugly bastards. This job made me see the overall picture of Australia, which is good in a sense of learning about a country.

Different seasons, I get to see different clientele. Summer will be the best where lesser clothing are visible everywhere. More interactions happen during the Spring/Summer. You get to see different “Cup” sizes with a clearer vision. This is generally good for my job as it helps me “keeping an eye” on them and keep the troubles away (double meaning). Occasionally you even get free hugs and some selfies or wefies from them. Whether it be a hottie hugging you or a footie fan where their team had just won after many games later, you have to be in that moment. From young children to older folks, you know that you had made a big difference in the community. Then you realize that none of this you will see back home.

But it’s not so great during winter though. There are times when you have to be working in extreme condition, in the freezing cold and the winds will be there to bite you on your neck and face. You talk to lesser people or even no one around after 9pm. When you finish your shift, you find there is a layer of ice on your windscreen. Those are the moments when you realised that you just want to curl back on your bed and wrap up with your blankie.

A job is a job. When you know that you have signed up for this, you can’t go on complaining. Well you can if you are a Singaporean. But wait. You are not supposed to complain because you deserve it, because you voted for it. As a famous politician said in a TV interview during the last election: “Singaporeans get the government they deserve, so I don’t want to hear any more complaints.”

I used to be shy talking to people because I was so busy talking to computers back in Singapore. Coming here had made me change and get more interactive with people. Whether being at work or off work, I am moving slowly away from being an introvert but not completely and more sociable in talking to locals and anyone.

This job has tested me in different ways and throwing my surprises. It has its pros and cons. No job is perfect. It’s how you keep yourself sane not because of the job but because of who you are. That’s what made you leave your Motherland and land in another land.