I'm Not Packing for Home

July 11, 2008 – Today commemorates my first week in a new job and I’m not about to set myself packing for the first flight back home.

But before I begin my narrative on the job, the training and the people, I must start off with the DHL boxes. Yes, the ones we sent here from the Philippines to avoid paying the excess aircraft baggage. We were informed of their arrival late Friday afternoon, the day after our 48-hour adventure, so we had no choice but to pick them up early Monday morning. Which was a hassle really, because we were expected to be at work by ten o’clock and the DHL office doesn’t open before nine.

It wasn’t a simple “picking up” thing because we also had to go through Customs before we can finally bring our boxes to our house. It was annoying especially since we had to take a ten-minute walk under the scorching heat of the sun with the shivering cool breeze of the early morning just to get to the customs office.

In the end, it wasn’t at all that bad, especially when the customs officer who attended to us was everything that could pop my (boy-crazy) eye – tall, unfriendly and totally cute! I absolutely go bonkers over snobbish men so forgive me if at this point I have totally forgotten my reservations for all Caucasian males. I even momentarily forgot that I was supposed to keep my heart waiting for (a snobbish, cute and totally smart) someone to “grow up” back home.

We took some time at the Customs so we had to call Paddy (our agent) so he could let our new employers know that we are going to be late. We were panicky by then because it’s absolutely a no-no to be late on your first day at a new job but he assured us that it will be alright and gave us a thirty minute allowance.

After mentally saying goodbye to the cute Customs guy who was chewing a gum and doing anything but mind us, we started the walk back to the DHL office. I told Eunice that I’m having second thoughts about the Brits, how they are better looking than the Americans and that the “CG” was cute. But she put me off by saying that most of them aren’t circumcised. Ew!!!

I wouldn’t dwell much on the boxes after that. They were totally heavy but we managed to get them on the taxi, off the taxi and lifted up eight floors to our rooms where they would stay unopened until we got back from work that same afternoon.

We did manage to arrive fifteen minutes later than our allowance and were whisked off to have another chat with Andrew, our Director, who is basically like an audit partner. It was a further talk about how the company works, what our jobs would be like and how excited they are to finally have us (they’ve waited four months). That was at least inspiring, and sort of scary if you know what I mean. They really have high expectations of us, since we have so much audit experience, so they say.

The rest of the day (and the training week for that matter) was a daze after that with Nettie and me sitting in front of a dark monitor waiting for we-know-not-what. It was crazy, especially when we’ve been through a computer simulation training program with PwC. But it was forgivable. We were informed that the induction program was ‘very new’ and that we were lucky because at least we’ve undergone training. The others who came before us didn’t have any.

The week-long training isn’t really worth the tale. The most interesting experience we’ve had is meeting the people we would work with everyday. The best adjective to describe them is that they are the friendliest bunch you could ever meet in this planet. It’s quite exaggerated you must think but it’s literally true. You can’t pass by the halls without smiling and saying hello to someone you meet. You can’t just come in the office and go straight to your desk without greeting everyone a pleasant day and asking about the night before. You can’t just leave the room without asking everyone else if you could get them something on your way back. It was a nice change from a competitive and sometimes gossip-infected (one I’m guilty of) work environment I have left.

They take life so lightly, these interesting people I have just known and grown fond of in a week’s time. They would start off the mornings with the usual “how was your evening?” and would go on talking about how they spent it lying around the beach to get ‘burned’. Then they would seem to be absorbed in their work for some time and suddenly before you notice it, they’ve started another talking marathon, which is mostly animated and requires a lot of walking around each other’s desks (it gets one to wonder if there’s really any work done). And by 5:30 in the afternoon, everyone is expected to have cleared their tables with the usual “See you tomorrow” or “Have a nice evening” or in case of Nettie and me, it’s just “Bye”.

I’ve gathered so much about their lives in a week than I have of the ex-officemates back home I have worked with for months and years. It shocked me at first to learn that here it’s quite normal to live with your boyfriend and talk about it or be in your late teens and pregnant and unmarried and have no plans to ever do. But you get used to it after awhile and you get amused by the stories they have to share about their domestic lives or their arguments with their boyfriends over smoking cigarettes (“you’re just telling them what’s best for them and they think you’re acting like their mothers). I even received an advice to never get married from someone who claims she is happily so.

Fashion is also very much welcome here. You only have to drop a one pound-coin if ever you want to dress down for work and this goes to charity. Our immediate superior is an ultimate fashionista. She has this crazy collection of shoes of different colors and enormous heels you couldn’t help but be amazed. She also loves wearing this baby doll dresses in which she looks absolutely fabulous in. And sometimes she arrives in the office wearing her hair in braided pigtails, she looks like a grown up doll.

More than that, I did meet my first British office crush on my first day at the office but it was short-lived anyway. He has this huge bright blue eyes and really charming smile it nearly took my breath away (haha). I cut my fantasies short though when I realized that he’s just a guy with a friendly smile and a romantic name. I’m glad I did because today I heard his voice and it was anything but sexy (sort of husky really). Worse, on our way out of the office, I saw him waiting by the gate with a cigarette stick in his hands (an absolutely big no-no. I can take the drinks, not the cigarettes). I smiled at him though, said goodbye and didn’t turn back. And yes, my heart remains yours, my Pinoy ‘Adrian’.

We also made somewhat friends with a guy named Chris who reminds us so much of Mamaw. He chatted with us during training breaks and during our long wait and walk back from the tax office. He’s on his ‘OJT’ which takes about a year and when he’s done, he’ll be going back to his university in England. He’s quite nice, the friendly nice, I mean. By now, I’ve totally lost interest in Englishmen. They could be really friendly but very few of them are gentlemen.

The job itself isn’t boring, contrary to what audit fanatics frightened us when we left our not so missed first work experience. It’s sort of the same as the tasks we usually did back then—preparing financial statements and tracing transactions to their original paper trails. Only this time, with smaller and less complicated clients, so far at least. But if you deal with like eighty accounts in one day, I’m sure you would be challenged.

So yes, I’m not packing up for home. Not yet. Not for the next two years at least.