Australia Panic

Work work and work..

My first pay day was a disaster. I didn’t expect that I was paid so high. $530 a month was definitely not enough especially for a still growing person like me. Before I started work, I actually had spent about $200+ to buy some working clothes, tie and working pants. When I started work, my traveling expenses had increased to $20 per week, and on average I spend around $50 on food on weekday each week. This added up to about $300 per month excluding weekend’s expenses.

At first, I was thinking on treating my friends for dinner and go on a small shopping spree after I get my pay. However, after I looked at my bank account, I quickly disposed of the idea and change my focus on how must I save money to survive for the month. In fact, my mom actually had occasionally given me some pocket money to spend and prevent me from saving money on food.

I always had thought working was easy. You go for work, you get paid and need not worry about such things like exams. However, after working for the 5th week, I thought wrong. Everyday, I no longer am able to stay up late to play my games and chat with friends, I have to wake up early in the morning, dress up formally and go to work like what those nerds had do for years. I lost a lot of free time during work, the only time when I am free is during lunchtime, dinner and after. During work, there is always a certain level of pressure and commitment that I have to maintain. A guy comes and dumps you with a pile of files, you have to do it even if you don’t know how to do. Worse of all, overtime was never charged because it requires approval, and it doesn’t reflects good on myself too.

At times like this, I do really fear. I afraid that I may lose my friends; I fear I do not have the time to spend with them. I fear I do not have the time to stone and do the things I like. Thanks to work, I have recently spent more time going out despite my busy schedule. My timetable was almost packed each day and for the past few weeks and I only manage to get a whole day of rest just last Sunday. From now on, I will be busy in preparation for the deferred paper back in Perth which is on the 1st of Feb.

To be honest, this internship had given me valuable experience on what to expect in future. Not only I get a feel on what it is like to work full time in a competitive environment, I also find myself friendlier to anyone. Regarding this, I must thank Eric. One of the colleagues that I had worked with, during the intern he had showed me something that I should learn on. I will talk about this funny guy in the next or next next entries.

And of course regarding food, I thought I will go LPS (lao pat sat) to eat everyday when my work start. LPS is the last place you want to go during lunchtime. It is crowded, the queue was long, there is no air-con and before that, you need to be able to get a table first. Normally, I will like to go Chinasquare, Banquet, or maybe Caltex House for lunch. Indeed, after 5 weeks, I am pretty sick of the food here. Oh just a reminder, if you need to book a table, put something like a tissue paper on top. People at CBD will know what it means.

posted by Gabriel Chan @ 1:22 PM