Leaving your mark. And finally getting a permanent job!!
I’m Famous! haha. ok not really. But it does feel sorta nice to have left a mark somewhere on the net I guess. Other than all that useless junk I’ve made and uploaded on the web over the past few years. And yeah, Jeffrey Bardzell is a really cool guy.
I started work today. At the Maldives Government Trade Centre here in Singapore. Didn’t get much exposure to the work as yet. I’m just tagging along with one my colleagues learning the ropes for the moment. I’m not really used to an office environment though I can say the job doesn’t keep you stuck in the office all day, day in and day out. You’re always on the move.
I guess I’ll just give you a short description of the job. As far as I know it has no real title. You could call it Public Relations? or as an Agent? Anyway, this is it:
We have to take care of Maldivians who come to Singapore for medical treatment. That is, go to the airport and fetch them, arrange for accomodation, book appointments at the hospitals/clinics and accompany them there, make travel arrangements, sometimes translate, send them off during departure, etc. Lots of interacting with Maldivians. Which I’ve been avoiding all my life. Honestly, I hate being Maldivian. It’s given me nothing but trouble. Sometimes I wish was born a Singaporean.
The problem I have is that I have to learn to speak Dhivehi, that is the Maldivian national language. And I really can’t. I don’t think I can even pick up Dhivehi because I really have no idea how to speak it. I can understand it fine, simple Dhivehi. But can’t speak. People say that since I understand, I should be able to speak. But I just don’t have any idea about the grammar and sentence structure. I won’t think of the sentence in Dhivehi, I think in English and then translate it one word at a time, and so the sentence structure is lost. It’s really tough. I actually find it easier to speak malay. Maybe coz I had a ‘formal education’ and know the basics of grammar and sentence structure for it. Sometimes when I try to translate a word into Dhivehi, I think of the malay word for it.
But my colleague’s been really nice and says that perhaps they will try to arrange it such that I will take care of those who can speak English. And my boss is a really nice guy.
I’m not happy. But I’m gonna stick with it. I need to get my Permanent Residence status. I’ll do the job, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And if anybody says otherwise, they can just shove it.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2004 at 7:14:04 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
