A Singaporean In Australia

I must be the only person in Perth in charge of a factory without working table, let alone an office. Now I have one, at a little corner of the warehouse that I started off when I joined the company more than a year ago. Back then, the compressor of the air-conditioner above me gave me a torrid time. During Winter, the air around me will a freezing harrow and during Summer, the heat in the air can literally bake my face crisp. These didn't bothered me as much as breathing in recycled air from the guys inside. Yeah, I don't mind wearing hand me downs, driving used cars and living in old houses but I didn't come to Australia to breathe bad air.

Since then, I moved my workstation twice before I finally have a lull period this year to sort out my own stuff at work. So I got one of the boys to help me out putting up the new configuration at that corner. The air output was completely channel away from me due to my new awning, all made from recycled wood that would otherwise be rotting at the back yard before the yearly skip come our way. It's only a fan or air regulator away from perfection. Yeah it's really rough like a redneck's office but I am happy enough with it. Call me one if that qualifies me, doesn't bother me.

To some, it must have felt like being hang out to dry by my employer but to me, it simply meant I am left to my own device. It is better, not worse, if I am not told what to do, where to sit, what table to use, what to tell the workers to do or when to take breaks. I like the simplicity of my job expectations, and that is to make sure things don't fucked up. That means the job covers a limitless spectrum from the most menial, such as ordering toilet paper if you want to know, to the technical details of products and production.

Though it seems unambitious for a man at his career peak to coop up in a near profitless business, the chaotic dynamism of the job intrigues me in a manner no previous jobs managed to. For a half-autistic, half-cancerous schizophrenic, it isn't everyday he finds a job he can tolerate through the daily grind of exchanging time for money. There is always a voice in me to break out, to find out what I am missing out in Perth by joining a 'proper' company doing a 'proper' job I spent years getting qualified for. After all, I have already made such a big step leaving my country, what is changing a job to me? Didn't I spend time counselling my friends in Singapore to find the courage to leave their jobs so that they can put the miseries their respective jobs perpetually inflicts them to rest?

It didn't take much time to dawn on me that this must be the only time I don't want leave my job for another. No I don't want another job, I know exactly what I want. But I am far from ready to rise from my ashes. This can take forever, or perhaps never at all, not every one of us may set out for the rites of passage and remain as ashes at the end. 

You'll see.