On Wednesday I got a call around 2:45 from the HR department at NUS saying that they had received word from the government—the Ministry of Manpower, or MOM—about my employment pass. What I had received is called “in-principle approval”, which means that I could start working but they still needed the results of a medical examination, before they could issue the visa. I wish that the HR department had told me that I would need a medical before, but they didn’t. I don’t know why. So that same day, after I picked up my forms, I went to the University Health Centre for a standard check-up. They told me that my results wouldn’t be ready for a week, so when I got home that night I made an appointment for the following week (Thursday, July 29) to go pick up my actual pass. Then I was thinking that I would start working the next day, but my boss was at a conference and he didn’t get back until Thursday night, so I officially started work on Friday (July 24).
My desk! I've got everything I need--bookshelf to the left, bulletin board to the right, a nice cushy rolly spinny chair (not pictured). I like it very much .
The hallway where I work.
This is the entrance from outside into the hallway where I work. I'm sorry that these pictures aren't more interesting. There's not much I can do when my job consists of sitting and thinking all day.
View from the hallway between my office and the nearest bathroom. I walk past here a lot!
The hallways throughout the whole school are actually outdoors--it's just the classrooms and offices themselves that are inside. (Definitely saves on air conditioning costs!) This is the walkway from my office to the library. My first day of work was great. I got there at 8:30, because that is what I was told was the standard starting time. My boss’s name is K.P. Mohanan. He’s originally from India, but he did his doctoral work in linguistics at MIT and he’s been in Singapore for almost 20 years now. He had told me that he would be there at that time, and he was, but after a while it was clear to me that he didn’t normally come in so early in the morning. I took care of some preliminaries—i.e. getting my office and mailbox key, making sure I could access my computer, that the printer worked, etc., and then I had a chat with my boss about what he was expecting me to do, and then he took me on a short tour of campus, and then dropped me back off at my office and went home.
You see, he doesn’t actually spend very much time in his office—especially now that it’s summer and he isn’t teaching. He has an office at home and he prefers to work from there. The great thing about that is that I can also work from whenever I want. However, I have chosen, so far, to stick to the basic 8-hours-a-day Monday through Friday schedule, just because I know myself and I won’t wouldn’t work as well from my bedroom as in my office. The other nice thing is that he doesn’t keep regular hours, so I don’t have to have regular hours either! That means that I can come in late or leave early if I want, or even work from home the whole day like I did today because of scheduling issues. Basically, he is evaluating me based on the work that I produce, not the number of hours that I spend on it.
The job itself consists of editing and creating material for a web-based course that Prof. Mohanan is designing. I really enjoy it—it’s part research, part teaching, part proofreading, part analytic and critical thinking—in short, all the things I like to do.
Here is a link the the course I'm helping to design--you don't need to log in or anything to access it. The fun part is that you can see a video (several videos, actually) of my boss. He has really awesome professorial hair in the clips of the first chapter, but if you look at a video clip from the later chapters, his hair is much more tamed and he looks a lot closer to what he actually looks like now!
Other perks of my job: for a total of $100, I get 8 months membership in the Staff Club, which gives me two hours of free parking on campus and unlimited use of the full size pool and the private staff gym, all conveniently located about 10 minutes from my office, not to mention discounts on a few restaurants and a hair salon. And, since it doesn’t matter where I’m working, if my plan for the day is reading a couple of books on whatever I’m working on at the time, and I want to read them poolside, I can totally do it and count it as working with the full approval of my boss.
Nice view of the cafeteria. I eat lunch here every day--it's government subsidized so it's really cheap. It's not the best food in Singapore by any means, but it's not bad.
This is the cafeteria in my department: the Arts Canteen, as they call it. It's actually not really inside--it's covered and there are fans, but the side are open. You can see some greenery at the back corner there...
Staff Club upstairs. Pretty swanky.
Treadmills! In the air-conditioning! YAY! Now I don't have to limit my running to the hour and a half where it's not super-gross-hot-and-sunny but not dark yet.
LOTS of weight stuff. I haven't used any of it yet, but it's nice to know that I have the option!I’ve been working for about a week now, and I share my office with two other women, Post-Doctoral fellows. Rivka is from Seattle and she’s really cool but she’s leaving in a week to go to Denmark. J for her, L for me. The other woman is names Adeline and she’s from Singapore. She’ll be her through next semester. I just met her once, but she seems really nice.
Rivka, from Seattle. I'm sad she's leaving soon ;( But she's been really helpful as I've gotten settled, giving me tips for things to ask about apartments and health insurance, giving me her maps that she doesn't need anymore, etc. 
My officemate Adeline from Singapore--I asked her for an action shot ;) This was the first time I had met her, so I think she thought I was super weird.Thursday morning was my appointment to go downtown to get my actual work permit. Or so I thought. I took the subway downtown and I knew that the building was just a few minutes walk away, but I exited the subway out of the wrong door and ended up at the wrong Ministry building! Yes, there are two within 10 minutes walk or each other. Thankfully, neither way busy, so after I went through the first one, they were really nice about it and just told me where to go and got me through quickly. Unfortunately, I found out that what I was really there to do was hand in a photo and take fingerprints, and I have to go back one more time next week to actually pick up the visa and card.
Friday I had planned to talk to my parents in the morning, and then Dan was going to get back relatively early that night, and if I had had to take the bus 90 minutes there and 90 minutes back (that’s how long it takes from Dan’s house) then I wouldn’t have been able to work for a full 8 hours. So I just worked from home! Ahh. Wonderful.
Funny story—today I went to the staff gym, which is right next to the pool. First thing I noticed—there was a very high percentage of whiteys (or “ang mo” as they call Caucasians here, it literally means “red hair”) at the gym and the pool (it was about 5:00 PM). Second thing I noticed—there were about 10 people tanning, and they were ALL whiteys, and all the Asian people were either in the pool or in the shade. I thought it was pretty hilarious.
Also, this week Dan is doing his war simulation in the jungle—five nights and six days in the heat, with the bugs, digging trenches and lugging all their stuff around and doing battle drills and such all day. It’s very unpleasant and stressful—if you could keep him in your prayers that would be wonderful.
This post is already too long, so I will save talking about my NEW APARTMENT for my next post, which will hopefully be up by the end of this week if I get my blogging act together.
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