So...first day of work came and gone, and I must admit that it was surprisingly breezy and easy-going. Being the anal retentive me, administrative duties such as sorting out documents and filing are right up my alley. I wouldn't say I had fun per se, but time did pass relatively quickly even though all I had my nose in the entire day was a huge stack of documents to sort out according to name and country. Normal people would probably jump out of the first story window in boredom, but I was pretty engrossed in sorting things out. Perhaps it was partly due to some cheap-thrill entertainment that kept me in an upbeat mood. First of all, people's names should never ever sound funny. I don't know about the Koreans, but while sorting out documents for Korea, this name kept bringing a smile to my face of which I had to keep hiding behind pieces of paper and it was all I could do not to set off in great honking peals of laughter in my cubicle [ooo...my cubicle]. I don't mean to be rude, but Song In-Bum?! What kind of a name is that?! Maybe it means something like wisdom in Korean, but it was pretty darn funny, especially to a person who has been buried in a mound of paperwork the entire day. Bound to find humor in anything. It was funny enough seeing that name over and over again, but what took the cake was this letter addressed to him:"Dear In-Bum..."Then there was Auntie Janet, Auntie Rena, and Auntie Jacqueline, all of whom have worked for Dad in the past. Well, I knew Auntie Janet worked at Thomson Learning, but I didn't expect to see the other two. In was pretty funny because Auntie Rena walked past my cubicle, and we looked at each other, with me all ready to smile and wave, but she didn't recognize me, so me not wanting to come off as a total head case, contained myself and continued sorting through the paperwork. After minutes of suppressed excitement at seeing not one, but three familiar faces, I walked over to Auntie Rena's desk and said hi. What ensued can be considered the second funniest thing today. She turned around and stared for awhile until I said I'm Tracy, then in slow motion, her eyes widened and her mouth fell open for like 10 seconds before she said anything. Then she pulled me by the hand excitedly to Auntie Janet's office and said "Look who's here?!". So fly-catcher look again, followed by a few minutes of reminiscence of how they used to carry me when I was a month old, and how they had to bring me to the toilet [well, Dad used to bring me along to the office when I was in Primary School] because I had to do Number 2, and how they would wait outside for me to finish and then clean my butt for me before washing their hands, and how I look so different now because the last time they saw me, I was still so young, etc. Then they said it was better not to let people know that we knew each other because then, they would start watching me very closely. Office politics. But even if I didn't say anything, our mad laughter inside her room would have probably given the game away. Yet it was good to see some friendly faces in an environment that I probably stick out like a sore thumb in. Auntie Rena even said that we could go for lunch one of these days, which to me, meant alot because I basically didn't know anyone else. Minyen said "At least there will be people to look after you", which made me feel like 9 all over again.
Draw for the Duck