Journal of James's Journey with Jesus

This entry will be an update on my life's interesting happenings, though the events I will be mentioning happen as far back as November 2006. I had no time to write as I have been busy.

1. INTERNSHIP

I was an intern at an advertising company from Nov 06 to Feb 06 with one classmate and one schoolmate. Both were female and initially another girl was supposed to come here. That girl I replaced happened to be Nissi 1's Jason's elder sister, Serene, who is in our church now.

But I was transferred here after the company asked for a male intern because the project I was handling would be about a masculine product. The lecturers actually approached me first instead of anyone else. So there were big bursts of laughter in my class and school because I was not exactly the figurehead for masculinity.

I learnt from my fellow schoolmate intern that she and her classmates thought I was a weird dude after seeing the red Hello Kitty hanging out of my trousers pocket in Year 1. But she said her opinions of me changed for the better after 3 months of working and lunching together. This girl happened to be Xuan Wen and Bei Ru's secondary school classmate too.

It was real exciting to be employed, even at low rates, and having my own table, company email address and computer.

For once, you are being treated seriously as an adult who is capable of doing work. And when you're wearing formal clothes everyday, you do feel like a professional who's been working in the industry for ages.

We did mature into adults pretty quickly because that was what was expected for us. We had to immerse ourselves in learning from our supervisors and doing whatever assignment was given to us. There were to be no excuses, regardless of the difficulty or time constraint we were facing.

I also saw the stark contrast between the ideas students had and the ones our supervisors had. It was a pretty enriching experience as I did things I've never done before; like following and photographing our client's mascot as proof of what we did to promote his product.

And if we are able to get shots of our mascot with famous people(celebrities or government officials), our client would be even more happy.

All in all, the internship was an enjoyable, though stressful, experience. It was the first time I took taxi rides worth hundreds of dollars each month, at the company's expense, as I scuttled to and fro to run the errands they had for me.

2. WORKING FOR MY DAD

After the internship, I slacked for 3 weeks or so before working for my dad on the rooftops. I really had to detox from the stress of working life. It was pretty cool as I got to climb up great heights, and then down again.

This is footage of me standing high on scaffolding. It's real scary as it's not superbly steady and accidents can still very likely happen. But it's real amazing to see 6 workers erect something so high and wide in a few hours.

If we were not replacing tiles on rooftops, we would be involved in paint jobs. Or the weirdest jobs, like removing all the plants that had grown over someone's backyard walls. It was the most tiring thing I ever had to go through.

This is one whole piece of plants which was lining the backyard walls. We had to yank, saw and hack it out with much difficulty.

After that, we used rafia string to bundle them altogether.

And then pile them up on top of each other. After that, we will throw it out in the garbage.

3. THE ACCIDENT

Xin Long was driving a bunch of us(Pei Jun, Wee Huat, Kenni and me) home as we went to fetch Kenni from the airport. He had just returned from military training in Taiwan. We were moving along the Jurong Industrial area when Xin Long's car tire hit a brick in the middle of the road. Our bodies flew into the air for a few milliseconds. It felt like we moved over a hump at high speed.

Isn't it an insanely big piece of brick? And I wonder what it was doing in the middle lane of an extremely busy expressway. Who left it there?

Look at what it did to Xin Long's tire.

So Xin Long changed his tire in an impeccably short time of 30 minutes. And it was his first time too. All in all, I was glad that we were not hurt and the car suffered little loss.

I also learnt something about apathy. Apathy occurs when something that affects others does not affect you. Had we not been affected by this brick, we would not have bothered removing it from the middle lane.

3. SERVING MY COUNTRY

I am finally enlisting into the army on the 13th of July, which happens to be tomorrow. I would have been pretty nervous but I was assured by other church members who have gone in before me that I would be given time to adapt.

I took this picture on the bridge linking to Beauty World during last year's National Day celebrations. It almost makes me feel patriotic and ready to jump into my camouflaged uniform, save for the bald head.

(Taken from Reader's Digest)

I just want to thank my polytechnic group mates for having dinner with me and dessert on me. The picture shows me, Becky, Mei Hui, Jesslin and my best school friend Aizat posing at Marina Square's Subway, the venue where we used to hold our group meetings.