I am thankful that I now have a full time job, but that only adds to the incentive to spend freely. Haix. I need more self-control. Having a job is good, but it doesn’t mean the job is good. In my 3.5 day(and still counting) stint as a school lab tech, I covered many duties. A typical day would be as follows:
-Report to the sci lab by 7.30am or risk getting a pay cut (means eating breakfast with my eyes closed)
-Temperature taking (oopss…the HOD found out today that I had been reporting my temperature with an invisible thermometer, this is what you call goddess power)
-Check if all the projector, mike and apparatus are ready for the first lesson (triple check again if I know that the teacher has a monstrous temper, especially one that eats students)
-Help the lab auntie to clean up (I cant help but complain that the labs pose as both a safety as well as a health hazard. The place is lined with a layer of dust and is infested with termites! Three cheers to my faithful 6-legged friends.)
-Help water the plants, sprinkle them some love using a fire hose---a must-have gardening tool! Gets the job done within minutes!
-Treat the birdies to rice grains (Their version of breakfast cereal? Rice crispies? I question its purpose, but it seems to be part of the daily ritual probably to invite them to chirp along with the school song?)
-Sit down and pant a little
-Start playing hide-and-seek with the equipment used in subsequent experiments
-Attend to teachers’ last minute requests and bracing myself for their black faces
-Test out experiments (spend 5% of the time recalling the proper experimental procedures and possible results, 50% of the time asking. The remaining 45% goes to feeling apologetic for not being able to remember)
-Label, pack stuff and sneeze away
-Lastly, I discovered that chatting with the aunties is also part of my job…listen to what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday, the day before yesterday and 3 days ago. Ah yes gossip. One of them is particularly fond of speaking ill of other lab staff, supervisor and teachers, but it’s interesting to watch the drama unfold when other staff verbally attack each other behind their backs while the supervisor complains about practically all the lab staff. When it comes to a point when we sit together for lunch, they’ll turn their attention to canteen staff etc. The never-ending gossip actually provides welcomed relief from all the monotony.
-Basically it’s a typical sai-kang job. I think its job prospects are boundless. An area worth pursuing if you don’t like to have your butt stuck to the chair for the whole day!
