first day of work and a little something from the past...

first day of work today... feeling a little nervous, afterall its my first official banking job, being a customer service officer, with no background or past experience, previous jobs with DBS not withstanding, the job scope is different... this is frontline job, firsthand contact with the bank's customers, moreover, i am a representative of the AmEx, one of the biggest and most famous credit card and banks in the world. Peggy, Christina and Irene were kind to me and Dorothy... taking care not to overload us with too much information and too many job scope in the first day. They were friendly and helpful as well... patient and warm... luckily, we manage to perform admirably, raking in 50 or so signups for the new atm cards. something which i can feel that they are quite happy over. In the end, Dorothy and me got introduced to Corrine, according to Peggy, she was the one who decided to employ us, must be the HR manager or something. She was real friendly too... from the corner of our eyes, we spotted a plaque which says "Outstanding Achiever" which stood proudly on her table... fantastic eh... Dorothy is going to be my partner for the month to come, surprisingly, she is church friend of Charlotte, and they go to some church in Yishun together... hmmm... it was a good day at work today nonetheless, hopefully can impress them enough that they wun mind us coming back to work when we grad, seems like a fantastic environment to work in too...

When i got home, watching the news where fruit bats are found in HDB estate, mummy suddenly relate her past to me. she was saying that my fourth aunt used to eat a lot of bats cos she at asthma in the past. Grandma was the one who bought it for her... talk about exotic food... she was saying that last time, she and her sisters were like rivals, very naughty and mischevious and they would fight each other and gang up on each other too... the tender age that they had to go out to work, setting up roadside stalls to sell potatoes, sweet potatoes, having to go pick up scraps from the discards of the rich caucasians in the past. how dirty they were when they had to toil to get food to feed the ducks, chickens, pigs... how they played and acted as wayang shows with strings attached to ceilings and pretending to fly... how fierce grandma was in the past where everyone got tied up to the ceiling and caned till they had blue black or they bleed. How grandpa was the saviour, when they had to go hide from grandma in the plantation. how pathetic it was to have 10 cents for pocket money for an entire week, that they had to resort to stealing grandma's bottles to sell... how their neighbour Ah Cai used to bring them out to movies, feeling proud that he has a following of 7 sisters... how poor they were that 2nd aunt was given away to other people to raised up, how they played and had fun in the dirty pools... as she went on... i could see the tears well up in her eyes... those memories, meant a lot to her... it was something which she never shared before...

the good life that we have now.... and we dont appreciate it... sigh...