Unemployed No More

Today I got a job. Well, actually I got two.

I woke up early and got ready for my day and my aptitude test. I was wearing the same thing as when I had my interview because I didn't want to risk picking out something new because I have no fashion sense and it's just pure luck I got a nice combination of clothes last time. This time I brought a pen and I remembered the documents I needed, so I was feeling very prepared.

The car was empty, so I stopped by a petrol station to put five ringgits' worth of petrol in it and drove over to the office. I arrived a wee bit early, so I read a few pages of The World Is Flat before going up for my aptitude test.

I was let in to the second floor and told to wait. I met two other applicants, Victor and Sean. We talked about college and stuff for a while. I also noticed that the nice paintings in the lobby are actually the same scene with different colours so it looks like Summer, Spring, Autumn, and Winter. That discovery made them that much nicer.

Jack came in and told us that there was something new that had just come up. There was some part-time work with HP Customer Support that had just come up, so if we wanted to we were welcome to take that on as well. It would be from 8am-12am from Mondays to Wednesdays and the pay would be RM12 per hour. It wasn't for long, though, the job would be finished at the end of October.

We met with two guys in charge of the HP thing. One guy was called Dave and I think the other guy was called Sukarno. We were briefed on what our job would be and why we would be needed. Basically, people with HP desktop computers would be calling us about their computer problems, and if they had a warranty we'd process their information and then send their call to the appropriate department so that they could get their stuff fixed. If they didn't have a warranty, it would be our job to sell one to them. If they needed new computer parts, we'd have to try and sell those, too. Also we learned that the payroll department had recently decided to do the pay on a monthly basis instead of a weekly one, so we'd be getting our money in one big lump at the end of the month.

After the brief, we were sent on our way to the third floor for our aptitude test. We were told that the test was going to be handled by Ms Cali and that she would meet us in around five minutes. While we waited, I talked to the guys about how my typing speed was so fast, which led to a discussion on RuneScape. As a side note to anyone who cares (which is nobody except me in the future, looking through this post to try and recall what this day was like and feeling immense shame every time another I spot another error), I made a little over a million gp recently by buying up yews when they were bottoming out and selling them right at the peak of the bonus XP weekend. Boom, 20% profit, which is brilliant. Anyway, after I was done with my rather long and very nerdy speech, we started talking about what we which jobs we'd be doing. Victor still hadn't sorted out his schedule for college, so he wasn't sure if he could get either job. Sean had classes from one to five, so Roy Morgan was probably out of the question.

By then it had been a while and there was still no sign of Ms Cali and we started to consider the idea that maybe the test had already started and they were trying to see who would take initiative to go look for her. I volunteered to do it, but right after I went outside I saw a lady walking over to the room we were in, so I rushed back over.

Ms Cali asked us what we knew about the job we would be doing, so I told her what I had learned from the websites. She said that I was exactly right, so we got to skip a bit of introduction there. We were briefed about the aptitude test. We were told what it was for and what it would involve. After that she went out to set up the test and once again, we waited. I think I may have talked about gambling.

When everything was ready, Ms Cali came in to get the first applicant, which was me. The test involved reading out questions and filling in Ms Cali's answers. It was very straightforward. After it was over, she asked me how I thought I did. The first thing that came into my head was "7/10", but I couldn't figure out how to put that in words, so I just said "slightly better than average". She told me that my pace was too quick, which was a problem because New Zealanders are laid-back people who take life slow and talk slow, too. Also, I used words like "er" and "um" quite a bit, and I had a lot of dead air when I was filling in the responses. Overall, though, she said I did very well.

I waited outside in the lobby. There was a magazine on outsourcing on a table, so I read a bit of that. It was quite interesting. There was an article at the end about how 20% of Britons thought that Steve Jobs was a footballer, so that was interesting. After a while Sean came out and told me how he did. Apparently he got quite nervous and ended up with a lot of dead air. His pace was perfect, though, and he didn't have any difficulties with "er"s or "um"s, so he did better than me. We talked about 3D films for a long while after that. He had watched Avatar in 2D, and I was trying to convince him that it was worth a watch in 3D. When Victor was done, him and Sean went downstairs to wait for Jack. Meanwhile, I had to go back to get the photocopies of my IC and transcript that I had accidentally left behind.

I went downstairs and waited around for Jack to tell us what to do next. I continued my conversation with Sean by telling him about how post-production 3D was different than proper 3D and how it was the next big cinematic step and such. He was either genuinely listening to what I was saying or very polite and extremely good at feigning interest.

Jack showed up and told us that the HP training would start tomorrow, so he needed to know if that was okay with us. I told him that that was fine with me, Sean said that he had a presentation tomorrow for college that was quite important, and Victor told Jack that he needed time to sort out his schedule. After a discussion, Victor left. Jack said that there were no hard feelings, but he couldn't afford the time for Victor to sort everything out so Datacom would just bring in someone else since there were other applicants that Jack with going to meet with later on in the day.

Kuberan stopped by while Sean and I were waiting for the HP interview to begin. He told us about how he and Arun and Elo and the others had applied and how he had chosen to work with HP SEA (Sean and I would be doing HP ANZ) instead of Roy Morgan because there was this guy in Roy Morgan who he instantly hated. He said he's glad he got the HP job because he is literally being paid to sit around wasting time for most of the day. He only has to work when the calls come in, and the calls don't come in often, so he spends a lot of time watching stuff on YouTube. I think he's finished, like, five seasons of The Amazing Race or something. He also told us that the reason HP SEA was hiring us was because they had just recently decided to end the thing by October, so once everyone was notified they all started looking for new jobs and whenever they got a position they just left, so there were a lot less people to deal with the calls and that's why we were needed to fill some of the newly vacated spots.

So Sean and I went for the interview for the HP position. Once again we were in an interview room with Sukarno and Dave. Dave interviewed Sean and Sukarno interviewed me. The questions started off pretty normal, but they got unusual fast. They were also sneaky. There was on question that seemed like it was about what we'd do if we were asked about something we had no knowledge on, and it was actually a test for our listening skills since if we had paid attention during our first brief we would have known there was something wrong with the question. Sean did better in the interview than I did, but I felt pretty sure that I was going to get the job because of what Kuberan had said. Dave and Sukarno told us to wait outside while they discussed some stuff.

Sean and I waited in the comfy chairs near the nice paintings for a while and talked about stuff. After a short while Dave and Sukarno left the meeting room to hand in the forms they had filled out during the interview to Jack. When they passed us they joked that we had better settle how we were going to distinguish between ourselves or else they'd just hire one of us and not have to worry about having two people with the same name working for them. Unfortunately our names are spelled differently so the joke is impossible to write in text. Oh well.

Jack came out and told us that we had both passed. He collected the photocopies of my transcript and my IC and said that he would call us to let us know about the training, since it might start tomorrow or might be delayed to Wednesday, depending on whether he got enough people in the meanwhile. He told us that if we had any friends who needed jobs, we could ask them if they wanted to work at Datacom. I tried calling a bunch of people but the either weren't picking up or they already had jobs or they were going to start college midway through October so it wouldn't work. Anyway after that Jack said we could leave, so we did.

When I got back home I told everyone how my interview had gone, and my parents were pleased. Hannah started thinking up ways that I could spend my money. Most of her ideas involved paying for her stuff.

I called Clement to ask if he had any friends that needed jobs, and he said he did. I told them to call me if they were interested. I also called Jared and told him about the job.

After that I watched the first part of the Christmas Special for The Office, and then I took a nap. I woke up to a miscall, and then a few seconds later I got a call from Jack telling me about the HP Training. He told me which day it would start and what time it would be and who would be in charge and what their phone number was, and I wrote all of it down except the day. Right after the call was over I forgot what day the training was going to be. Fortunately Aunty Rosie was in the room when I answered the phone and she heard me say "the day after tomorrow", so I think it's Wednesday. It's from 7:45am (Well, technically 8:00am, but I'm to report at 7:45) to 5pm, and I'll be getting paid for it, which is good. The training will last for five days, I think, and then the Roy Morgan training is for three days from the 15th to the 17th.

After that I got a call from Jan. He was at the YMCA since his Advanced NCO Training thing had just finished, so I had to go pick him up. He told me stories from camp. Apparently they were staying at an NS barracks and they watched The Dark Knight as one of their lessons and also there was a gay guy named Leslie Gan and when Jan got home he told Hannah and me about how he accidentally "caressed" (that is the word he chose to use) some guy's junk while he was doing star jumps. I'm glad I'm not in BB any more.

Dinner was very delicious. Auntie Rosie made fish and chips, and the fish was very very very tasty because of some special marinade and nice breading. I got a call from one of Clement's friends during dinner and I told him how to get to the interview the next morning. After that I called Jared to ask if he was going, but he couldn't make it. Oh well.

I finished The Office by watching the second half of the Christmas Special and I was glad to see that it had a happy ending. Yes Hannah, I cried a little bit. Well, I didn't actually cry; not with noises or wails or sniffles or anything. I just felt a couple of tears welling up, all right?

Anyway hopefully the training starts Wednesday and not Tuesday or else I'm screwed.

My First Interview and Two Half Days

So the second half of Tuesday was quite okay. I hung out in Hannah's room for a while, and something weird was going on. Hannah was being nice to me. I wanted to see what would make her tell me to leave her room, so I asked her to do or let me do increasingly bizarre things. She even let me touch her laptop (she usually hates it when people touch her laptop). Also at one point I told her that I thought it was impossible to wear underclothes over normal clothes, but she proved me wrong and looked ridiculous while doing so. I should have taken a picture for blackmail, since she has a video of me dancing that is absolutely cringe-worthy. Anyway I stayed in her room until she had finished cleaning it up and it looked nice and tidy, then I left.

I had planned to go to bed early, but I ended up playing RuneScape and reading Cracked until a little after midnight, so I was only in bed by 12:45. Oh well.

The next day was Wednesday. I woke up to the sound of my alarm at 7:45am. I did my daily Bible reading and climbed the stairs. I still felt a bit sleepy, so I set my alarm for 8:40am and got ready for another quick nap. Before I did that, though, I read the newspaper and realized that Tuesday had been Merdeka Day. I hadn't realized. Oh well. Happy belated 53rd to Malaysia, I guess.

The nap was very brief but very, very helpful. When my alarm woke me up, I took a shower and freshened up by shaving and deodorizing teeth-brushing and such, and then I changed into some professional-looking clothes and I was ready to go. I grabbed my phone and my wallet and my transcript and my resume which I had printed the day before, and then I borrowed Ian's keys, put my stuff down to tie my shoes, and left.

It was only 9:15am so I had plenty of time before I was supposed to arrive at 10am. I decided to stop by a petrol station to get some petrol and mints for Ian's car. A little after making that decision I realized that I had left my résumé and transcript on the coffee table at home, so I had to turn around and get those.

By skipping the stop for fuel and mints, I managed to arrive at 1 Tech Park just a couple of minutes after 10am. I went to the second floor for the interview, but I found that access required a key card. I went upstairs to the third floor and I was told to sign in and go back downstairs and knock.

So I went back to the second floor and knocked. Sure enough, someone showed up to open the door for me. I asked if Jack was in, and I was told that he was. I introduced myself to him and told him I was there for the interview, so he showed me in to the interview room.

He asked me some questions and I tried to answer them. I didn't do too well, but fortunately for me Jack is a cool guy, so he told me what I had done wrong and how to interview better next time. He told me to avoid speaking too casually, he told me that I should go for a part-time position (I hadn't realized that there were differences aside from work hours between full-time and part-time), and he told me that I should always, always have a pen.

After that, he gave me a quick brief on what I would be doing if I got the job. The company I'd be working for is called Datacom. Basically, Datacom provides IT solutions. To quote their company mission, they are "Passionate people providing creative quality solutions." Recently, they'd also started running call centres (or contact centres, to quote their site). These call centres do work outsourced from other companies. The one I'd be working in would be doing work for Roy Morgan, which is this big research company. My job would be to make calls to New Zealand and ask random people to take a forty-question survey.

Once the brief was done, I was handed a bunch of forms to fill in. There was stuff about my education background and personal details and such like that, and there was also a place to fill in my answers to an English test which I was also given.

While I was filling the stuff in, someone else was being interviewed. He was even less prepared than me, though, so that made me feel a bit better. After a while, Jack left, which was unfortunate because I had a few questions about some of the stuff that I needed to fill in, and I didn't know who to ask.

I decided to fill in what I could and then take the test. The test was easy for three reasons. Firstly, relative to most applicants, my English is really good. That's probably due to all the books and articles on the internet I read, and also due to it being practically the only language I speak. Anyway, the second reason is that the test is relatively pretty easy, too. I'm pretty sure that my first semester English quizzes were more difficult. The final reason that the test didn't worry me was because despite clear instructions not to, someone had written their answers on the test paper. I know I could have passed even without the answers, though. Besides, the person who had written on the test kinda sucked at English (not surprising considering they failed to comprehend the basic instructions), so they got a few answers wrong. But yeah, unless I made a careless mistake somewhere, I'm pretty sure I got everything right.

After that I had a bit of a struggle coming up with who to use as a reference. I remembered working in a store that belonged to the son of the reverend at my church, but that was a long while ago. I gave the reverend a call, and he gave me his son's number. However, he failed to tell me his son, Eusoffe, was in Cambodia. After what was probably a very expensive phone call, I managed to get the number of the store and the guy who was currently running the store, Arthur. I called the store but nobody remembered me, which I had anticipate, so I called Arthur and was pleasantly surprised to find out that he still remembered me. He told me that he was currently driving and would call me when he reached his destination.

While I was waiting for Arthur to call me back, the lady who helped me out from my last visit (Shamini? I'm gonna go with Shamini for now and when I know for sure I might come back and fix these posts) passed by. She came in and answered my questions about the forms and helped me fill almost in everything that I was unsure of. She told me that since I was a student, I could use a lecturer as my reference instead of a previous boss. I thanked her for her help as she left, and then I called Mr Joel to ask if he was okay with me citing him as a reference. He was, so I had everything I needed to fill out the forms, or at least enough to show them to Jack.

I brought them to Jack and told him that I had filled in everything except the bit for previous and expected salary. He told me not to worry about it, so I didn't. He then told me that I'd have to take a typing test.

The test was pretty simple. Applicants would have two minutes to type out as much of a given text as they could, and then their speed, in words per minute (WPM), would be calculated. The goal was to get at least 30 WPM. Jack told me to take as many tries as I needed and to call him when I got at least 30 WPM. Elo had posted in her blog that when she went to interview, the standard was 25 WPM and Arun (and maybe Milan, too) had to have multiple tries before he finally got the required speed. I got 70 WPM and 100% accuracy on my second try. I would have passed on my first try, too, but I made some mistakes half a minute in which would have landed me with 62 WPM or something, so I just cancelled and started over. Anyway I guess that's why those guys have girlfriends and all I've got is a blog.

I went to tell Jack, but he was busy, so I went back into the room. I considered retaking the test and trying to beat my score, but I decided against it since 70 is a nice number and I didn't want Jack walking in while I was in the middle of a test. Instead, I texted Arthur and told him that I had already found a reference, but thanks anyway. He had tried to call me ten minutes earlier, but I hadn't noticed because my phone was on silent mode because my ringtone is not very professional at all. It's a mash-up of California Gurls and Tik Tok with the timing altered so the song has a swing beat. So... Yeah.

After a while, Jack came in to check my score. He asked me why it was so fast. I think he may have thought that I had cheated or that there was some kind of computer error. Anyway, I just told him that it was because I got a lot of practice.

Jack told me that everything seemed good so far, so they would be calling me back for an aptitude test. I asked him what that was and he told me that it was basically another interview, but with other applicants and role-playing and stuff to see how well we'd react in the type of situations we were likely to face. He said that since there were almost enough applicants, it might be possible to have the aptitude test right that day, so I had a seat while he went to check.

It was a comfy seat, and the room it was in was nice. I wish more of my waits were in places that nice and comfy. I didn't mind that wait at all.

Jack returned with my transcript and told me that the aptitude test couldn't be held that day, but he would call me and tell me when it was. He told me to bring a photocopy of my transcript and my IC next time. I thanked him for the interview and left. The whole thing had taken around an hour and half.

As I was pulling out of the parking spot, I got a call from a withheld number. It was Jack, and he was calling to tell me that the aptitude test would be on Monday and they expected me at 10:15am.

I drove over to Pusat Bandar Damansara to get my stuff photocopied at WN and also to get a tasty lunch. Along the way I texted Elo to thank her for her help getting me the job. When I reached PBD, the traffic was terrible and there was nowhere to park, legal or otherwise. I gave Jan a call and asked him if he wanted to join me for Subway. He did, so I told him to be downstairs in ten minutes.

After collecting Jan, I told him the plan: we'd find somewhere illegal to park, then he would wait in the car while I got my transcript and IC photocopied, then he'd order Subway which we could eat in the car. There were no parking spaces to be found, though, so we ended up parking at HELP and walking to where we needed to be. Before we left the car park I realized I had left my transcript in the car, so I went back for it for the second time that day.

As we were walking through HELP, I met Tanuj. He had been in Calculus with me during my first semester. I asked him how he was and what he was doing. He told me he was working on the second year of his psychology degree. I told him that I had just finished an interview. We wished each other well and went about our day.

I took Jan through HELP's corridor and told him stuff about the college. He told me he couldn't wait to go to college himself. He also told me he thought that people were looking at him because he was so unusually handsome. He's quite vain, but judging from his recent success with girls, he probably had the right to be.

Anyway, we went to WN and I got my stuff photocopied. I also bought a pen, since you should never be without a pen in the professional world.

After WN we went to Subway and I had probably my best sandwich ever. It had plenty of meat, its bread was liberally doused in olive oil before toasting so it ended up being golden-brown and crunchy, it had so many onions and enough olives to be delicious, and the black pepper went on the meat and not the vegetables (you would be surprised how many times I've had people put pepper on my vegetables). Its only flaw was that it wasn't a footlong. I guess I'll save that for when I pass the aptitude test.

When I had finished eating my sandwich, I glanced over at my photocopied IC and remembered that my new IC should be done by now. I checked my wallet for the receipt that I had gotten from the JPN, but I got distracted by the fact that my IC was missing. I realized I must've left it at WN, so Jan and I went over to get it back. Fortunately it was in the care of the lady there and not her perpetually-grumpy partner, so we were okay.

When we were walking back into HELP I noticed that the entrance to the level that lay between HELP and the street was open. Jan and I went in to explore. It was a long corridor of abandoned shops that had been closed for a long while. It was dim and creepy but at least it explained where all of the college's cockroaches and the occasional rat came from. I had thought we could exit from the fire door at the other end, but all the exits were locked and barricaded. I wondered whether it was because they were trying to keep something out or keep something in and which would be scarier, but then I realized that we don't live in a horror movie so I stopped caring.

We left the way we came in and walked back into college. The first person we saw when we got back down was Nadiah. She had gone with Effie and me to MTV World Stage last year. I had driven her back home afterwards, actually. Anyway, we said hi and asked each other what we were doing with our lives. She was taking a break for a while. She asked if Jan was my brother, and I said yes, and she said that he was so cute. And also small. Jan was haunted by those comments for the rest of the day, trying to figure out what they meant.

I also met Sam from my Physics classes. He was playing Fallout 3 with all sorts of mods and add-ons. He told me that he was currently doing his degree in Psychology, but in-game he had just started an evil character and was killing raiders in the metro. Nearby, Shaun Joel was playing Just Cause 2. I felt like watching that game, but I don't know the guy well enough to justify watching his laptop instead of Sam's. Besides, his name freaked Jan out.

As I left I was greeted by someone I recognized. He was one of the more well-known guys of the January intake, and he may or may not have won best dressed at the annual ball. He also knew my name. I didn't know his, though, so I just said hey and walked away with Jan.

I drove back and went on my computer for a bit, then I hung out in Hannah's room as I read through all my Bahasa Kebangsaan material. I then decided that I wanted to sleep early, so I told Hannah I wouldn't be making a blog post that day.

I went to my room and watched a program on the History Channel about the Al-Ma'unah arms heist. I did my exercises during the commercial breaks. It was a pretty damn interesting documentary and I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it earlier, especially since it happened in Malaysia only ten years ago.

Anyway, after that I took a shower and I was in bed by 10:45. I woke up almost twelve hours later and I haven't really done anything all day except write this blog post. I'm supposed to do my hardcore studying of Bahasa Kebangsaan today since my final exam is on Saturday, so I guess I'll do that sometime after this.