Definitely one thing that I have always anticipated and turned out to be true is the "no life" aspect of work life. Back at home at 8 plus and before you know it, it's already 11 and time for bed. Though recently have been extending that a bit to 12 considering that I am staying a lot nearer to office than I used to. Point is, there isn't much that you can do within those few hours. Strangely, considering that these days there isn't things like homework or assignments to work on. Mostly brain-fried after work that you only do things that don't require brain power...blogging wasn't one of them, though. Weekends used for catching up on sleep...though since I moved to Toa Payoh I have not spent a day of a weekend in my room for various reasons.

Back to the work - not sure if its appropriate to post it here considering my blog wasn't really as private as I thought - google my name and you can find a link to my blog - seriously that one should be shut down lor. Anyway, time flies (yea cliche) partly because of the never ending nature of my work...feedback will continue to come, submissions and consultations will continue to come in unless development have stalled in your area. 

Think I am managing the submissions and consultations portion quite well now, think it really takes experience and familiarity of the area. With experience you know what to look out for when evaluating, you reply emails a little bit faster too. One year experience isn't really a lot actually and I still find myself learning new things every now and then but it does help already. 

Though the feedback portion of the job is still getting on my nerves every time some unreasonable person turns up with their so called expert opinion and demands. Still get emotionally affected by the really bad ones and these are the only things that are preventing me from saying "I enjoy my work". Think it will take a lot longer for me to really desensitize and filter out such negativities. No amount of training is going to help I think, just time to numb all these. 

People have always been complaining about the workload in my department and the higher management, they cite it as one of the reasons of the high turnover rate. Which is kind of true in a way as people getting the same amount of pay in other departments are doing a lot less. People getting more in other stat boards don't even have to be as customer oriented as us. Honestly that is one thing I still can't fathom...why on earth do we have to be so customer oriented and succumb to unreasonable demands sometimes. Calling ourselves an "Authority" is so so ironic to me. It boils down to the direction adopted by the highest management and I don't suppose we have the power to go against it. Back to the workload of our department, the older birds were blaming it on the management for not being able to stand up for our "rights". Shan't comment much on that...

Relationships with fellow colleagues - they are still colleagues and not someone I can hang out with during weekends or go on holidays with. I duno if I am perceived as cold or what...not speaking much (sometimes even among my closest friends) is my nature and I duno how to change it. The "fear" of bosses have drastically diminished though lol. Which brings me to another thing...I have some concept of competition in workplace but I never imagined it to be so serious...to me, I sort of dun feel the need to stand out yet...duno why. Faster progression will be fantastic of course, but there is an uncertainty in a sense that I might not even be here for long..so what is the use of fast progress? Heck, I haven't even applied for PR yet.

Either way I don't see myself changing jobs anytime soon...one possible reason probably being how much I hate changes. Unless changes are really necessary like transition from student to work life..or shifting house. Or how I moved to sg after secondary school (have resisted transferring schools a couple times during sec school). Other than that reason...my hatred for public relations haven't taken over to an extent that I am seriously considering quitting/transferring....yet. 

So yep. Job is tolerable as of now.