WorkING for a week

It has been a week since I first started at ING. Thanks to a friend, I now have something to do to pass the next for months. Sure, the pay would be much better if I worked in a restaurant like Dome, but at least I got to see the inside of an office. The Human Capital Office surprised me for being smaller than I expected. I thought the place would have hundreds of workers, seeing as how that department was responsible for hiring new people. I was surprised to find that less than 15 people worked in the office (out of which only 3 were men, and that does not include me). Still they were quite friendly and helpful. My time spent there was called an ‘internship’, whatever that means. I suppose I am supposed to learn something, but al I do is really boring but tedious work and every now and then, my supervisor would point things out to me like, “these are the personal folders of past employees, every company is suppose to…”, blah, blah. For a week, I have been filing old papers belonging to people who have already resigned. Boring nonetheless, but I did get a bit of entertainment reading the complaints of sexual harassment made against one employee. That fellow got fired some weeks after that. Awww…Then there was another case where this woman believed that she was the target of a conspiracy to get her fired. Interesting. Apart from that, I made use of my college built PowerPoint skills to create organization charts, fun at first but a headache eventually. There was a bit of excitement on my first day because of the Plant A Tree campaign. Some big shot from Holland came to initiate this campaign and of course plant a tree. Actually the hole was already dug, so all he did was plunk the tree in and pour some water. Had lunch with an old friend that same day. She was the one who helped me with the job. Went to the Weld Building for the first time too. ING is the official sponsor for the Renault F1 team this year so today there was some activity going on. There was a Simulated Car where one can pretend to be test driving one of them race cars and some competitions too where the prizes would be passes to watch the race. Of course I was too lazy to bother with any of them. Getting to work itself is a chore, the Monorail is so small and it is always crowded. Waiting for it to pull up at the station is a pain in itself as it can sometimes take up to 20 minutes for a train to arrive. Stupid government. Why can’t they make the train bigger, knowing that it is so popular? Another thing, why must they announce the advertisers along with the name of the station. I find that really odd. The station is a short walk from the office and on my very first day (which is the only time in my life that I went out without an umbrella) it had to rain. Well, at least I got my first paycheck today, and that is a good thing.

The Dream

They say in dreams you enter another world built from your imagination, memories and experiences. I don't normally experience dreams but none that I had so far was as weird or even as enjoyable as this one. I was watching some kind of fantasy cartoon (in this dream I was a mere observer). A boy gets sucked into a world of fairy creatures and all kinds of monsters. He is caught up in a duel between two dragons- one was blue with red eyes, his names was Uliarat, or something like that, and I'm guessing he is the bad guy because he looks so mean. The other, presumably good dragon is fighting him, and is losing (can't remember what this dragon's name is). The good dragon asks the boy (I also don't know what is his name) to find some character named Papa Bear and get help. The boy is given directions and off he goes. Uliarat or whatever his name is breathes fire on the kid, but he is unharmed. He travels a long way calling for Papa Bear. He then meets a group of tree people (anthropomorphic trees). Seems like they are all nuts because they all claim to be Papa Bear. The boy ignores them and continues to a meadow. Actually there are two meadows, each in a different shade of green. He steps in the light green meadow first and hears a woman's voice (sounds evil). Afraid, he runs to the other meadow. Then he meets a talking beetle. The beetle tells him to stay away from the other meadow because a witch lives there. The boy asks the little bug where he can find Papa Bear. The beetle replies that Papa Bear went for a walk and is not home yet. The beetle invites the kid to wait in Papa Bear's house for him to come back. Apparently Papa Bear lives inside a cliff and the house is completely hidden from external view. Inside the cliff, the boy waits in a cosy living room for his host's return. After some time the Papa Bear comes along with his wife and son(yup the three bears). He is angry at first at the beetle for inviting the boy in the house(I gather that the beetle is a close friend because Papa Bear trusts him with his house). The boy asks Papa Bear for help. The grumpy bear refuses but eventually agrees when the boy make shim laugh. The boy tells of his encounter with the two dragons and how he didn't get burned by the blue dragon. Papa Bear now offers his 'help' which takes the form of some kind of training. The boy's first task is to balance an apple on his head, next to a cliff with a sheer drop. Two villains appear, a fat guy and his talking pet rat. They start singing a really funny song (sadly I can't remember the words) and then they perch themselves on a ledge above the boy. The boy is oblivious to their presence. The fat guy wants to kill the boy, for some reason. He lets his rat bite his hand and spills the blood near the cliff end. The boy, concentrating on balancing the apple does not see the blood. He slips on it and is about the fall off the cliff when my annoying sister wakes me up, ending my dream. I certainly would have liked to have that dream again and maybe see what happens next. Perhaps I will evolve those characters into an actual story. This must be a sign!!!! I just need to fill in the details. If that Narnia lookalike 'Bridge to Terebithia' and Eragon can be made into movies, I think I can succeed with this.