Here I am, 2 weeks down

Thank you Yufen and Siew Wei for emailing, for caring whether I'm alive or dead. You have no idea how it feels, coming back to my own laptop after the end of a long week, to see those emails. It makes all the difference in the world.

Yes, I'm alive. I've just been working somewhat long hours, even going in for 15 hours last Saturday, so I crash out as soon as I get home, and leave the house the soonest I can get ready in the morning.

This past Thursday, when one of my seniors told me to go home early because I had stayed late the night before, and I was almost comatose anyway from tiredness, I took his advice and left at 12.45am. When I realised that I was actually excited that I was leaving work early, I had to laugh, because my concept of work hours has clearly been warped by a mere two weeks of work.

It seems like I've been working for longer than 2 weeks though. It has only been 10 official working days. But when you add last Saturday in, yesterday's few hours, and today's couple of hours, it's longer than that in standard working hours' terms. I'm also dreading more work from another senior who left a voicemail on my Blackberry last night: "We (you - after all, He is out of the country.#) may have to work tomorrow. I'll give you a call."

The most important thing I think is to work for good people. When I was working for these two guys I liked, I would walk through fires and mountains for them. But when working for another guy who told me off for following his instructions to the letter ("Use your brain"), or for this other out-of-country senior who has a fearsome reputation, even the slightest bit of work makes me nervous. I actually feel myself twitching whenever the out-of-country guy calls me or says: "Hey, how are you doing?"

At work, most of the seniors don't actually care about your welfare. Even as innocuous a phrase as "How are you doing" becomes a gruesome beast in their mouths, because it is Invariably followed by some demand: "How are you doing. Have you updated the model?", "How are you doing. Could you do a newsround on XYZ company for me?", "How are you doing. How are you getting along with the work I gave you?", "How are you doing. Do you have time to do XYZ for me?"

The first few miserable days, I had nothing to do and was bored out of my skull. Then one day in particular, I was twitchy and nervous all day, I was actually unable to disguise the look of horror on my face whenever anyone stopped by at my desk.

In retrospect, it is pretty funny.

The best way to keep sane I think, is to always keep a sense of perspective, and always be able to sit back and have a laugh. The problem with my team is that it is huge, and there are few juniors. And it's difficult to have fun, chill and laugh, when there are so many serious faces around.

Note at 14:16 hours: one of my seniors has just called me in to check some numbers. My weekend is completely blown now. Cheers mate!