Saturday, June 30, 2007

GSS damage :
4 shirts (office wear)
1 black pencil skirt
1 black pleated skirt
1 pair of charles & keith wedges (9cm tall)

My excuse -- need new clothes for my new work place as there is NO dress-down fridays. Need to look presentable and professional at all times. And there is a "no skirt shorter than 2-fingers -width above the knee " rule. And hair style is limited to pan-asian colours only, which mean no blond, blue, red, purple. And no open toe shoes if you are at the clinics

Notice most of our colleagues wear neutral colours (black, white , dark blue) most of the time, and my fellow colleagues, also newbies suggest we start revolution by wearing bright colours. and wear half-covered heels (cover toes only, the heels are exposed) If boss tell us off, then we stop.
And our boss, though is a man, is quite a sharp person. Overhead him once commenting to another colleague : "wa your shoes very bright ". On another occasion, i passed him the documents, using my own binder clips. Though I did not indicate that to him, the next day he passed back the clips to me , knowing that these are not from the office common stationery stock. As what my colleague commented:"Boss very sharp, dun beh-ley arh"


However, i think i have not been a good gal so far. In fact i have been "testing the water " by doing the follows:

1. wearing open-toes heels on many occasions. but i do switch to the pair of covered flats (kept under my desk) when i reached office.
2. listening to radio . Din see my neighbours listening to music, but then din heard of any rules saying no listening to music.
3. logging on to msn. So far when boss came to my desk, i was not msning, but the short cut icon on the toolbar is clearly visible.
4. Wore a bright yellow top on the day where my colleague wore a bright pink top. Very glaring to the eyes
5. Painted my nails and still doing nail art with gold glitter and shiny sticker. On a few occasions, saw my boss glanced at them but he din comment anything abt it.

Guess as long as i did my work, he can "close one eye" on the above matters.

人家说：伴君如伴虎. For my colleagues and I, we are "伴狮", as our boss is a leo. Though he does joke with us at times, he is VERY serious when it comes to work and that look on his face is really terrifying. We also pre-empt each other when we see that he is not in a good mood, especially when we have bad news to report to him.

Friday 29 June was not a good day. In the morning, I had to braced myself to meet up with a doctor, to introduce myself (i dun like to meet these professionals, as i dunno how to interact with them).

Just a bit of history -- my boss mentioned abt how the difference btw a grade A-performer and a B-performer for my post . Even when he person could have just email the doctors to ask for articles, he said he will meet up with the doctors for the first time to do a self-introduction, so that people will have an idea of who you are. He also added that my predecessor did not do that, even though she has lot of time.

Boss say until like that, of cos u have to do it right. i spend some time drafting the email (and SOS to my friends for help over msn) and after days, one of the doc gave a curt reply of " u can see me at 9am this friday"

Turned out tha the doc is a snob. Felt demeaned after the session. Not going to get into details on what happened , the "highlights " are

1) Instead of the usual introduction, i tot he too will gave a brief intro of himself, wat he did , yet his first words to me are:

"you know arh... here.. people come and go. So u have to get use to the thing that people here dun spend much time with you... u know... what for?"

Kaoz. Implying that I am wasting his time lah. He din speak clearly ,also waste my time to catch what he was trying to say.

2) Stop me when i was abt to leave and said " u know arh. by meeting you, it seems that you are giving me work. Where u should me helping me with less work".

Wah Kaoz! I dun report to him ok. BTW, it was under his chief's instructions that the docs are scheduled to contribute articles to the new letters. My job is just to remind them to submit the articles. I had done my part and if he din submit, it will be his fault, not mines.

Anyway,I directly told my boss that the meeting did not went well and we might not have articles to contribute for this month. Thankfully he was quite understanding on that and not to take the doc's comments personally. Have to treat this as learning experience and have to be thick-skinned when dealing with these type of docs.

I definitely dun look forward to meeting 2 docs every month. Was telling my friends perhaps i should make a list on the percentage of doc who are nice over those who are snobbish.

Actually I was not wounded by the doc's attitude, after all, having encountered with verbal abuse from ex-colleague (refer to my older blog posting), what can be worse than that.

In the afternoon, received notice that the gal who is due to join us on the coming monday had called to revoke her contract as she got another offer. Boss was quite pissed off with this irresponsible attitude, even the HR was pissed off too. As for me, having to rush to get everything ready for her, I was also "sian" by this outcome. Everyone was expecting her to join us on Monday,-- my fellow colleague being assigned as her "buddy" worried abt not being a good buddy as she is also quite new, and last week, boss even instructed me to include her as our lunch khakis as she will be station in another office,.

Due to her absence, I will be involve in helping out with some of the jobs which are intended for her. Wonder is this is good or bad.

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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Mini skirt concept & la kopi sessions

have not been updating. actually have lots to update but too tired.

The tutorial on writing business papers conducted by my boss , which i "gate-crashed" (cos it was originally meant for training the executives only) on last Thurs was very enriching. I remembered how in my previous-previous-job, the monster ex-boss shove the responsibility of writing papers to me and did not give any guidelines on the specs. How could I even start. I was so helpless and frustrated over the task that i was practically whining to everyone that if i can write paper (which is usually done by graduates) then i should not be working in the organisation liao.

Each of us were given more than 10 different sets of notes for our reference. Learnt abt the standard format of writing internal and external papers, the common terms to use, the information required to support and justify the purchases as requested in the papers.

It was quite a serious tutorial lesson. Guessed the only time we laughed out loud when boss mentioned abt his theory on writing papers. Quote him:

" Writing papers like a 'mini-skirt' concept --- Short enough to sustain interest, but long enough to cover main points."

What a cheeky theory! However, those executives and I who are reporting to him did not dare to make any more comments abt it while other executive who do not report to him added " this (theory) definitely comes from a man!"

*****************
Spend the weekend (23-24 june) in a rather tai-tai way. On Sat evening, met up with the other tais-tais over dinner at Sakae Sushi and followed by la-kopi at NYDC. Have not been catching up with them over a proper meal for a long time.

Great discovery of the day (shall i say Night) -- NYDC's Ugly Cake.

It is called Ugly Cake cos it dun look nice . But it tastes great. I only have a small bite but that's enough for me to pass my judgement. That's the thing I like abt NYDC -- the cakes. Be it cheese cake or brownies. You can't find fault with their cakes but some of their outlets' service sucks.

Have another la-kopi session on Sun at Starbucks, RC. That was with another group of "tais-tais". This was the once-a-year gossiping+whining+sharing+catching-up kopi session. This year's "session" also touched on religion. And then to divorce, adultery and abuse. Which i also wondered how we can digress so much . Hahahaha.

La-kopi session ends ard 6pm. Yet at 8pm, i had shifted to another "impromptu session" -- ktv session with friends. The ex called for it at the last minute, also asking my friends (gor & flutterby) to come along. Guessed he might have "gian" to go singing before his one week holidays with family. Gor and him together made a great "crap-ers". Flutterby came up with a question on how should a gal flirt and we thought she could get some serious views from the guys' perspective when gor requested The Ex to sit beside him so that he can demo (pretending he's a gal).

Turned out to be CRAP! That lead to us (gals) protesting that what he did was "seduce", not "flirt". There's a difference between the two. No point asking the guys for their honest views when they are so "crappy",

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Sunday, June 24, 2007

Sexy Lashes!

Ok ok the title was just a teaser.

After years of comtemplating, I finally pluck up my courage to go for eye-lash perming this afternoon
I remembered my friend who had her eye-lashes permed 3 years ago joked that the permed eye lashes will look very sexy especially when you are swimming.

Bleh, the reason I went to perm my eye-lashes was not to look sexy (i dun swim anyway), but to save time in my morning make up routine. Had to spend more than 5 mins daily to heat up the curler and curl my stubborn eye lashes. If not for that, I will only require 5 mins to apply make-up .

Time saved = money saved too. Cos with 5 more minutes to spare, it simply means that I have higher chance of catching the free staff shuttle bus service instead of taking the SBS feeder bus service. hahaha

Going to wash my face later. Shall see the "wet eye-lashes effects".

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007

端午节07

端午节快乐！

actually i not very 快乐, cos stupid prev company delay my pay. And when i finally receive the payslip on Sunday (note it's payslip, not pay), and upset to find they din pay me for my unused leave. So it took me quite an effort to look for relevant parties and speak to them. so sianz that i dun wanna write it down. It is unbelievable that such a big organisation can be so C***-up.

Still suffer from muscle ache after TXY Sports day on 16 June. Due to my leg injury , i have not be exercise much, so this year even though i only play 2 rounds of captain's ball match and friendly Frisbee session, the muscles hurt more . Anyway, glad to see my group 凌鹰 won the overall championship. the last title was years ago, i think.


Work is still at a slow pace (at least to me), even though boss taught me how to do up this workload calculation spreadsheet. And yesterday, he came asking me " U wanna do events management?"


Aiyoh, boss ask u to do things can say dun want meh?

of cos i din say that lah. Replied him "Thought that was part of my jobscope?" (which he did mention during the interview). So found out that this event is a high profile official opening of a new clinic scheduled in August. "High profile" meaning they would like to invite Minister as guest-of-honour. He initially planned to have the new executive to be part of the team but worried that by the time she joins the team after her orientation, the team would be in the midst of preparation.

Well, if not for this event, i guess i would have to wait till next Feb to be involve in events management. Can't expect me to shake legs for all these months right. I think i had put on weight as this job is less stressful than the previous (less running around) and with the good food available.

(thinking of NUS cheap and good food ... )hahahaha

speaking of weight, my msn nick for the day is : 包粽不是“包中”，而是“包重”（包你重公斤） eat too many ba-zhang, sure put on weight !!

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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Not much updates for the past week cos there has not been much work in the office.
Handover took only one day. My predecessor is a tall gal (1.7m), same age as me and has big eyes. Found out that she has found a job very near to her home and the organisation she is joining was my first workplace. Singapore is too small i guess....

For the rest of the two days while she was still around, she took me to some departments and taught me the shortcuts to walk to there. Most of the time, she left office to catch up with her friends from other departments and our boss dun seems to care much about her "MIA". For the first two days, i left on the dot after checking with boss that there wasn't anything to be done for the day. And on the thrid day, which was my predecessor last day of service, i could not contain my curiosity and asked her if it is usual for her to leave on the dot daily. which she said "Yes".

And i wondered why boss asked me before the interview that, as he put it:

"Tell me honestly. Really honestly. are you a 'on-the-dot' person?"

That gave me the impression that i may need to stay back, which is not a problem for me as i have been doing so for my last two jobs.

For my prev job, I was already on the job the second day, using my ex-colleague account to help her clear her backlogs. And not to mention for my 2nd last job, there was often a period of time where I am doing two persons job whenever one resigned.

So suddenly having with the so-called "normal" workload to the colleagues of my same level ( i realised it's the executives who need to stay back for meetings), I am not feeling used to it instead. Also realised that as boss had put our position (my predecessor & i) under a different headcount, to freed us from the "boring administrative tasks", i did not have to deal with purchasing of stationery and other supplies for the people in the department --these fall under the secretaries' jobscope instead. Even though compared to my predecessor's jobscope, I have one more task relating to events management, I am still rather free for now as there is not major events planned for these few months.

My predecessor told me that there some tasks which she is unable to handover to me as these are ad-hoc work given by our boss where he have to first explain on how to do the calculations on the excel spreadsheet. The only thing I have to take not of is that he is a very neat person, as can be seen from him workstation, must make sure that whatever files passed to him is clean & tidy (meaning not to take those recycled files).


At least on Friday, I managed to spend some fruitful time as I was given a chance to attend the tutorial on costing which boss conducted for his executives. Heard from another manager that my boss is one who is willing to spend his time on training others. Seems to be true as on that day, some executives reporting to different managers, who had gotten the word from others abt the "tutorial" , asking if they can "gate-crash". The session lasted from 10 am to 1.30pm, touching on the 2 excel template he had came up with on NPV generation. I have no problems with the first, bu looking at the 2nd spreadsheet, it seems really cheem. To get the figures on the first page, one would need to link from from 8 other annexes. Each annex is about 3 pages long. Imagine how many different figures one would need to get hold of first. For me, as I do not have any heath care background, I have much difficulty figuring out the terms they used, such as the different class wards applicable and terms such as "cream-off". Even the executives joked that is boss take 1 week to do up the costing, they would take at least one month.


On another note, lunch at current workplace is definitely better than my prev workplaces. There are two kopitiams, one staff canteen with lots of varieties of food to choose from, and if hat's not enough, my colleagues and I even went to NUS science canteen. So far, we only tried the western food ccos the prices is really cheap. A plate of chicken chop/cutlet only costs $2.20! Shall go there more often now as it's still their students term break period.

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

吸血魔：
是不是要把我的血给吸完了，你们才甘心！

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Orientation (part 2)

6 & 7 June


Took a module regarding SSU and CARE which talks abt service standards. Was told there would be a test and certification and a Sunny Side Up (SSU) egg-shaped pin will be given to us only is we passed the test.

Initially thought it would be a serious (and boring) module on service standards, urn out that this was the most interesting module out of the orientation training. We played quite a lot of games , which turn out to be related to what we are learning. Eg, being blindfolded and make to walk across"rivers" and "climb mountain", so as to understand how a patient might feel when he first came in ,ie: scared, uneasy, worried.
There was also another came where the whole class of 30 having to think of ways to pass rubber balls from one to another within a time limit. The time limit was shorten greatly each round, from 4 minutes to 1 minutes then to less than 10 seconds. In the end we broke the instructor's previous classes recording by achieving it in 4 secs. how we did it? Instead of using conventional method of passing it from one's hand to another's hand, we shortened the distance between each person and use everyone"s fingers instead. Purpose of the game: to remind us abt shortening the time lapse when one task is passed from one department to another.


By the way Sunny Side up service means to :
Greet & Smile
Go the extra mile
Delighted to serve
Deliver with love

Though i wun be dealing with external customers, which means patients, all these information abt improving service standards can still be applied on my daily work. As for the test, I think I am the only one in the class who scored full parks 27/27. The instructor joked that I can conduct the next round of training but i think I am just lucky cos i did not fall for their "trick questions".\

Bumped into boss on 6 June morning again, before my classes. Heng I had remembered to stop listening to my mp3 player as soon as I get off from the staff bus. Phew. It seems like it's his routine to check out at his clinics first and then walked back to office ard 8.45am. Which mean in the future, if i missed the staff bus and late by a couple of minutes, I am still "safe". :P



8 June 2006

After 2 days of fun, the programmes for the day's training seems so boring. We understand it's necessary for the respective Heads of each department to give a brief talk on their departments. However, we could not feel falling asleep. Many of us almost drifted to dreamland especially after lunch. Couldn't expect them to think of relevant games to keep us awake right?
Even the mention of having to sit for a test at the end of the day also din not help to perk us up.

All the speakers seems to understand that and shortened their speech. In the end our training ends at 4+pm instead of 5.30pm. Needless to say, we were all "上课一条虫，下课一条龙”.

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Sunday, June 10, 2007

orientation (part 1)

Started reporting to new organisation from 4 June, but have not officially start work as I had to attend a 5-day orientation program.

yes . 5 days!

Rather intensive right, and i thought my prev company 2 day orientation was the most intensive one I ever attended..

Here a quite run-through of happenings for the past week


4 June 2007 (Mon)

Reported to HR 5 minutes late due to late arrival of shuttle bus. Thought HR might be kan-cheong cos she had to meet up with quite a lot of newbies b4 sending us to the vane for orientation , but she seems quite cool abt it (at least it seems so over the phone), figuring out ta ht I will be there by 8.45am and it's ok.

compared to the prev company class size of ard 40 newbies over the pass 3 months, the class size of this new organisation orientation is more than 50 newbies who are recruited over the past month.

As usual, there were some ice-breaking games and top management's introduction. CEO was not around and COO gave the speech instead. As for the games, it was through the 1st ice-breaking game that the executive from my department manage to "find" me. As she had out it, she was instructed by our boss to look out for me and another executive who are joining the organisation today.

Program line up for the day was rather the "usual" programme. Though there were two exception where they invite the Union chairman to give a talk abt the union membership (hard to believe that the organisation would encourage staff to join union), and they also invited a principle executive from Community Chest to give a talk on the SHARE programme. I had pledge to donate a small amount of my month salary to the community chest.

We also played a game of "amazing race" -- had to find various departments /places within the whole premises. We dun have sufficient time to explore the different departments with the different levels of the 3 main building, but managed to score 16/25. That wasn't so bad, as the best group's score was 17.5 /25.

One thing I have to add. The food was soooo nice. More varities of food available at the kopitiam for lunch (compared to prev work place), and the food they catered for tea breaks were so yummy, especially the cream puffs. We couldn't resisting taking 2nd and 3rd helpings.


Proceeded to Ai Qing Hai (Musicdreamers) to watch Monsters 1st official performance at the cafe in the evening. "The Ex" and "Mr loud-rence" also came. despite warning "Mr loud" that his voice is audible from the stage, he still purposely commented rather loudly that Meilian sounded like Sun Yanzi cos he felt that is a compliment and she should heard it. "The Ex" seems to favour Jianhua over the rest though, (maybe becos they both are tek-kos :P), and said becos he is "shuai".
Towards the end of the performance, our table had become a group of 10, with Sips, Songyu and Leonard joining us. Guess they wanna be in time to celebrate Jianhua's birthday.

Din stay long after singing bday song as I gotta rush home to study. Yes , had to study the CD-rom which contains the handouts for the next day orientation.

5 June (Tue)

Managed o figured out where to took the Staff shuttle bus (not the shuttle bus for patients and visitors) in the morning and figured the way from the drop off point to the auditorium. Bumped into my boss as i was coming out from the car park, with earpieces ( listening to my mp3s) in my ears. Dunno should I screamed "Oh no" or not though technically speaking I had not start work yet and I was still early for class but being 'caught" listening to music by yr boss does not reflect that you are professional. Perhaps my worries were unfound for he din say anything when I pulled out my earpiece and "ha la" with him. He asked me abt how's my orientation and if I had met my fellow colleagues.

Programs for the day were rather "dry" compared to the previous day. But through the group activities, we learnt how to do value stream mapping and A3 report.


to be continued......(REFER TO PART 2)

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Friday, June 08, 2007

the name u left behind and anything

" When a snake leaves, it left behind its skin.
When a man leaves, he left behind his name."

Forgot to add this to the last post. This is what Uncle Glenn emphasised to me that day when I told him abt a friend's experience had make me realised that even though one is leaving the company, he/ she should continue to a good job till the last day of service. Would rather left behind a good impression that a bad one, right.

Furthermore, with "the Ex" reporting to my office weeks later for a project, I definitely would not want people to complain abt me to him if they came to know that we sort of knew each other. I'd prefer the other way round and it'd create "pressure" for him to perform. hahahaha

Frankly speaking, after the past few days of working late to clear work (and mostly not my work but backlogs), i couldn't help feeling upset even though I know I am doing the right thing cos some had mentioned that I do not need to work so hard since I was leaving (hint to me not to "spoil market"). Spites from the jealous colleague don't seems to help too. It was the first time I ever encountered with one's jealousy. (It became rather obvious when she purposely said that my new workstation is like a toilet cubicle, purposely chose to eat crackers for lunch when the other colleagues plan a get-together lunch for me before I leave the office; even her wishes for me was a "make more money" with a sarcastic tone. ) Thanks to Uncle Glenn's teaching, I was assured that I had done the right thing.

*********************

Bought 2 cans of "Anything" just for fun. My brother was lucky, the can of "anything" which I passed to him just happened to be "cola", while mines was "root beer". (my bro prefer coke to root beer).

Initially I wondered who is the manufacturer. My guess was some big company , perhaps F&N, as they seems to have a huge advertising budget. Don't u feel that 'anything " and "whatever" ads are everywhere --- from bus tops ads to printed ads on newspaper, TV ads , radio ads. I told my ex-colleagues, that the first thing i will do when i came across shop selling them was to check out the info regarding the manufacturer. Turn out that the manufacturer is "Heng Seng" (if i remember it correctly :P) . Not some big player which most of us had thought.

Was telling my friends next time if people asked them what would they want to have as their birthday presents, they cannot say : "anything ". cos friends now will have the excuse to buy cans of "anything " as yr birthday gift.

by the way, wonder if you have check out their web page www.anything.com.sg

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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

The last day of work at the 鸟不生蛋 place

OK, feeling so mentally drained. Orientation for the past few days was like back to lecture theatres --- lots of things to learn. That I shall touch on it another day.



Last day of work at previous office was 1 June 2007. Had already cleared the payroll 2 days before that. With the help of my temp staff, we managed to clear the leave files and re-arrange the recruitment files in a more systematic manner.

Wat irks me was that on the morning, there was still some changes on the training booking to be made. Training (for rev company colleagues) was like starting next week. Even the other party was commenting to me she have never see such an organisation changing the dates so many times. Haiz what can I do, have to say it's part of their culture....


My SP was so sweet, even though she has not gotten her pay, she gave me 2 cans of nescafe and rocher as farewell gift. She was under me for less than 2 weeks , yet she knew my "office snacking habits? Just hope my fellow colleague wun bully her when I am not around.

Well, early in the morning, another colleague fr other dept whom I dealt with came to passed me a present. When i returned home to unwrap the gift, u can imagine my surprise when I saw...


So thoughtful of them, wonder how they know i like purple .

Another Senior Manager (BC) from another department also have something for me. Though she said it's becos I had helped her with her temp staff recruitment, i felt pai-seh cos it was part of my job.

Uncle Glenn , the colleague whom i really impressed by his mannerism and look up to him as a role model (though i have to say, as a gal, i can't be possibly apply some gentleman gestures he did into my life. as in, for the case of opening doors for others, i can open doors for female colleagues, but it would be weird if i "rush" to open doors for guys right?) , knew that i had lots of barang barang to take home, was nice enough to check with me if I would like a ride to Bugis as he is meeting his friend for dinner ard the area. And it was only during the ride that he found out I am a Hainanese and revealed that he and his wife are Hainanese too. It was exactly the same feeling last year when I found out that a friend of mine , HL, whom i can "click" with, even though we only met once briefly 2 years ago, is also of the same dialect group.

Of cos there came the usual question : "do u speak hainanese".

and came the reply. "no. which is why relatives will say 'Hai nam nang boh bat gong hai nam whey.!"

Think that phrase is so common among Hainanese....LOL

Anyway, was dropped of at City Hall instead, cos he had considered I need sometime to pick up my 4 bags and an umbrella before i could alight from his car. Fortunately the bags weren't that heavy, and I decided to take MRT home instead.

Managed to get a seat during the peak hours by taking it down to Marina Bay first. I was rather tired and eyes were droopy. A few stops later, i noticed a heavily pregnant lady standing opposite me, and the passenger seated beside me , right under the sign "please give your seat to others who may need it more than you" , right facing of her, SUDDENLY falling asleep. Despite carrying lots of bags , (I had to admit for some seconds, i dun feel like leaving my seat) i could not bear to see her standing ,and offered my seat to her. Guessed i have managed to create the impression that I was alighting as a stop later, she sort of looked at me , wondering why i din get off. (and the lady beside her was awake liao...). Before she got off from the train, she took the effort to reach over to nudge said " I am getting off", signaling me to take back the seat. And guessed what, the lady seated beside her looked at us, and magically fallen into deep sleep the next second.

Guilt-ridden huh?

Not trying to be a Saint by mentioning the above, but somehow, I feel that it is because of the "good things" I had received from my colleagues during the day (the gifts and the ride) "induce" me to pass on an act kindness to other.

it is what one would term as "karma" ....

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Sunday, June 03, 2007

was supposed to write abt my last day at work but not in the mood to write. Somehow in the mid noon, had a bout of runny nose. and lasted till the nite....

jialat lah, 2moro attending Orientation. hopefully will recovered by then.
a 5-day orientation session, wonder what's the programme like...

still can't believe i have to attend 2 orientations in less than half a year

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