Went for this job interview today. Just now. About 2 hours ago. It was at this small company along Shenton Way.. that deals with translation for those huge companies like DBS, Ascendas, ITA etc. So what they do is, these companies send some documents to them, and they translate the documents to Chinese. Or it could be the other way too. Like, some companies from China need to translate some documents to English, then that would be the company's job too. Let's start from the location of the company. It's this small company at UIC building. No idea where that is? Then what do u call the locating of such a place by someone with totally no sense of direction.. someone like Ms Lim KS? Hint.. it's the name of a movie Tom Cruise acted in. Yeah.. no prizes for guessing. I roughly knew it was somewhere near Raffles Place MRT. So first thing I muz do.. get my butt over to Raffles Place MRT! After that, I thought about it. Seems like I've been there once.. to eat at some restaurant located there. So I thought about it.... closed my eyes and tried to recall.. how did my dad drive there?? OH!!! I remember!!! I think I THINK he drove past Lau Pa Sat to get there!!!! Yay!!! Ok next step... locating Lau Pa Sat. U would probably think that is already not a problem.. from Raffles Place MRT it would be a breeze to get to Lau Pa Sat. But no.. for KS it is as easy as trying touch the tip of your nose with your tongue. (Think it's easy? Try it! Eh wait.. who are those goons sticking out their tongue and furiously trying to.... ah.. never mind. I meant trying to locate Lau Pa Sat from Raffles Place MRT and not licking your nose u goons!) Ok anyway.. from there.. I walked in circles... trying to find my way to Lau Pa Sat... road signs road signs!!! What's the government doing?! When I need them.. I can't find them!!! Sigh.... BUT!!! In the nick of time... my inborne navigation instincts kicked into place! Never NEVER doubt your instincts... especially when u are in serious trouble.. cos they are DEFINITELY wat u can rely on to get you out of whatever shit you are in! So I started sniffing around.. trying to search for traces of my scent that lingered around since the last time I went to Lau Pa Sat. Finally... after many rounds of searching... there!!! I spotted it!!! The white tent-like structure!!! Lau Pa Sat!!!! Then of cos... it's time to search for UIC building. So I crossed the road to Lau Pa Sat.. and turned one circle around Lau Pa Sat to try to determine exactly which direction is the right one.... before I finally spotted the crucial road sign.... SHENTON WAY!!!! YAY!!! I'M ON THE RIGHT TRACK! So I walked down Shenton Way, an finally there.. tadaa!!!! UIC building!!!! I'm SOOOOOO proud of myself!!! *pats myself on the back* OK on to the interview. It's a real interview.. no not the fill-the-form-and-get-lost type.. the type where the boss sits opposite you and asks you questions. The whole interview was conducted in Mandarin. Wow.. xiang kao lao niang... Lucky I'm still taking Chinese GE now... U wanna try Kong Zi, Meng Zi, Lao Zi, Han Fei Zi etc?? No prob! Wahaha.. Anywayz first question he asked... my interests, and what I was looking for in a job. I replied, a bit too brightly," Challenge!!" (Yeah right..) And then he proceeded to tell me what the company does etc.. this boss has a certain weird way of writing things down.. he writes them down in acronyms. So like.. Confidential Translation=CT etc... and he would write all these acronyms on the board... so being the dumb me that I was, I thought he might ask me questions about them later.. so I was busy memorising what each acronym stood for.. yeah.. well.. in the end he did not ask... but oh well.. it was always good to know more about the company.

And then he was telling me more about the job scope I had.. if I decided to join them. I would have admin jobs like liasing with the big companies and helping them find translators or translating the documents for them myself. I could also choose to teach these students from this new fac of interpretation at Temasek Poly. I would also have to follow him around to meet the big shots like the CEOs of the big companies etc etc... and the basic salary would be S$1000 per month. The salary would increase depending on how much work I do each month. Like his other assistant.. her salary increased from S$1000 to S$4000 in 2 years. At least that's what he said. When I told him I was looking for juz a vacation job.... he said that it was fine.. and I could join them full time in the holidays and work part time during term time. He would try to accommodate my schedule. I wonder how that accommodation would work if he finds out that I have lessons everyday and end late almost everyday... and my homework is rather time consuming as well (all those endless lab reports.. ahhhh!!!!).

Anyhow.. it seems like he needs me more than I need this job! So how!? Seems like a scam to me!!! How can everything be so nice?! He even said if I have problems with translation, there would be teachers to help me. Sounds too good to be true rite?! If the company is investing so much in me, think they would most probably force me to sign some contract of some sort.. then I can't ever get my ass out of it.. sianz.. my primary interest is still Bio... I'm juz trying to relieve some of my parents' burden.. Ok to be fair, I DO find translation quite an interesting job.. at least we don't have to do the same thing all the time. But it is not what I want ultimately! But like what my aunt says, I will get to meet a lot of big company CEOs on the job.. which means a lot of exposure. Makes it much easier to get jobs in future... sigh.. and the pay's not bad.. I might juz be able to support myself thru university and get extra allowance on top of that. Dilemma....

Oh btw the boss asked me to go join them for a few events to get a feel of what the job is like.. so I can decide if it's the job for me. One of them is on Vesak Day, I will have this session with some of the Temasek Poly students... actually I still dunno what I have to do there, all I know is he gave me this thick Chinese book and asked me to read thru it b4 going... @_@
And the next event is this meeting with the LTA CEO... and I was invited to join them as well... WOW! Great exposure rite?! This had better be true...

So... now.. this is the poll. Who thinks I should go for it? Who thinks I should not?