HDE Logs of Siang Ping
Life as an HDE intern — summed up.
Prologue
The squiggly signature on the paper betrayed its owner’s skill, or rather lack
thereof, in wielding ballpoint pens. I stared as it glistened merrily on the page,
seeming to taunt me for making the laughable decision of working briefly, with a stipend a fraction of my previous salary, in one of the world’s most infamous workaholic cities: Tokyo.
A Major Test of Strength
‘In two weeks!’ I baulked.
‘And I have to get everything running and deployed and tested and,’ I ranted in
the true Singaporean spirit of complaining until I got what I wanted.
`Yes,’ came the treacherous reply. This was Japan.
I stared, once again, at the unchanging specifications. The entry test must have been a mistake. They must have given me the ones they handed out to children to get them interested in coding, with titles like ‘Koding4Kidz’ or ‘U CAN B A PROGRAMMER 2!!!’
I was given an important piece of advice: Ask, and ye shall receive.
Halcyon Days
Clackety-clackety clack. I watched the screen while absently drumming my
fingers noisily on my Macbook Pro. Amidst the soft buzz of people typing at
light speed, cussing at their laptops and having hushed second meetings in
Japanese to clarify the problems raised in the English ones, I sipped tea,
conversing softly with my computer.
‘Shucks,’ I inform my laptop.
‘Hey, how’re you doing? Is everything OK?’ It was nice to have colleagues for a
change.
‘I’m all right,’ not wanting to trouble anyone, I dismissed the helping hand. I glared at the screen once again, daring my code to fail.
I called my laptop something unprintable.
‘Er, no actually, how do you…’ I discarded my final attempts at bravado and
asked.
The Storm
‘There’s a typhoon coming on Monday,’ I was gently informed.
I pictured my rickety house braving the violent raging winds. Not a pretty
sight. It didn’t help that the storm was reported to be the strongest in 25 years. ‘Can I stay,’ I proposed, ‘the night at the office?’
My suggestion met with guffaws. Signs of my student-ness was showing. Between chuckles, I was told that ‘We are not a lab.’
I emerged on Tuesday unscathed, but also unknowing of the fact that said
typhoons would continue to systematically strike on all the following long weekends.
The Text Editor
Ever since I started using Vim, I’d always suffered from typing seemingly random text in any other editor, the most obvious culprit being ‘j’.
It was a pleasant surprise that I could use the old and dying editor here.
Once in a while though, such as while typing this blog, I still look up at the screen to see ‘hhhhhuu’ and other permutations of Vim commands.
A Wee Tipple?
I learnt, through experience, that there exists no better phrase for causing
sudden shocked silence than ‘I don’t drink’. Don’t say it. It is much easier to
smile and sip fruit juice or tea while watching everyone else get drunk.
Such behavior, however, could cause one to be accidentally invited to the
drinking club.
The Toast
Whenever free food is served, a curious phenomenon can be observed: What looked to be a randomly-organised crowd would, at the sound of a gong, prove to have been a queue, of which I would be invariably, regardless of initial displacement, at the end.
Curries, rice, salads, meat… As usual, the table was laden with colourful
dishes, but the audience’s attention was on the cans on the table. I attempted,
frantically, to read the labels on the cans. They were in Japanese.
‘Is everyone ready?’
At last, I lunged for the sole bottle of green tea sitting amidst the beer,
pouring myself a cup just in time for the toast.
‘Kanpai!’
Mission accomplished.
A Greeting
From time to time, I face a major dilemma. It lurks in the lift lobbies,
ambushes me at the lockers and even confronts me in the restroom.
‘Otsukaresamadesu!’ once again, in a cheery voice, the polysyllabic phrase
struck, my colleagues, expectant. Was I to utter this flawlessly
back, I who couldn’t pronounce even the Japanese ‘r’?
I fumbled for an easier replacement. ‘Otsukare’? Too rude. ‘Otsukaresan’? Isn’t
that a dialect? An English equivalent? None that I could think of. Lost for words, I hurriedly issued a bow.
Whenever I can’t find my tongue quickly enough, I find that a bow is a good compromise. On top of ‘Otsukaresamadesu’, it works for ‘Ohayougozaimasu’, ‘Arigatougozaimasu’, ‘Shitsureishimasu’ and any number of greetings one may encounter or need to use. Even then, I refrain from silently bowing too much, in case I’m assumed to be incapable of speech, though that is not too far from the truth.
A Game of Hide-and-Seek
Snap!
‘You can’t run away!’
‘Tsk,’ I made my annoyance obvious. It wasn’t fair, catching me while I was button-mashing.
I envied our in-house photographer. When you’re the one behind the camera, you need not to be in any of the pictures.
I, however, had to spend my days dodging and ducking from the lens without the results to show for it.
The Daily Stand-Ups
A circle of grown men passed a red, squishy soft toy around. I concentrated
hard as the tapir was swung by the nose, squeezed, punched and waved about while everyone recalled their deeds of the day. ‘Pfft!’ My concentration broke as I was offered a chance to manhandle the poor fellow. Looking anywhere but at the toy, I desperately tried to remember my progress.
This strange ritual is repeated every morning.
The Release
‘Ok, I’ve pushed!’
We gathered around. It was almost time for lunch, but the code didn’t seem to care.
One green tick and…
Another red cross. I puzzled over the failed integration test. Eyeball the code. Nothing there. Read the logs. No permission to. I pushed again for luck, Windows-style.
One green tick and…
All tests passed. As we celebrated the new release, I puzzled again over the events that just occurred, even as I started to realise the true nature of software.
The Coffee Guild
The effect of being an incorrigible night owl is not dissimilar to that of
jet-lag. At night, you lie awake for hours on end, and you find that when
you’re full of energy and ready to work, you look up at a day which has already ended. According to the difference in my perceived time and real time, it is most likely that my body clock had, in my teenage years, been misplaced somewhere in the Middle East.
As an unfortunate owner of a circadian rhythm that regularly informs me that 3 am is a good bedtime, I consider it a great fortune that my work day officially starts at 10 am. Yet I still often struggle to last the whole day, particularly when I miss my daily cuppa.
I collapsed on the table, my resting place of choice.
‘There’s a place to rest, you know.’
‘What, in the office?’
True enough, my groggy self was led through heaven’s gate to a place with
massage chairs and sofas beckoning me for a quick lie-down.
A while later, eyes smarting from a nap shorter than I would have liked, I
emerged and descended to Earth.
‘Coffee?’
I gratefully reached for the cup and sipped. ‘How often do you guys do this?’ I
enquired.
‘Every day. Where have you been?’
One of the banes of an open office was that I knew not of the fun my colleagues were having just floors below me. This was my discovery of the coffee club’s activities.
The Final Chapter
Light rain cascaded from the gloomy skies. The heat of summer was giving way to the chilly autumn air. Just two more weeks left. Absently, I drummed my fingers on my laptop as I willed away the impending autumn. I typed.
Afterword
You may have noticed that I’ve written this entry a little differently. I’ve
found that there was already plenty of objective information about GIP. Rest
assured that while I was there, there was still free GIP lunches, free Dr
Pepper, board games, karaoke sessions and even video game night. But to me,
some of the things I enjoyed the most were the individual encounters and the quirks of the office environment. I’ve written this mostly in the narrative style to capture that. I’ve also deliberately left out names, but for those involved, if you like, I’d include them.
Of course I’d like to thank my dear colleagues for being kind, patient and great people. Thank you for making this internship such a memorable and enjoyable one. Thank you Ogura-san for founding such a cool company.
