Had a job interview today at Samsung and that was quite an experience. Not to say it was bad like my last few job interview experiences, thus me working at my Dad, but it wasn't very good.
I arrived at the Samsung business building on time but reached the office a little late because of some wrong turns and a very disinterested security guard who was taking forever to verify every visitor's pass. If I could describe his movements, it would be akin to that of a sloth, really really slow, no sense of urgency, he looked like he couldn't be fuck about anything, but he wasn't rude, which was an odd combination with the perpetual look of depression on his face he seemed to be born with.
I was about 5 minutes late when I finally reached the correct Samsung office,
because there are multiple offices belonging to Samsung scattered throughout the building, it's all very confusing, and was greeted by my recruiter, who talked me though very briefly what I questions I should expect and what questions I should ask as he leads me to the meeting room and leaves me there.
And left me there he did, I was waiting in the meeting room for quite a while, an hour to be precise, he would call and check up on me every now and then to apologize on behalf of the interviewer who was stuck in a meeting and try to keep me updated about the situation.
Finally the interviewer arrives and by the time he came in and introduced himself to me, panting from running to the meeting room and apologizing for being so late, all the nerves I had an hour ago had already dissipated and was replace by this growling from my stomach, which was extremely awkward.
I did a quick introduction of myself and showed him my meager portfolio, it wasn't very impressive because most of my works were in my laptop, which I had brought along but was too lazy to take out and put on display for him to see. After an hour of wait, I just really didn't feel like doing anything, not out of annoyance but just from sheer laziness, not that it really mattered because he still went ahead and ask me legitimate "
do you want the job" questions to gauge how interested I was in the position.
He went on to describe the position to me, what the responsibilities are and what kind of work environment Samsung would be like. I have to admit, after learning what the job really is about, I was very underwhelmed, it was a very specific job scope that focuses on a single range of product, the flat screen display sets.
To liaise with clients and come up with space planning ideas on where to install the flat screen displays in their existing offices or shops or where ever they needed the display sets to be, that's it. There's no actual space planning of where the furniture should be placed, what colors should the walls be, the flow of the space, none of that, just where is the best place to install the flat screen displays in a commercial space, that's it.
But to offset that underwhelming job scope, there's an overwhelming sense of responsibility that comes with it. Turns out in Samsung, there's only one such position, that means all related projects will be handled by that one designer, there won't be a second designer to balance out the workload should ION Orchard decide they want to install 400 flat screen display sets all across the shopping mall and Takashimaya decide they want to hang 500 flat screen display sets on the ceiling at the same time. One designer handling all the projects sounds a bit much, it just reminds me of the days working in the restaurant where I quickly overwhelmed by orders because I was the only pastry cook or back at the bakery when I had to handle all the baking on my own.
When I realized what I was about to get myself into, I became really unsure of the position. I was very happy when Samsung suddenly sent me an email out of the blue asking me to head down to their office for a job interview, and even now I think that working in Samsung would be a great opportunity, but the main thing I am worried about is the job scope and the scale of responsibility.
Before the interview ended, I was asked by the interviewer if I was willing to learn, to which I replied I was, but when asked if I was interested in the position, I actually told him I had to think about it first because it was not at all what I had expected it to be. I relayed the exact same message to the recruiter after the interviewer completed the interview and I think I have basically just kick myself off their list of potential candidate. I'm sure I'm just one of the many dozen other candidates they invited for the interview and I'm probably the only one who had to
"think about it", so unless Samsung likes their interviewees to play hard to get, I'm pretty sure I won't be invited for a second round interview with their hiring director, although that would be a pleasant surprise.
There were moments of awkward silences in between the interview that I quickly filled with redundant questions lest my stomach started to growl,that was both embarrassing and stressful at the same time.
Decided to take-away French Onion Soup from Soup Spoon and this weird Chinese Rice Dumpling thing for lunch at the nearby shopping mall and made my way home thereafter via the bus with the shorter route, it was so much faster.
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Another thing I did today was going for my first Remedial Training.
Decided since I had an interview in the morning, I might as well take a day off from work and try and clear up this burden as quickly as I could.
There isn't really much information online about how RTs are planned or what actually happens during RT, I've gone for RTs in the past during my BMT days, but I'm an ICT now and I was pretty sure the system would be very different now, especially so with the new revised stations, and since I couldn't get any info about it online, I had to find it out first hand.
Turns out the way RT is organised quite similar to IPT, another type training ICTs can go for should they opt not to take their IPPT because take also fail. IPT is similar to RT except one only has to go for 10 sessions to clear their window for the year rather than 20 sessions of RT. I was too lazy during my IPPT window to do that, so now I have to pay the consequences with 20 RTs.
I reached the camp pretty much on time, got through security check and went straight to join the queue to register myself, I have gone to Maju for my IPPT many months back with a friend before, I was the weaker species and he managed to pass his, that's why I'm going through this ordeal alone, but I roughly knew how the registration would go and where I had to go, what I didn't know though was how the RT sessions was going to work.
When it was my turn to register, I passed the counter person my NRIC, he proceeds to scan it into the system and then ask me....
"Which colour tag?"
Being my first time going through this brand new ICT RT, I didn't really understood what he was asking, and he doesn't even bother to explain to me what he meant, so he just passes me a tag from color that still had the most available and send me on my way.
Before heading out to the area where everyone was waiting, I went to put my bag in the locker, found an opened one and stash all my items in, my wallet, my phone and my bag, set the combination and walked out to wait with everyone else.
After a few minutes of just standing around, I realized I don't actually know what my locker number was, I was such a fucking idiot because I was so busy trying to get the combination right I completely ignored the locker number. I quickly went back to the locker and kinda just stared at the wall of lockers, hoping one of them will click with me, I knew it was in one of the lockers that was at my eye level, but I didn't know which one it was exactly, so I just randomly went up to one and dialed in my combination and lo and behold, I managed to find my locker on the first try, upon finding my locker, I proceeded to closed the locker again and made sure to remember the locker number before heading back out to the waiting area.
I had thought the tags were to categorize us by age because the counter guy had just nonchalantly passed me my tag after looking at my IC, but that wasn't the case because guys who looked my age weren't ALL carrying the same coloured tags as me and older looking guys who were definitely not my age were wearing the same coloured tags as I was.
One by one, the instructors starting calling out the coloured tags and one by one, the waiting area started to clear up. Finally my colour tag was called and we were instructed to head to the equipment room to take a medicine ball and a kettle bell weight.
As I exited the equipemnt shed, I noticed, glued to the the window of the registration counter I was at earlier is a piece of paper with 5 horizontal bars of different colors printed on it, Red, Blue, Yellow, Green and Orange. Upon closer inspection, I quickly realized it was the different training option that were available for us to choose, and the colour tag I had been given was the training type I was avoiding.
I had read about the new IPT system on the internet and I knew of the different training that were being offered for IPT takers, I just didn't know at that time that RT would be the same, but what I knew was that out of all the different training they offered, the one that I definitely didn't want to be in was the metabolic training because I wanted to train on my running, not on my strength and endurance, I don't need those, I'm not a tank trying to absorb hits for my team mates in an MMO, I'm just a NSMen who wants to clear his IPPT so he doesn't have to go for 20 sessions of RT.
The colours of the tags and their respective training are as follow...
Red - Running (What I wanted and needed)
Blue - Power and Endurance Training (What I didn't want and need at all)
Yellow - Push Up and Sit Ups (Not necessary for me)
Green - Weight Loss (I don't think RT has this option but IPT has and I don't have any weight that needs losing)
Orange - Sports Games (I don't play sports and I don't intend to start anytime soon)
Out of all the tags I could have been given, the guy manages to pass me the one I wanted the least, the blue one.
When I realize what I had just sign myself up for, or what the guy had signed me up for, it was just an immediate rush of sianess.
Before we actually started, the instructor actually told us that the blue tag was the least popular out of all the other tags, and when asked who were the first timers, more than 50% of us raised up our hands because more than 50% of us weren't really aware we had any choice in the matter.
We had to grab a medicine ball and a kettlebell from the equipment room and those items were going to be a part of our tools to help us in the circuit training called "The 300", and all the exercises related to "The 300" were written on the whiteboard by the training instructor.
A total of 10 different exercises ranging from push ups to swinging the kettle bells to bouncing the medicine ball really hard against the floor.
When I first saw "The 300", I thought we had to do each exercise 300 times. 300 push ups, 300 jumping jack with medicine balls, 300 ways to make sure I lose focus, swing the kettle bell between my legs and crush my own testicles in the process. Luckily, that was not the case and we only had to do each exercise 30 times,
30 reps x 10 exercise = 300
30 push ups was easy, everything else after that was torture. I'm so fucking weak I didn't even manage to complete everything, I just skipped ahead after the first 4 because I actually lost track of all the type of exercise I had to do, the whiteboard with all the exercise written on it was at the far end corner of the training shed and not within my view able distance, so I tried my best to do as much as I could, but after a while, I just couldn't anymore, skipped right to the last exercise, not bothering to do all 30 reps and then just sat down and waited for everyone else to be done.
By the time I had cooled down and my heart rate was starting to normalise, the session was over. It actually went by relatively quickly. The instructor wanted to get the whole thing over as soon as possible, and he succeeded.
It really wasn't as bad as I thought, it's nice to have a good sweat once in a while because the only sweats I've been getting later and the ones that really bring out my body odor. Even though I wasn't really doing much with my leg muscles for that session, for some reason, those muscles are the ones that are getting sore.
I will be having another session on Sunday, this time in the morning and this time, I will know exactly which colour tag to take. My legs are probably going to get extremely sore after that session though.
One session down, 7 more to go and hopefully I can pass the first RT-IPPT so I can finally clear this window and move on the my next one.
