So I have been offered the Interior Stylist position and am very very likely going to be accepting the job offer, this means, the current 2 projects I am running now will be the very last 2 projects I will be running for my current company.
I have given the new company my starting date, which is 19th August, honestly not sure if that is even a realistic date for my projects to complete but there it is, I only gave them that date because I feel like giving a later one would probably make them retract the job offer. As it stands, being given this 2 months, I feel, is really generous of the company.
My projects are going as smoothly as they can go during this period, which is not at all, there are a few delays happening here and there due to workers going for their covid vaccinations as well as my tilers telling me very last minute about materials being insufficient.
They will tell me in the morning that they need something topped up, so I will immediately order for that item to be delivered the next day and the order will end up incurring a small order fee because it is a small order of 1 packet of cement. But then the very next day when I drop by the site, they will tell me another item needs topping up and they also need just 1 packet of that item.
Anyways, yesterday, I was told that some tiles needed to be topped up, so I ordered those tiles immediately in the morning to make sure they could be delivered the next day. Late afternoon comes along and I drop by the site again to check on the progress and the tiler suddenly tells me..
"Actually the amount I ask you to top up for me is not enough, we need about 10 more pieces."
... I tired, but it was way too late to add that order in at that point for next day delivery, so I had no choice but to tell the tile supplier that I will do a self collection for those additional 10 pieces today.
I ask my supplier if I could get the tiles from their Showroom near my office, but she informs me that it has to be collected at their warehouse, so I went to take a look at where their warehouse was located and they had 4 different ones. One in the West and three in the East, the furthest one being at Changi, I then ask her if she could arrange for the collection to be at the West warehouse and she tells me she will check, but because I have been having really shit luck with these projects recently, of course the Warehouse I had to go to to collect the tiles is the one at Changi.
I know I am not going to take a bloody bus all the way there to collect the tiles and then take a bus back, the warehouse is located in the industrial area of Changi, there aren't a lot of public transport to take to get there, plus it's at bloody Changi, I really do not want to spend half the day travelling for 10 pieces of tiles, and with how hot the weather has been, that is crazy talk, so I rented a car.
To be honest, I was quite excited to have a legitimate reason to rent a car, haven't properly driven one in a while, so it took a while to get used to driving again, but thankfully because the car is the same model as the family car I used to drive last time before it was given to my brother, it didn't take too long to get familiarized with the vehicle.
The sheer convivence of having a vehicle is amazing. I get that Singapore is a small country and we have an amazing public transport system, but when I can do all the shit I had to do today under an hour and still stay relatively sweat free, that comfort and convivence is really hard to beat.
If I hadn't rented a car, I would have had to take a 90 minutes train & bus ride to the Industrial area, walk a distant to reach the Tile Supplier's office to get the order sheet, walk probably another 15 minutes on foot to the actual warehouse to collect the tiles under the sweltering heat, and then walk back out again to take the bus, this time with the added weights of the tiles that I have to carry by hand because I can't fit it into my backpack, and endure another 90 minutes ride back to my project site that is in the West where I will have to keep transferring buses and trains.
The car rental was not cheap, but it was worth it, really makes me wish I had a car of my own to drive and it just reminded me how great it was back then when the family car was actually available to be used for scenarios like today.
I will settle for a bike too, would be especially useful for my upcoming reservist in December if I am going to be thrown into the same camp again.
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