Subject 15 is showing an increasingly lack of patience and increased agitation after being administered with Test Serum B. Subject was also noted to have increased incoherency when conversing with me.

Hi! I’m fectoryboy and Subject 15 happens to be, yup.. my Plant Manager, Joe. His recent actions have been noted to be increasingly vile towards me mainly attributed after he realized that I’m not just here to play.. but that I’m here to stay..

Oh yeah, everyone would probably thought that I would have quit by now, but no.. I ain’t a quitter..

And, Test Serum B happens to be a recent conversation not too long back when he tried to make small talk with me.

Below is an excerpt (recalled as best as I could)

Joe ‘Hey FB (fectoryboy), how’s everything so far?’

FB ‘er, ok lah.. quite tough but, i kinda like it..’

Joe *tries to hide a look of disgust but only managed to make his face somewhat more contorted* ‘oh, wow.. that’s good, that’s good.. so, tell me, what do you plan to do in the future?’

FB ‘I dunno, maybe take over this plant when my uncle decides to retire I guess’

Joe *tried unsuccessfully to mask a look of shock and horror which, resulted in something that looked like it was caught in between convulsions and grotesque*  ‘what??! oh, ok.. that’s good, that’s good..’

and with that, he walked away without ending the conversation, all the while muttering and mumbling something that sounds like ‘siao liao siao liao..’

Sorry for not being to update the blog any earlier.. Of late, our particular loser has been trying to make me do more.. sigh.. menial labours and OTs in hoping that it would probably forced me to quit.. Undetered, I did as he demanded.. and realizing that it was quite futile, he then stepped up his efforts and tried to make me do multi-tasks like cleaning the toilets and some other lowly stuffs.. well, I had no idea what the other lowly stuffs were that he had on his mind but, guess what.. my uncle decides to make an unannounced visit to his this one plant one day and.. found me cleaning the toilet.. and the next thing I knew was.. I was promoted to QC inspector.. hurhur.. I bet you guys would give an arm or a leg to see that expression on his face after he came out from a meeting with my uncle to inform me of my promotion..

Touché..

—all ye who cast eye upon her shalt yield naught but fever!! ah seng 2009

Anyway, trotted to see the doctor and gotten 2 days mc..
Phew.. I thought that I had busted my chances of getting 2 days from her especially during the part when she asked ‘any phlegm?’ and not being in a particularly good mood I replied saying, ‘yeah.. more than enough to go around’ and that earned me a look of disgust throughout the rest of the consultation..

So.. back home, medicated and whilst waiting for the drowsiness to set in, I decide to write some interesting things I discovered at work..

Some of the most interaction I realized, took place in the changing room. Imagine a Chinese worker trying to talk to a Bangaladeshi (more commonly known as Bangala) and a Sabah Han (natives of Sabah,  can speak a spattering of bahasa melayu but many of them aren’t muslims, still, commonly known as ‘马来仔’)’ .

I almost couldn’t understand the mutated language of Chinese, Malay and English that was fused together so badly that it hurts my ears the first time I chanced upon them and, to those who thought Singlish was bad enough, seriously, I think it would probably kill you..

Thankfully, there are, it seems, only a handful of these fused spatterings that got them interacting. Most commonly used is, ‘没有， 没有’ Chinese as in no. ‘ok’ as in ok, ‘bodoh’ Malay as in stupid.  And finally ‘Ali Baba’ for almost every conversation.

A few examples of a conversation

‘ I 没有 Ali Baba 你 ok?’ probably means I am not bluffing you.

‘I no Ali Baba’ probably means I’m a honest man.

‘你 bodoh cb Ali Baba, I 没有时间了！‘ proably means I am running out of time, stop acting stupid and work faster!

Anyway, ‘Ali Baba’ is associated with almost anything. If they call you a ‘Ali Baba’, most probably, it means you are a thief or a person who is bad or liar.

If they call you a ‘Ali Baba’ at work, it probably means that you are skviing.

In general, Ali Baba means dishonesty or lying or stealing.

Stiffling a grin, I handed one to him and his reply was, ‘hmm.. pretty big, but quite plain’ and that was when I really had to laughed it out..

Baffled, he finally got it when I explained to him that our ‘猪肠粉’ is actually made of flour..

All I heard from him as he walked away was a series of heavily accented chinese vulgarities…

‘Shabbat Shalom unto you as well’

As my body begin groaning with effort from every movement, and when even my well seasoned fingers protested.. I decided to head back to bed and relinquished the fight with gravity…… Gravity won the day.. Hurhur.. Hooray…

It had begun, in the most unlikely manner that the fate of a factory worker boy was decided over a cup of kopi by two aunties.. One of whom is my mum, the other, my auntie.

Seems that my mum has finally gotten tired of me milling around the house doing nothing but finger spamming on the mouse the whole day and so she had arranged for me to work at my uncle’s factory.

‘Oh well’ I thought, it’s at least much better than wasting my life on online games right.. Wrong! I almost died on the first day, it was worst than anything I could imagine. Perhaps my muscles had turned to jelly after all those couch potato acts, perhaps.. then again.. there wasn’t any to begin with..

Anyway, the factory was exactly what I pictured it to be.. Greyish walls, bleak glooming working environment with machines chunking in the background and alcatraz type of security fences (more likely it seems, to keep people in rather than out).

However, inside, it was nothing like what I’ve imagined.. no cute production girls giggling around as they work, no young babes in power suits inside the office.. All that greeted me was one auntie and three.. er.. plain janes (more of an overstatement on my part, but hey.. I’m being a good boy here) and lots of and lots of.. men.. *literally raining men~~ Hallejuah*

The auntie woke me from my trance and brought me to the plant manager, Joe and was given a warm welcome.. but something in his eyes (mockingly, i’m quite certain) tells me I couldn’t make it through the day. A brief intro and tour around the factory soon followed and the next thing I knew, I was plunged into raw materials handling. These are ‘rawr’ materials and they weigh like a tonne each. I was tasked to ‘assist’ three china workers and two bangladeshi, so it actually makes me by defacto, lower ranked than them. The plant manager (PM) gave crap talk like, ‘oh, you’ll need to learn from the basics and understand how our day-to-day operations run and how our raw materials are handled from beginning till they are finished products, (but not forgetting to add) this is what your uncle wanted’..  Smart…. My eyes started to roam around, frantically in search of a familiar sight.. Almost reading my mind, the PM said,’oh, do let me know if you need anything, you do know that your uncle has a few other plants and seldom come over to this one except say, maybe once in a… month’ My heart sank to rock bottom upon hearing that.. The chubby jovial man, my uncle, suddenly seemed so distant..

Resigned to fate, I decided to join in the ranks of men and start sweating it out instead of running off crying to my uncle at the slightest hint of trouble.. ‘It’s good workout, it’s good workout.. no pain, no gain’ These words keep going through my mind, I had to imagined myself in a gym doing endless sets of workouts to prevent myself from going crazy as I transferred packs and packs of raw materials from the wooden pallets to the conveyor belt. After awhile, I could no longer feel my arms, by lunchtime, I could no longer feel myself.. and despite of the short respite I had during lunch, by 5pm I no longer remember my name or where I lived.. I had no idea how I ended up on the bathroom floor.. but as I lay there, fragments and fragments are slowly creeping back..  I muttered a word of thanks to the Jewish God for creating Sabbath and that I do not have to work on Sundays as well..

Dragging myself out of the bathroom, I crawled to bed and soon drifted off to a dreamless sleep..