My brain stop clicking and my body decided to lock me in my bed till 4 pm today. That is almost 12 hours of sleep. Exceptionally rare on a Saturday. The whole week of tension, madness and self inflicted frustration and a sudden downpour on Thurs' noon has taken a toll on my shrinking body. I am eating less these days cos I swim during lunch, by eating less I meant not eating lunch but a heavier breakfast and a munch from whatever I can find in my office drawer or the miserable pantry.
My need to look thinner is not because I worked in a image crazy design house like the Runway in The Devil wears Prada. I want to lose a little more weight so that I dun have to buy too much clothes all the time. This tiny outlet I have worked for the past two years only have two and a half staff. My senior designer and myself, and a boy whom my boss hired to help her with minor paperwork.
My senior designer, a wonderful and friendly individual, cannot do filing to save his life and he still has document from two years back sitting on his desk. He sometimes dun remember where he placed them and ask if I know. The last time I got mad with him is after my long two weeks reservist. I returned to office to discover he has left a pile of unknown and badly named file icons on my mac desktop. When asked if can I trash them, his answer was "I am not sure if I save them separately on my mac." I went silent on that. My way of handling my frustration is either I scream at you or I go silent. If I scream at you, that means I am trying to communicate (in a very bad way). If I dun, I am telling you I am really not interested to tell you (after the tenth time) that I am mad and hope you will learn. That was it. He never learn. It should be very easy to work in such a small design house where there are only two designers. Again, in such small office and being him such a good person to have around, I can be very patient with him. And sometimes, I have to be his blast barrier when my boss gets upset with him, simply because I think he is a nice chap and I dun want to see him to pack and leave.
We can make bloody racists remarks about each other and ourselves. Sometimes when I teased him by stating my conditions when promised to help him in something, he complains and I retorted "I am a Chinese! You expect me to help without rewards?" A few months ago, he finally bought himself a Mac desktop and was telling me about his new machine. I looked at him and replied coldly "Did they give you a box to carry it around with you huh?" while replying an email on my powerbook.
My boss, this lady whom I never really figured how old she is and why she used the word "my girlfriends" so loosely is a pen sized woman. A woman who will fall sick when she is on holiday and filled with energy when she works late night. When I first joined the company, she will pace up and down the short passageway to check on me. About a year later, she stop doing that and very comfortable to let me do what I want and manage the projects and leave me to handle my senior designer. Perhaps, like what she said, I learnt fast because I came into the company with clean slate. Completely clueless how does desktop publishing work but quick to absorb. We got closer and understood how we work after the crazy two weeks working on the Marina Bay Sands IR project. At one point, after working for 48 hours, I was so fed up with the work and I walked out of the office to have dinner with my friends. Returned to work through the night after I calmed down. I can tell that she started to appreciate me more after the mad weeks, especially she realised there is someone else who can work 72 hours in the same clothes like her. After the office admin staff who has been there for 5 years left in Dec, my boss told me that she hope I won't tender my resignation too soon. We had a verbal agreement that I will work for her for two years. I am 3 months away from it.
A graphic designer is no glamourous job and I am glad I am in a company that handles big corporate clients instead of fashion magazines. Imagine you still have to look your best at 72 hours and do air kisses. Not for me. And yet, what I am doing is not really designing. Corporate clients have very strict rules about everything about how to use their logos and fonts. Every issue of the magazine I am doing must have the same style yet look different. Orphans and widow are the first thing I know on my job and before I know it, I am picking them up on local newspapers. My job is different from consumer stuff. The challenge is to present a corporation in the same style regardless if the publication is read in Singapore or Oslo. Of course, there is also impractical clients. One of them, from a local healthcare corporation will take leave, report sick or MIA for one week and then email me stuff at 5pm and expect to see the visual the next morning. She will end her emails with "I am sorry that I have to rush you for it". It did not take me too long to realise she probably save the sentence under an email signature titled "Look like you are really apologetic" After the second time she used that on me, I learnt not to send her files too quickly because she will take her own bloody time (aka two weeks) to sit on my visual and then go through the next cycle of emails with "I am sorry" attitude. The best part is, she will send me images of 1 x 1 cm big and want me to think of how to do them for a A4 size cover. Or fit a 4 pages article into a two pages spread complete with big pictures and bold title. Is she dumb? Or she think people read with a magnifying glass?
I guess this is the first time I wrote extensively about my work and my colleagues. Nothing to write about the other half staff because most of the time, he looked uninterested in anything and I suspect my boss pays him worse than MacDonalds.
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