Holiday ranting and some car trouble

I'm glad the year is over!

Things weren't going very well for me last December. There were a total of 4 non-working holidays that was on a weekday for the second half of December last year. Plus the weekends, that's just 8 days total until the new year. I should have been at home enjoying the time off from work. Instead, I was on duty at the office during most of the holidays. Bummer! Being on duty doesn't mean I have to report for work the entire day, although it meant waking up very early in the morning to attend a meeting at 7am in the morning. That's everyday. It doesn't matter if it's a weekday or a weekend, a public holiday, or even Christmas, you still have to attend that meeting which goes on for about 1 and a half hours. Working for a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year manufacturing plant meant there should always be somebody on-call 24 hours a day. It's acually composed of a team, each with their own area to look into. If the plant operators encounter any problem, they will call us up and wake us no matter what time of the day it is. And all of that responsibility comes without any extra compensation *sigh*. We used to get a meal allowance during our tour of duty (which lasts for a whole week) but even that small amount of concession was taken away early last month. They told us that our stay in the company's housing compound free of charge is compensation enough. Well, they did provide us with cooking facilities after all. It's a good thing I know how to cook. Sadly, that's not always the case for the other bachelors working at our company. I wasn't actually scheduled to have my duty untill end of February but since the one on schedule was a senior person, well let's just say I was "volunteered" to go on duty during the holidays. Fortunately, my brother accompanied me during my duty through the holidays and my birthday so I wasn't too miserable at the time. We just cooked a lot of festive food and ate, then cooked again then ate again. And so on and so forth... you get the picture heh :)

To make matters worse, a colleague of mine crashed a pickup on my car right after Christmas! It was early in the morning and we were already just about to be late for the meeting. As I was going down the road, I noticed him backing out of his garage. I stopped the car since he may not have noticed me. I pressed on my horn a few times so that he will notice me. He just kept on going and going even when I was pressing the horn continuously at that point. The rear end of the pickup slammed on the front of my car. That finally got his attention. He jumped out of the vehicle and kept on apologizing. I didn't even wanted to look at the damage at first. I calmly suggested we proceed to the meeting and we talk about it later. Perhaps he's feeling just as miserable that morning at having to wake up so early in the morning during the holidays just to attend a stupid meeting. I was doing the minutes of that meeting and I couldn't write straight. My hands were shaking, the full realization of what just happened finally sinking in.

I wish my car gets fixed soon. Up until now I still haven't heard from the insurance people. They were supposed to send someone over to survey the damages.

I just hope this month will be a whole lot better.

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