Misadventure.

Me and 2 other friends (Shi Ming & Wong Chyi) went job-seeking. We arrived on our appointment 30 minutes late. A day in the life of a gardener, this whole experience was due... TO GREED.

Boss, a middle-aged, clean-shaven Chinese man, arrived in his lorry with a loadful of plants. He did not take our lateness kindly. We were instructed to unload the plant troughs...

"Why did you carry out so many? I said FOUR... only FOUR - and I mean EXACTLY FOUR."

"I am a DISCERNING person..." He said all this sternly, in English.

With the words drilled into my head, I returned the additional trough to the lorry. I got Shi Ming to sit with him in the front, while Wong Chyi and I clambered up the back of the lorry. The engine started.

The lorry sped away. It was my first time sitting in the back of a lorry. It was hard to get comfortable, squeezing in with the potted plants. Yet I felt a sense of compensation, with the wind blowing in my hair.

'Life is an adventure,' I thought.

We left the old Seletar Airfield. We were somewhere in the 'desolate' north, far away from our homes... We passed by fields of tall grass, from afar, an LRT station, and some shophouses in the town. We found ourselves - in the middle of nowhere at the gate of a private semi-detached house. We could distinctly hear drilling and hammering in the background. It was currently under construction.

This morning started at 6AM where the 'Big 3' met to take MRT from Paya Lebar to the North East Line, Sengkang. On arrival, I forced my friends to forget about punctuality and let's go have breakfast at Compass Point Mc Donalds. I could still taste that delicious Spanish Omelette Bagel in my mouth...

The Boss explained to us, "two of you stay here, one follow me."

We were to conduct weeding! Dig out the black roots of the abundant cyress-grass with a chang-kol. Roots that look like ginseng. Just kidding. It was harrd work and I worked like a communist...

WC and I were talking to each other half of the time. He was on the optimistic side. The supervisor, a men in his 40s laboured away by himself, and called us to help him, every once in a while. Carried fences we did, dug trenches we did...

"At least the working environment here is good," he said.

"Good?" It was questionable. There was a bit of quiet, mild sunlight - yes. The foreign workers labouring away on the house were calling out to each other frequently. Some carried along a radio. There was the occassional singing from a worker.

Three hours passed, we laboured away - without much success in weeding. Boss was disappointed. He drove the work supervisor, me and my friends to the Seletar Food Centre (near the neighbourhood police post).

Back to work, we met a damned salesperson. He said who hired 2 students to do the work? And I was angry - demoralised. I suffered pain from a blister in my right hand. I thought about the pay, all the time! Can I survive this day?

Instant cement - just add water. Twas some yellow sand that turned grey when sprayed with water... Was it clay?

"It is Professionalism. We don't play here." One of his memorable quotes.

We dug a little trench parallel to the wall under call of the supervisor. There, boss laid down pipes with holes likely to seed plants

I avoided eye contact with the boss. He was critical of me. If we were to be sacked, I would be the first to go!

At the end of the day, we sat a bus home. The journey almost erased our toils in the garden, as we discussed whether to return to work tomorrow.

We didn't.