Now why do I have to do payroll in Bintulu? You see, we have all these foreign workers at our Bintulu project sites that thumbprint in to work daily, and it's all connected to the computer system in Bintulu site office.. and it somehow can't be imported to the Kuching computer.. which means.. everything has to be calculated in Bintulu and then brought out to Kuching to do payment..
And since when do I do payment for foreign workers?? It's not part of my job scope! Well, I took upon this role when our usual lady resigned because she too did NOT WANT TO GO to Bintulu.
So anyway, I flew out on the 28th February and had tickets to return to Kuching at 9pm on the 2nd March 2013. I hate flying so early in the day.. messes up my body clock with a 7am flight! Anyway, got there and started getting to business.. counting and entering hours work to make sure that it matches what the foreign workers have in their time cards. The whole day was spent doing that.. and then we took the long drive back to the hotel (it's about 1 hour and 15 minutes drive!)...
I DID NOT WANT to stay at the hotel myself.. thoughts of ghastly ghosts ran through my mind the entire day.. not sure if I wrote what happened the last time, but I was given a corner room that's way too big for one person.. and when I walked into the room, all the lights AND the television was turned on.. which is fine.. except for the fact that the key card wasn't plugged into the wall, which meant that no electricity was supposed to be in the room!!!!!
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| Come to meeeeeeee.............. |
Imagine if I had walked in to see this scene from Poltergeist! Hahaha.. luckily I didn't, but it sure didn't stop the goosebumps from raising on my arms!
This trip, I was given their standard room... thank goodness.. everything was switched off, the way it should be. I flipped on all the lights and took a shower (a quick one.. you never know!) and high tailed it out of the room to the closest bar and waited for my colleagues to pick me up for dinner! Thank goodness I was exhausted by the end of the night that after dinner, I just got to the hotel room and collapsed in bed and fell asleep until 2am.. when I startled awake thinking I was late for my 7am pickup to go to work.. yes.. they work THAT early in Bintulu.
Second day, I got really pissed off with my colleagues.. they were supposed to send me the workcards on Friday.. and I waited all day until I finally got through to his phone and he said he was at 'Bakun Junction'.. which was apparently 3 hours away from our site office.. so much for finishing the calculation that day and catching an earlier flight on Saturday. I was so pissed I needed to cool down, and that's when alcohol came in.. we went to eat native food where we had wild boar pansur, terrapin and bats! It was delicious, especially the pansur. I was again exhausted after a full day, but my colleagues insisted on going for a few more drinks, so fine.. I met up with them after a good shower, where I was so dying to go lay in bed and fall asleep.. but I'm glad we met up for drinks, because I had a lovely 2 500ml cup of my favourite Hoegaarden! Was buzzed enough to fall asleep instantly when I got back to the hotel.
Day three.. mad rush to the office. Mad rush to finish everything off.. got the work cards from my colleague an spent the next two hours keying it in. Then the final part.. to get all the bank accounts ready (it's all in the system) and NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.......... bank accounts were keyed in wrongly for some of the foreign workers, which means that I had to go back and find each person's bankcard to key in the right bank account number.. damn these shoddy jobs done by other people! I was finally done at 12.30pm.. just in time for lunch.. AND just in time to catch the 4.30pm flight out of Bintulu. It transits through Sibu but I was desperate to get away from Bintulu I would prefer to take a longer route back than to wait til my original flight time.
OMG.. I was ecstatic to be home.. I would have kissed the tarmac if I could! Sean so rightly put it.. "It sounds like Been - to - loo"...
And thus was my exciting week of nothing more than payroll in a shit town!
