Bond... Calamity Bond

So I went to two job interviews today.

As an aside, you know, I was in this same predicament last year but the difference is that now, I don't feel lost anymore. I'm confident of myself and I truly believe I can handle anything.

The first one I went to was for the worldwide investigator job. I actually found it weird that I was applying for such a job. I couldn't believe I said it when the girl at the front desk asked what position I was applying for. I could actually imagine me looking at myself with a weirded out look.

Heh.

It was a tough interview. I was huddled in to sit in their conference room at their conference table, on the conference room chair while they were in the middle of a conference.

The boss was like a mafiaso. Scary-looking, with body fats almost bursting at the seams and screaming to get out.

He interviewed me right there and then. He had this habit of asking "why?" suddenly from outta nowhere and I found me asking myself "why the fuck what!?" a few times but of course I didn't show it. Each time it happened I took 3.4792 seconds on average to recover, apologized and asked him politely to expand on whatever he wanted to know.

I carried myself with dignity. I may fall but when I fall, I wanna fall down in flames.

I stated that I knew Mandarin so he asked me how well my Mandarin was. I said I have a fair knowledge of the language. He nodded at his right hand man who was on his left and the guy started to ask me something in Mandarin. I replied him back in Mandarin.

He was asking what my job scope is in my current job.

At that point, I had two things on my mind. Thank God for my bad boy days of yore when I hung out with a Chinese gang and also thank God that the guy's Mandarin wasn't really fantastic either so he made me look good. He couldn't possibly say my Mandarin was bad. Besides, no one else at the table knew what we were on about.

He nodded back at Mr Mafiaso.

Whew!

Mr Mafiaso told Mr Right Hand Man who was on his left to let me handle the operations. And then he asked if I had any questions. I said yes. I wanted to know what the job scope was, the working hours, my remuneration where I would be based and so on.

Mr Mafiaso again nodded at Mr Right Hand Man who was on his left.

Mr Right Hand Man said I basically have to manage the stable of investigators they have (cool! a promotion even before I started!), process some reports, I work 9am to 8pm from Monday to Saturday, I shall be based... indoors (bleah) but I'll have my own desk (woo! my own desk, finally!) and my salary is not an issue, but, there shall be a three year bond in place (gasp!).

I told them I needed to think about it and will decide by tomorrow.

Before I left, Mr Mafiaso hastily added, "I like you. You seem to be different from other Malay guys."

"I've heard that a few times before. Thank you."

I proceeded to my second interview with the matchmaking agency.

As it turned out, the lady who spoke to me had to attend to something else and asked her partner to attend to me instead.

He was nice and pleasant but the guy didn't know squat. He was just helping out he said and he was treating this as a preliminary interview and whatever queries I wanted to ask had to wait until the lady comes back... on some other day.

Nice, really nice.