In between start and end

Greetings from an office girl who's eating her tuna sandwich when everybody's out for lunch. Hashtag takretisocial.

Started my first day of intern the day before before yesterday (25/6) and today's the fourth. Fun fun fun. No. Well the place is nice. Small but not too boring. A different environment. Everyone here mostly brings own laptops. It's a non-bumiputera company meaning many of them aren't Malay. Malay is such a minority that the surau is literally made up of 2 cupboards forming an 'L-shape' against the wall just so it can fit a sejadah. Told my mum bout it and she told me, "Kira baik lagi la ada 'surau' kat your kind of company. Most companies like that takde pun surau tau."

K ma.

They have a pantry. Got oven, fridge, coffee machine and all we can take for free. Haa makan la makan banyak-banyak time kerja. Pastu jangan gi tandas asyik buang air jerr *points finger at self*.

Gladly, they have a lot of interns here... surprisingly. It's a small company so all departments are basically breathing the same air. But the place isn't square so we can't really observe everyone. There is a girl I like to look at though. She is a graphic design intern and like my graphic designer friend, her vibes is truly similar. The way she dress, the fact she owns a Macbook and a Kanken and just her presence in general. I'm just interested on how graphic designers work... It seems really cool.

Unlike me, an IT-but-soon-to-be-a-marketing intern who have to perform data entry and be a true office worker. I like the fact I get to run away from coding and the IT part I used to see a lot in uni. I get to learn marketing stuff now. Very interesting in my perspective. Yea ofc I would like to learn more on coding but tbh, I kinda wanna take that slow and not hurt my pea brain so much during this 10 weeks of my sem break.

On the bright side, I get to do lots and lots of research which is also what I am good at. My whole experience of landing the job was to do exactly that anyway. Customising each and every resume to fit the applied company and later learning about them for the interview. Sokay gurl, I got this.

Also, knowing more about the platforms this company use and at the same time be more knowledgeable in the current technological growth. My supervisor is fairly nice but she is always busy so she asked another person to handle me whenever she couldn't. So technically I got 2 supervisors, which can be confusing at first since I have to ensure both parties are aware of what I'm doing.

Everything else is nice. So far, I like this kind of working life. Definitely different from my other part time jobs which require loads of labour work and social interaction smh. 

I'm now stressing on a little bit of researching and calling people up, but still fairly simple tasks. Next week I'll be shifting to other more research task so hopefully it gets interesting. Also, I was told my company is having a campaign in August and since I'll be here til then who knows maybe I'll also be involved in a REAL office project?! Later, if it turns out great I can include it in my resume as well... maybe? Hopefully, insyaAllah.

Dropping by,

Melynn.

On an end note, here's a toilet notice I read after dropping my bomb in that particular toilet.

Greetings from my hospital bed.

Note: I started writing this post the night I got admitted, but got lazy to finish the post right after so I ended continuing it much later.

Let me just explain briefly on what happened to me recently. Initially, I was probably in the same situation as few of those people who's immune system deteriorate over the last teenage years... I got sick. It started with the usual fever and just the feeling of dying. I didn't wanna get out of bed, but that happens all the time so I assumed it was not a big deal.

3 days before my first final paper - the 28th of May, I came home from our 3am study session with a sudden ear disturbance. Since I've spent the whole night "studying" at my faculty, I was ready to sleep when I got home. But I couldn't. My fever spiked up that morning but that wasn't the worse case, I woke up with a sudden (and horrible) ear pain. The pain was no joke. It literally felt like a stone was pushed into my ear. Rolled on the bed like mad, balled my eyes out until I cannot anymore, Google search and only to find people who can relate to my pain on YouTube yet gave advices I couldn't use, asked my housemates for tea tree oil since people on the internet told me it would work but no one had it so boohoo, placed a heating pad on my ear to shift the pain onto the heat and those are just the few struggles from a bird's eye view.

Sometime around noon, my ears suddenly excrete what happened to be blood. So I ended up with a bloody ear. Ok probably not that extreme, there was blood but slightly watery. Then a real bad headache followed. You know the feeling of seeing the world spinning? Yeah exactly that feeling suffering.

Cut to the chase, I went to the clinic and was prescribed some antibiotic and paracetamol along with an ear drop. Shoutout to Ikha and Yumi for going through all that trouble finding a clinic and sticking through (I know you read this Yuan Min). I just needed to survive the finals week with those prescription before I get a proper checkup at a hospital in my home state.

Finals went by pretty unharmed, though I had trouble listening when people are on my right side talking (since the pain is in my right ear) and whenever someone talks through a microphone, I wished people could just skip the announcements altogether. It was that bothersome. Other than that, no further pain was encountered. Alhamdulillah.

I reached home, told my parents everything I went through in detail and the next day my mum booked a hospital appointment for me. Since we suspected it was an ear infection, going to a physician won't settle things and it was definitely meant for a specialist consultation. Previously, I actually had an ear infection back in 2012. Coincidentally, my mum found the same doctor who did the procedure for my ear back then as she was booking for an appointment in a different hospital. It was like deja-vu. Just in a different time, at a different place.

That doctor told me I had a mucus in my middle ear and it's currently stuck so it couldn't get out the natural way. That thing isn't hardened, it just remain sticky inside. People call it 'glue ear'. Technically, it is behind my eardrum and that was what caused my slight deafness. We found out I had about 30% hearing loss on my right ear because of this (after going through some tests). Usually caused by flu and when it is not treated properly it could end up in the ear since the canals are pretty much connected with the nose. It is more common in children. The doctor said 5% of children usually get this and lol guys, I'm practically called a child.

Also,

Wrong body ke apa /sweat

I ended up agreeing to do a simple procedure of inserting what the doctor called 'gromet' which basically is a tiny hole that allows additional air to aid with the ventilation inside my ear. I got myself admitted due to some circumstances but most of the time, this procedure don't even need the patient to go through admission and could just go under daycare. 

Anyhow, I did get admitted. And let me tell you, this hospital is lowkey a hotel. It's a private hospital currently known as Avisena Specialist Hospital, but previously known as Darul Ehsan Medical Centre (DEMC). From the front desk to the hospital room, yo this place is really out of the usual. They got a freaking bell boy to bring us to the room. How fancy is that?

Not to mention, they're very Muslim-friendly and have one of the best hospital services I've ever seen. The costs too are pretty reasonable for a private service.

The procedure went well and I'm still currently on medication - some pills, ear drop and nasal spray. But I'm all good. My ear is getting better. I am able to hear close to my normal hearing. I still hear some echos but I'm pretty sure it'll get better.

Throughout this whole experience, I honestly had that "I think I'm going deaf" thought. I thought that I might need a hearing aid for real. And maybe put all my sign language knowledge to good use lol.

Due to this, I actually got a gist of what hearing loss felt like and it happened to be very annoying. Imagine able to clearly see someone talking right in front of me but I could barely hear what that person says, then constantly having to ask them to repeat. That really annoys me just as much on top of feeling really sorry. Plus, noises tend to sound louder. Like the noises really overpower the entire space so I hate noisy people even more because of it. Though aku pun bising gak sebenarnya.

That pretty much sums up my whole experience. Stay healthy people. Hospital bills aren't cheap!