Tiresome Stupidity

At long last, this week will be Welcoming and Orientation Week, after which I no longer have to worry about people withdrawing their application from hall, and receiving bits of incomplete info about those coming to replace them. Let's just say we have an idiot of an Office of Students Affairs. We receive lists of freshmen from them that are very much useless, as they give us name and genders of everyone, but with the PRC freshmen details do we get the contact numbers. These are MOE scholars that have already been in Singapore from half a year to one and a half years. So of course by now they have Singaporean numbers.

But the list of Singaporean freshmen doesn't have any contact numbers! It is exceedingly hard to fathom how we can have contact numbers of the Chinese students, but none for Singaporeans! So we have to compile one by one through emails. But that's not enough! They give us details of several scholars in different batches, so we have to constantly update our lists of total freshmen. Needless to say, the list of Singaporean Scholars given to us has nothing to allow us to contact them at all, no emails addresses or contact numbers.

Now why is this so crucial? This is because we, as the Orientation Committee, will be contacting the freshmen with emails, to inform them of the dates of our Orientation as well as to get the date of check-in so that we can ensure that they get rooms that are clean and well distributed. What does well distributed mean? It means all 5 block groupings have about the same ratio of local and international students, seniors and freshies.

We will also assign buddies, ie committee members, to each freshman, so that if they have any questions or problems they can approach them. We will also be there to assist when they check-in, carrying their luggage and showing them places they need to know like the toilets and laundrette. They also have the function of answering any questions regarding courses, which means freshman and senior pairs should ideally be by course, nationality and lastly gender. Of course, the list we get doesn't have Majors listing too except for the few international freshmen, so now its just random allocation. I can't believe how idiotic OSA can be.

Then there's the problem of some idiots that don't vacate their rooms on the dates stipulated. We have residents who only stay here for the vacation period, and they should have moved out by last Monday. But we in the vacation committees can only move into our semester rooms during the weekend, as during the weekdays we are fully packed from morning till night with our preparations. And there is a day assigned for PRC freshmen check-in as they come together in a group. So we had to vacate the rooms they will be taking by Monday, so that on Tuesday when they get the rooms it would be cleaned beforehand.

Well, PRCs get all double rooms as MOE scholarship covers their accommodation only for double rooms. If they get a single room they would have to pay $525 by themselves each semester. I was staying in a double room for the vacation. My future room was being occupied by the previous year's resident as he too couldn't move into his new room as another person was there up till Monday. And he was attached to the hospitals, so he too couldn't shift his stuff during the day.

My other roomates faced the same problem too. We could not move during the weekend, and while people had the leisure and luxury of moving in during the weekend, we ended up having to move in late into the night until the early morning. Why was there such a bad management, that the vacation residents could not have vacated the rooms by last Friday, so that all of us could have moved in by the weekend?

It was all due to someone who only has a screechy crow as a voice. That blasted fool thought that a single day was enough for the previous resident to move out, the cleaner clean the room, and we move into our rooms. Obviously she has never moved a single finger in her life before, so how would she know the difficulty of moving rooms each semester. This pathetic low life even dares to say that it happens every year, and if the previous years succeeded in doing so, what's wrong with this year? It basically shows that she has no brains at all, not even an ounce. She just knows how to scream at the Office staff while never solving the problem at hand, but compounding it with her senseless statements and remarks. When I was there to confirm with the staff regarding which of the rooms were currently occupied by those leaving late, she eavesdropped and then came out of her office and said that she never liked students to interfere with office matter. When I asked her when we could get the keys on Monday, she replied that I cannot set a time for them, that it may be ready any time, so we were to check at different times.

We decided this year that a balloting system, or random draw this year for allocation of rooms to the PRCs would be more fair then letting them choose their own room. The reason we are even doing this is because last the Secretariat handled it last year. I can't believe how such an important matter like room allocation can even fall to us, the Orientation Committee. I can see no reason really why we should be doing it. And another distinction from last year would be that they were paid for doing so, but this year some medusa doesn't want to spend money that isn't hers, so we are like free labour, because we help out at the Office by answering queries by freshmen regarding Office matters, sort out room matters for the holiday committees and we even help to do their admin work and PASS THEM THEIR ROOM KEYS!

Another thing that happened was during the PRC Mass Check-in, she was supposed to give a briefing to the students between 9 to 9.30 am. But when we hauled the luggage from the bus and arranged them according to person, seated them down in the roomate pairs, given them queue numbers, then went to the office to tell her that she could give her briefing, she WASN'T THERE! She was HAVING BREAKFAST OUTSIDE!

So what else could we do but give out the forms the students were supposed to fill and assist them in that. We had a mic prepared for her to use for her briefing, but as she was not there, we used it to coordinate the students in their form filling. Half an hour later, she suddenly appeared and screamed at us, because she thought we were doing her briefing when in fact, we were just doing the forms. She said we were overriding her, and if they were not registered how could they join our Orientation? Then she went off into her office and sat there the whole time, not doing a single thing with the PRCs, after dragging them from being seated in the dining hall to lining up in front of the Office. She refused to listened to our explanations, saying that she will talk to us when she wants to. That day there were 27 PRCs. The next there were 42 coming.

Anyone who has seen a PRC with their belongings know that they have tons of luggage. Each person has at least 6 large luggage items, with girls sometimes doubling that. So we needed a large open space to separate the luggage in an orderly manner. But the 'intelligent' being forced us to leave the luggage in front of the Office, as we 'defied' her orders the day before.

GAH, SUCH A PISS-OFF!