going on house visits also gives me the opportunity to work with 'collectors of land revenue' from our operational unit, who are often older male officers in their 50s (i think) so in a sense it's also like a totally different 'crowd'; these officers have been at this for so long that they are really proficient in explaining things in dialect and malay to residents! and so thanks to them i am sometimes saved from situations whereby my limited capabilities in hokkien fail me :P also, though i don't know them very well personally and may never get the chance to given our very infrequent contact; it is not difficult to tell that they are good decent folks. today i finished early and so could go home... then it was raining.. and dark.. and i wasn't too sure where i can take a taxi from... then Mr XX (though it was drizzling) somewhat insisted on walking me to the road where i could hail a taxi home... the only thing that prevented him from doing that was perhaps this elevated platform from which i had to jump down from... which if he followed suit he would have been unable to get back to the void deck where all the others were.... yeah anyway, was quite touched by this little fatherly act of kindness... :)

i like the occasional ''frontline" aspect of my job. which puts me in contact with our customers, ie. HDB flat owners... i've come to realize that most of the SERS flat owners we deal with are really not very well off... thus work unwittingly gives me a rare opportunity to interact with the less privileged members of society. i'm still too new to be able to answer ppl's queries effectively or very accurately, but i'm trying to get better. sometimes officers have to bear the brunt of these ppl's complaints/gripes; and it can be rather demoralising to have ppl blame you for policies that you had no part in drawing up; but nonetheless it's just interesting in my opinion to listen to such feedback. well... i suppose i'm still new and the novelty of such frontline duties has yet to wear off... but i hope that i wun become jaded with time, but instead become more familiar with policies i need to know well, so as to be as helpful as possible to members of public in need of info they really ought to be aware of. feel that policies have gotten so complicated and I have the responsibility to make things as understandable as possible to everyone; and esp the illiterate and elderly. alas, i don't even hav everything at my fingertips yet. so need to first work on that!