Hydrant Day

Some days you are the mutt, some days you are the hydrant.

I went to SP earlier for a temporary job assignment. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

I told the counter staff that I received a call from them last week. I was told to come for a temporary assignment from 2 to 5 today and another one on the 23rd. However, she claimed that she called me yesterday to inform me that the date has been changed to this Friday.

I was certain that I didn’t receive any calls and I explained this to her. However, she still insisted I had acknowledged the change in date. I checked my phone’s call log and found no received/missed calls from them. I explained my case to the staff and she checked through her files.

To my surprise, she asked me for my student card.

“Student card?’, I asked.

‘Yes, are you a student here?’

‘Was’, I replied. ‘About eight years ago.’

Taken aback, she asked me if I was there for an interview. I told her yes. The she said if I was applying for a job position, to which I nodded.

She flipped through a ring-binded folder on her desk and asked me if I was here for some CPI course.

‘CPI?’

‘Yes, a part-time course. Only for students.’ She asked me if I applied for a job online. I said yes, but I couldn’t remember if I had actually applied for a position in SP. I asked her to check again.

She asked me for my name and I told her. She flipped to a page in her folder. I told her that it was not my name on the page and told her my name again. I also noticed the phone number besides the name was nearly identical to mine.

I figured out what was going on and I explained the situation to the poor clerk. Her colleague dialed the wrong number and got mine instead. Even so, this misunderstanding would not have had occurred if the bloke she was trying to reach didn’t have a name that sounded similar to mine. “Soh Wee Hiang” does sound like ‘Liu Weixian’. I had picked up her call when I was walking along a busy road and the traffic meant that I could not make out the pronunciation very clearly. This was possibly compounded by her mispronunciation of my name (people get my Chinese name wrong half of the time.) Eager for a job, I had agreed, remembered the date and somehow forgot to clarify the details. One thing led to another and I wasted my time as a result.

The clerk and I had a little laugh over it. I looked at the bloke’s number and every digit is exactly the same, save for the fifth one (Contrast XXXX9512 to XXXX3512). The coincidence was uncanny and before I left I asked the clerk about the course the bloke is taking.

‘Triple E’, came the reply. Damn! He is even in engineering as well!

In the end I returned home empty-handed. I went to the betting outlet and bought $2 Big on 3512 and the first four digits of our number for this Wednesday’s draw. I have a sneaking feeling I’ll hit something.

I need to do something about my name. Weixian is not exactly a very good name, considering that people tend to mispronounce it. I have been called, ‘Weixiang’, ‘Wee Xian’, ‘Wee Xiang’, ‘Wenxian’, ‘Wenxiang’ and other strange and funny names. I am sick of it.

From now on I should stop using my Chinese name. I shall get everybody to call me Cayden. The Lass got me this name half a year ago but I have very rarely used it. It is easily pronounced: KAY DEN. I don’t think anybody will mispronounce it but you never know. I am so frustrated I’m just going to give it a shot.

KAY DEN. Repeat. KAY DEN.