NEW COLLEAGUES

Cat and Lucy are our new colleagues who just joined us recently.

Cat is temping as our admin assistant before she begins uni life, and she also takes on the role of receptionist. She has been diligently answering incoming phone calls, transferring them to the respective staff and taking down messages for us when any of us are not around. Auntie Grace has given her tons and tons of unwanted documents to shred and she has been shredding faithfully. A very fast and motivated worker indeed, does things 'chop chop' and is picking up the Japanese language too. I exchanged MSN add with her on her second day of work, and enjoyed chatting with her. Just found out from her today that 'Neko' means cat in Japanese. Audrey says this sounds much better than 'Meow' (with a deeper intonation), which also means cat in Vietnamese. Interesting :)

Lucy, our Social Work Assistant... she came on 15 May and is sitting where Khee Ling used to sit. Yesterday, she started on the task of taking all IR (information and referral) calls and/or walk-ins and will be doing so for the next 3 months, just like what I did when I first joined. The respective IR duty officers will be there for her to consult or to be with her when she does all that.

Because yesterday was Lucy's first attempt at taking IRs, and because I happened to be the duty officer during that timing, I was given the task to supervise her by listening in to the conversation while she speaks to the caller and to also process & give my feedback and observations after that. That was what Kumar used to do with me too, so it felt a bit different with the role change. But it was a very fun and rewarding experience I would say. We actually sat on the carpeted floor in the counselling room to debrief after the call. And half of the time, I was trying to think "What questions should I ask her?", "How I should ask her?", "How did Kumar, Fiona and Hazel use to process with me?".... nostalgia...