Going through Elie Wiesel's gothic and expository account of the holocaust in his widely read novel Night gave me chills. Afterall, most of his dreadful personal stories took place during winter in a Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. I read this book long way back in college, but I felt the same chill when I was told I am required to attend a bootcamp at work. I know concentration camp and bootcamp are entirely two different things, but I have taken semantic elevation so close to my heart I can only draw gothic,unnecessary associations.
It turned out to be a programming bootcamp, an intensive training program where new hires are taught how to go about the process and logic of doing business in the company. It was technical by nature, save for a crash course in Supply Chain Management which, by the way, was something so IE I could easily complete the instructors sentences. The other topics were all technical and designed for the computer savvy, definetly so not me. But what I initially gathered to be an intimidating training program turned out to be fun. Yes, just fun--I couldn't drop the word euphoric for this one because it would sound overboard.
I'm now bent on giving credit to whom it is due, and this time everybody gets it! I believe every participant of the bootcamp has his/her own share of interesting mannerisms and a whole lot of discriminating opinion to any topic, exam and the ludicrous, unfortunate pronunciation slips of a few good instructors. And before I forget, I think it's worth mentioning that we call ourselves Batch Six--nothing fancy with our batch name until you associate it with a famous TV talent search that used to run by batch.
Patty is the sweet lady from Bicol who would switch from Filipino to Bicol in the middle of a conversation. Paolo is the animated guy who is but everything he claims to be--who could forget that I am shy incident? Adet is my college blockmate and former Canon officemate who would religiously update her facebook status with her daily realizations in life about traffic, diet, and arriving an hour early to work. Seated next to her are Jericho and Nelson who love to whisper to each other. Man2 (pronounced Man-Man), on the other hand, is actually a woman. Erika is the genius we won't be surprised if she gets regularized in just a month or two--she loves iced tea and debugging. Patrick is from La Salle I was suprised he's much into jologs stuffs. He usually gets incessant phone calls, perhaps from family, when the weather outside grows ballistic. And there's Jamie, whose lunch-time affairs remain to be top-secret for the batch to uncover. Myron is the Atenista whose juvenile signature gets the most attention. I was glad I learned both his parents are also IE graduates from UP Diliman. And seated next to my left is Hosea who usually arrives in the office with an unwrinkled shirt because he doesn't take the MRT. He's really good at throwing aspersions at anyone, though not coming off offensive but rather funny; he once asked a batchmate if he wrings out his armpits when he noticed the poor guy's wet polo.
Today is our last classroom training day, and that means we will no longer be staying in the same room for the rest of our training program. We will be stationed in our respective departments, and we just cross our fingers we won't succumb to boredom. So long, everyone! See you around!
