A morning at [Redacted]

[Redacted] is a research enterprise. I got an opportunity to attach myself to the team that is working on [Redacted], a simulation platform. [Redacted] is part of the [Redacted] interdisciplinary research group.

I arrived in the morning about 9.40 AM. In a possible fore-shadow of the kind of working hours over here, the person at Security informed me about an access card that handled the doors which were locked after 6 PM.

Since I did not have an access card, a person unlocked the door for me when I rang the bell at the entrance to the [Redacted] office.

My project manager had not arrived yet, so I spent several minutes at the reception area. On the coffee table, there were several copies of The Straits Times in a small pile. The Straits Times is a newspaper which has an online reputation of being state-controlled. There was also a magazine which lay un-opened in its plastic wrapping. The stylised font obfuscated its title. ‘Sian times’, it seemed to say to my struggling comprehension.

A person working as a ‘senior software engineer’ walked in. I had met him before, during my interview. He made eye contact with me, and, without breaking his stride, he went into the office. Wordlessly leaving me at the reception area, he had intimated what his responsilibities were (or were not).

Two people were seated a table in the office, facing me. One was consulting the other. ‘We are willing to teach, but you must be willing to learn,’ my project manager had said during my interview. Looking at these two, I wondered whether it was a positive demonstration of behaviour within the team.

My project manager walked into the office as I surfed the Internet using the Wifi network. “Lesson #2: Learn to mind your business,” a heading said on the web-page on my laptop screen, which was navigated to a blog post about personal financial security.

She showed me to a spot at a table, and mentioned the access card.

Across the table, the two people I had seen previously were still on their laptops. The one who had asked the other did so again. I wondered if, like me, she was an undergraduate who was here on a Final-year project. I wanted to feel less alone.

“I’ll introduce you to the team later,” my project manager had assured. I said hi to the two people across the table, and made eye contact. As I did so I thought about the bows that South Koreans did when they met people. I imagined the respect that that would have conveyed. I wondered if that could help with the awkwardness of meeting people for the first time. Convention had its purpose. I was certainly feeling the awkwardness.

I started up the Linux virtual machine on my Windows operating system, and tried to occupy myself with my laptop.

Of the two, one had fair skin, the other being dark of colour. Both appeared Asian. As a vegetarian, I wondered about their diet, and tried to guess their nationality and ethnicity. The one on my left might be Chinese. The one in front of me might be Indian. These were guesses that would not matter very much if the conversation in future was going to be anything like this morning’s: reserved and purposeful.

The space seemed hushed, cold, and dull. The word ‘exciting’ did not seem to fit with how the place looked. With its un-read newspapers and un-used rooms, the word ‘growing’ seemed to suit the place.

Writings on the floor-to-ceiling glass partitions injected some much-needed personality into the place. “Call me 4 lunch” said a scribble on a cubicle partition. ‘Non-beards,’ pointed an arrow to another.

‘Do you wear a hat indoors?’ asked the senior software enginner from earlier. He was smiling. It was a newsboy cap. I thought it could become my trademark. “The cap”. Pushing worries about being a limit to the productivity of the team aside, I thought I could live with that nickname, if I did become known by it.