E-Journal 1

First and foremost, I would like to talk a little about my company. As you all might know, I'm under the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). I have chosen to be under this department at Terminal 3 (T3) known as Terminal Operations, under the head supervision of Mr. Lek Hi Huak and other supervisors such as Samuel, Wee Loong and Jian Hong to name a few. I report to work everyday at 8.30am, and I am situated in this office which is also called the Terminal Operations Command Centre (TOCC). This department, in short, is in charge of the entire operations in T3. Examples of some contractors that are under this department are Wilson Parking, CISCO (Police), Campaign (Cleaners), FMC (Fault Management Center) etc., and every morning these contractors will have a meeting with the Duty Terminal Managers (DTM) to discuss on issues occurring in the airport. I have been exposed to interesting and weird incidents happening in the airport, for instance, there was a drunken man in the transit and how they dealt with cases like these.

Today marks the end of the 3^rd week of my attachment at CAAS and so far I’ve been given quite a few tasks, with some that are already completed and some are still on-going. Currently, I am dealing with this project that deals with the work signages used in T3. Some examples would be ‘Work In Progress’, ‘Toilet Closed’ etc. I have been assigned to improve on such signages, to standardized all signages and make them look professional, and at the same time create a map for an alternative if certain facility is closed. At the beginning, I would go around the airport to look out for such signs, taking photographs on them and thinking on how I can improve them. As ‘boring’ or ‘useless’ this might sound, I have realized the importance of such signages from the daily morning meetings (also know as TOCC Briefing) I attend every morning at work. I did a draft of these signages and presented to Mr. Lek in about 1.5 weeks and there were many rooms of improvement. I am really looking forward and will sure be very proud if I could see my signages used in T3.

Not long after, I was lucky to have the opportunity to experience a ‘live’ incident. There was this smoking room in which the glass door shattered at the transit area, and immediately I had to work on a sign to indicate that the smoking room is closed and at the same time create a map to show where the alternative nearest smoking room is located. I completed the sign in a day, however, the door was already fixed by the end of the day and had no chance to take my sign for a ‘trial’ test. Other smaller tasks were creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the DTM, writing down minutes during the daily morning meetings, and the most recent task assigned was to update and improve on a PowerPoint presentation for Mr. Lek, taking new photos and updating the slides for his lecture on Terminal Signages. Thus, you can see how important signages can be in the airport.

On the other hand, I do face a certain amount of office politics as well in the office. My colleagues are overall rather nice people, but I guess wherever you are, there will be some people who do not like certain people or how they way they manage and do their work. One way I deal with this when people gossip, I would just listen and then be neutral on my comments. Such issues one should never take sides in order to order to prevent any biased act.


Time passes with them around.