"Can you hear me?"

It has been a busy and eventful week. My grandma was in the hospital for a surgery, so our whole family has been busy getting in and out to take care of her. The surgery was vey successful and she is recovering in an incredible rate. Her pugnacity – no doubt an indicator of vitality and strength – was evident the very next day of the surgery. I pity whoever shared the room with her – victims included at least two fellow patients and a caretaker. And my grandma stayed for only five days at the hospital.

On a Friday that I was visiting her (okay, more like idling unwillingly and reading uninteresting stories of some family brawls over a gambling tycoon’s fortune), my phone rang and I jumped, because A) I was happy for any beep and ring from my Blackberry because I was on the verge of needing medical attention for my boredom, and B) the number resembled those from Cathay Pacific Airways.

I answered at the second beep with a professional and controlled “hello.”

(Below conversation was in Cantonese)

“Can I speak with XXX (my full name)?” the female caller said.

“Yes, speaking.” I answered. Attentive.

“I’m calling from … ssssss…oouu…we’re…hiiishuji,” she said.

Damn.  The lousy reception made the call inaudible. I dashed out of the room, still clutching the phone at my ear with my brows locked. I could smell the importance of this call.

I said something, kept asking her whether she could hear me, but all she said was that she couldn’t. Then. She hung up.

Phone in my hand, I stared at it for a brief second before calling back. She picked up. But again, same thing happened.

Because of my abrupt department earlier, my family bombarded me with concerns and questions when I returned to the room. I told them that I suspected the call was from CX because they should have called by now if they were going to hire me. In the room, I called again, twice, but was only greeted by the voicemail of extension 2830. Okay, fine. They’ll call again, I told myself.

Indeed, they called on Monday – while I was on a bus. She asked whether I was free to talk and I said yes, because luckily, the bus was quite empty. She said it was going to be a long call; I said okay. She said (more like commanded) I needed to write everything down; I said I was all ready.

She spent the next ten minutes detailing when I’m going to start, what I have to do before the training (such as dying my light brown hair black – hell no! Dark brown is the best I can do – but of course I didn’t share this thought), what I have to wear to the training, how long the rumoured harsh training is for, all the documents and materials I have to bring when I sign the contract, etc.

Even though I said I was all ready when she started, all I had were two pieces of scrap paper with my stuff-to-dos scribbled all over the place.  I had to scrawl all those important commands by my caller at wherever I could fit them. And writing on such flimsy paper on your lap while holding a phone in one hand is certainly not easy. Not to mention your neck will complain after three minutes of that.

So I slid down my seat, turned my body to face it, crouched on the floor and kept scribbling away on the seat-now-turned-table.  As I jot more and more notes down, I began to worry I might run out of writing space before she could finish. But to my great relief, the call did end. As I sat back up, I finally had a moment to reflect on what had just happened – I’m so glad I was wearing jeans and the bus was not full, I thought.

And oh yes, I’ve got the job.