Honeymoon period

Yar the first 2 weeks at work for me is no serious work yet. As much as I am looking forward to handling the cases on my own very soon, I can't imagine how I will be coping then, given the loads of information and knowledge that I need to absorb during the meanwhile. Really alot man. So challenging. So frens, u all studying, I also like studying rite now. Sama sama! Same boat!

Have been tagging along with colleague to go for home visits to see how interviews are done. A really close-up interaction with members at the lower strata of the society. Elderly ppl are really sad case. Hard to get money from children, on the other hand hard to get money from the us (govt) cos we have strict criteria to meet up in order for us to give social assistance. We promote self-reliance and believe that the first level of support is the family and not the govt. Our clients tend to see us as the 'saviours' who can bring them out of their poverty cycle but in actual fact, we have little power in granting them social assistance as supervisor need to approve our recommendations in the end. Not up to us to decide. We are the 'investigators' who explores and dig out information that are needed for us to assess their eligibility for our social assistance schemes. We also act like social workers who need to be involed in other miscellaneous stuff related to our clients as well.

Can forsee my future days to be real busy from what I see from my colleagues. They stayed back, even coming on saturdays to write reports and stuff. Not enough staff to handle the number of cases we are receiving every now and then. They seem overloaded with so many cases and follow-ups to do. I hope my entry can help to unload some of their burdens man. But right now I still feel un-equipped....yet they still keep telling me to enjoy my honeymoon first. I wanna learn as much as I can now so that when real work starts, I can get into the right gear straight away la.

My mum says poor ppl have endless stories to tell as poverty branches out from all kinds of unique circumstances. As for the rich ppl, they only have one happy story to tell.