Turned Tables
A little over an year ago i finished uni and was looking for work for the first time in my life. Being the lazy scallywag that i am i never did any internships or part time work during uni vacations. I always told myself that i’ll be working till im around 60, so why rush into things? I’m not sure if i regret it or not, i had a damn good time all those summers. Had i been working i wouldnt have been able to amble back home at 4am and sleep till 12, wake up and go watch a movie or play cards till evening and then run off to play cricket with the pals and do the routine all over again. But then I would have also had a better shot at my masters applications, but as it turned out im happy with what i got.
Anyway after that long digression, the point is this time last year i got my first job as an intern at the un and today, one year later, i got my own intern!!! I’ve been having a really busy few days since i got 2 external projects landed on me and the boss decided to allocate not one but 2 interns to help me out! I’m still a bit shell shocked but the first guy turned up today and i had coffee with him. Turns out he’s a first year at ucl and happened to go to the same school as i did. Typically enough we know about 10 ppl in common and had a typical sri lankan chat..”ahh you know this bugger?” ..”"adey yes! my good friend’s bro” etc. etc.
On monday the second intern is scheduled to show up. So its all a new experience and i’m going to try and be nice and not give them menial tasks and try to get them as involved as possible in interesting work. The worst thing about interning is sitting around having nothing to do while everyone else is much older than you and do their own things. I still remember the first thing i had to do when i was an intern was to call up a bunch of people inviting them for some meeting, intellectual stimulation to the max. One of my close friends interned here last year and she loved it bc there were loads of ppl of the same age interning and they all got along well, unfortunately when i interned my friends were at least twice my age and were twice as busy! I still managed to get along ok with them, the best part was a field trip to Killinochchi. I went with dev and Ganesh, two fantastic guys and i learnt so much from them, ranging from how to make murunga curry jaffna style and where to get the best koththu in the wanni to the history of northern kings and how the LTTE recruit cadres. The most memorable parts of the trip were visiting the LTTE war cemetry, seeing where prabha gives his martyrs day speech, seeing a young girl with a text book under one arm and an AK-47 under the other and sitting outside the building where Tamilchelvam entertains foreign visitors. Oh and how to forget the fantastic parippu wadey in vavuniya. Hehe and also having to pay a Sinhalese tax! soon as i walked into the killi market all the vendors who had been saying “waanga waanga, nalla rusi” saw me and said “malli malli, elawalu laabai, palathuru laabai” i was shocked that they spoke such fluent sinhalese..i paid 40 bucks for 1kg of wambotu and discovered later that the market price is 30 bucks!
I don’t think i can provide that sort of experience to the two interns working with me, unless of course they’re turned on by the nitty gritty of south asian trade patterns. But i’ll try keep them amused in as many ways possible. I still can’t believe i’ve got an intern!
