The past week was torturous. But it was saved by the gathering with my fellow interns.

We celebrated the last month of our attachment and motivated ourselves to bear with the final month.

I shall introduce the interns. From left to right in the photo below, we have Cindy, Fiona, Yvonne, Shi Hui, Frederick, Logen (me) and Zhen Zhen.

Both Yvonne and Frederick are from the Tax Department and the rest of us from the Audit Department.

Cindy loves to pout after grumbling or talking and smiles widely whenever she sees the rest of us at the pantry. On my grumpy days, I will scold her for being so happy. And my sarcasm doesn’t work on her because she doesn’t understand it.

Fiona (aka Office Senior) is most of the time in office and knows new policies, politics and tells us the news when we’re back. She acts grumpy whenever Shi Hui and I tease her. However, she’s seems to behave like Shi Hui from time to time and parodies Shi Hui’s antics to great effect. At a point in time, we have named her Hui Shi, supposedly a second Shi Hui.

Yvonne and I go a long way. We were classmates during our Secondary School years. She is self-conscious and talks a lot when you’re alone with her.

Shi Hui (aka Outside Senior) is usually out of the office (like me) and is familiar with the technical procedures of fieldwork. She is the craziest among the interns and is also my ‘best friend’ (inside joke). Her manager mispronounces her name as Sher Hway to our amusement.

Frederick cracks random jokes to great exasperation from the group of us. And is often teased by Shi Hui.

Zhen Zhen takes a long time to respond to us whenever we’re talking. She is lost in her thought, or as Sher Hway likes to say, lost in her own world.

Within the audit interns, we have fucked up nicknames. For instance, I am ‘fuck tart’, Shi Hui is ‘fuck puff’, Fiona is ‘fuck cake’, Cindy is ‘fuck kueh’ and Zhen Zhen is ‘fuck lapis’. If you notice, all the nicknames are improvisations from pastries. This all started when Shi Hui was cursing someone at the filing department, calling him a fucktard. Her pronunciation was ‘fart tut’. Eventually, I began naming the interns these nicknames. It’s the stress…

And now, for pictures…

Everyone above is laughing because Zhen Zhen stepped on my foot when rushing to get in the picture before the timer went off. As a result, I exclaimed in pain. Zhen Zhen is the happiest there.

Now, they’re trying to push me out of the picture. The guilty ones include Office Senior (Fiona) and Outside Senior (Shi Hui).

Cindy has this habit of pouting after grumbling and at times after talking. And I have the habit of teasing her about it by imitating her.

The only two guys in the group of interns. Both of us are known for our weird/long hairstyle during the initial stages of the internship.

Logen L.