The day I'd rather be at work.

I stare blankly at the screen. I hear the trainer telling us to open a new blank document yet again. Without thinking, I move the mouse and do as told. To my right, Charlene is in her dreamy state. To her right, Vic looks like he's in utter misery. It is just 1 hour past our lunch break, and I can stand it no more.

"Ok class, you can take a short break now. Be back by 3pm," the trainer announces.

We stroll down to the canteen to get some drinks. Before we know it, it's time to head back again.

This is torturing us. I feel like I'm back in secondary school, when we had to go through basic courses to learn MS Office.

"Ok class, did the email state that your course will end at 5pm or 5.30pm?" the trainer asks.

"5pm!" we all agreed unanimously.

"Oh, i thought it's supposed to end at 5.30pm!" the trainer says.

15 mins later.

"Class, don't you think it's getting warmer and warmer?" the trainer complains.

"You know how your throat keeps drying up when you try to talk loudly in a warm room?"

"Ok class, that's the last section I have to cover for Writer. It's now 4pm. It's up to you whether you want me to carry on, or....?"

This time round, she got our attention.

"What do you mean by 'or?'" someone asks.

"That means for those who have questions, you can stay behind and ask, because technically speaking, I can't leave until it's 5pm. But for the rest, you can go."

Hearing that, our group turn to each other with a "How?" look on our face.

"I think, we deserve a break. After this whole torture," I said.

Everyone agrees. In 5 minutes, we are out of the training room.

"My god, I wish I was back in office than having to go through this training!" I said. And a few heads nodded in agreement. We waved our byes, and happily went our own ways back home, where we can finally take a break from the boring training we suffered from.

That was 2 hrs ago. (Ok, any English power power ppl who can enlighten me if the above sld be written in present or past tense? Don't fault me k, I have totally no clue!)

I was talking about the OpenOffice (OO) training that I signed up for, together with a few other cols like Vic, Charlene and Violet, because in a move to reduce costs, our organisation has decided to remove all MS Office and require all personnel to use OO instead.

Well, for those who have been avid MS Office users and have tried using OO, you'd know how frustrating it'd be at times when you want to perform certain functions in OO but you can't find the equivalent command. Being the web manager and all, I thought I should familiarise myself with the new features of OO so as to reduce any compatibility issues in future.

Though I knew beforehand that this is going to be a basic course on OO, to introduce the different elements and stuff, I had expected it to be more... well, more catered to our level of usage. I mean, come on, we are not senior citizens who do not even know what a mouse is. Although there are some differences between OO and MS Office, there are many similarities as well. Why waste time going through how I can change the color, size and type of font? If the location of the function is different, all I need is know where to look for the command and not be shown what the command can do. If you know what I mean.

In fact, so much time is spent on Writer that there is no time for Calc, Base and Impress (which are actually components we need more help with). The trainer assumes that all of us will the going for the 2-day training in Sept/Oct (which, by the way, no one knows about till she mentioned it), and hence she can skip all those components. That's part of the reason why she let us go off at 4pm too.

Not that I have learnt nothing from today's course. But I think those that I learnt can easily be taught in 2 hours instead of the 5 hours (yes, i think that's about the total time spent on the course, instead of the slated 7.5 hours (we started at 9am instead of 830am, had tea break at 10am-1030am, lunch from 12pm-1pm, teabreak again from 240pm-3pm, went home at 4pm).

Yes, this is the day I'd rather be at work. (By the way, darkholme has finally uploaded pics of JT's birthday lunch at Gallery Hotel. Go take a look!)

Disclaimer
We did not head back to office after the course because:
1. We were so 'stoned' by the course that all we want to do is to get home fast.
2. According to Vic, we have the right to go home instead of back to office because we are on course. And I reckon that the thought of 'going back to office' would never have crossed our minds if this course was held somewhere else like Changi instead of DTT B.