May 1, labor day, first time i report to work. i come in at ten and no one's there except for the production department officer-in-charge. Went out for a smoke, then came back with a heap of tapes to put back on a shelf. all the VHS 30's and 60's tapes had jumped out of the shelf while the huge thing was being moved. then we began to move tables...and then we began to sweep...apparently we were cleaning the whole damn place so the newbies can have their office space. i'm located at the center of the whole room.
second day at work, may 2. they don't have a new host for the show yet, so there'll be no launching soon, and no work for me just yet, so i spent the afternoon painting japanese paper Jackson Pollock style (it's all my frustrated hands could do anyway) for my table, because i didn't want my table to be like all the rest of my officemates' tables (it's weird switching from "classmates" to "office mates") with some rainbow colored wrapping paper, and anyway, i haven't been feeling as colorful, so i "[brought] out the shit cans of black and white" to quote L. de Veyra. by 6 pm we had a meeting. i was assigned to do a plug for this Saturday's emergency show (a "Best of Sabado na Gyud"--they aired their final episode last week, and since they couldn't launch the new show, they're doing a "best of" as last resort).
third day today, and i'm beginning to try to get the feel of the place, the work and the people, though i think i'm failing. i did the plug script and the script for the whole show. found out about my sched. Tuesdays i have to finish the plug script and the plug itself for airing. write script, look for available DJ to do the voice over, get raw material from stack of tapes, hand everything to the editor, sit with him through editing and wait till the tape's ready, then give to the in-charge in the next room. Wednesdays i have to have a script done and ready for taping, or for live airing, whichever's the case. Idiot boards too, for the idiot hosts (pardon the generalization). Output oriented routine with an erratic schedule. Right now i think i can work around that.
i haven't been feeling ecstatic over the job, and while walking in the halls of my new daily destination it dawned on me i made a wrong decision a-fucking-gain. i've always tried to go against pop culture and now i'm working to fit my writes according to the dictates of the station, and giving back the people entertainment that underestimates their mental capacities, at the expense of using more than what their pockets can give us (and to think we're paid on a measly per-show basis, and to earn more money i have to have "rakets" on the sides. Go ahead and stuff my clock down your throats.)
and silly old me, i kept empahsizing "creative work" during the job interview. i should have gone into where vera and kara are, looking for feature stories. perhaps they say that's a low-ranking job in the world of news, but heck, i think i can even experiment more on my own with the things i'll find. or not...might be burdened with network processes and tradition and rules.
if this is what creative work means, send me to hell.
ok, i'll give them credit, cleanse me in purgatory and edify me.
tomorrow i take the edited script and do the idiot boards.
Good God have mercy on me if i begin to love writing the idiot boards.