I am now officially funemployed.

(While I wish I could take credit for the term, it’s something that my sister created)

It has been a strange experience so far. I am still on a ‘work schedule’ with regards to my sleep patterns, and I’ve been dreaming about work for the past two days. And while I’ve known that my last day was coming for close to two months now (I had to give a lot of notice), it seems to have crept up on me. One day, I was thinking “oh, I still have plenty of time” and then next, “wait, isn’t my last day next week? I HAVE TO GET THE PRESENTS READY.”

There is a distinct possibility that I went overboard with the presents. I prepared slightly more than 40 packets for my department and about 15 packets for people outside my department and I still had a bag of sweets for “emergencies”. Each packet was basically a collection of Singaporean snacks (+ a keychain for people in my department.)

By the way, I have no idea if this is de rigueur in Japanese companies. All I know is that I wanted to give my coworkers something because they’ve been incredibly patient and helpful. For what it’s worth, I know of two other people within my company who also gave out snacks/presents when they quit. But that is a really small sample size so take it as you will.

Anyway, I thought that I’d be completely cool and normal on my last day but it turns out that I am a big baby. I was so close to tears just giving out the farewell presents. I feel really lucky to have been assigned to the department I was in and the thought of never being able to work with everyone again made me want to cry.

But I powered through and just when I thought I was going to be okay, this happened:

I was surprised by a few of my batchmates and some of my colleagues.

I am really blessed to have been able to work with such caring people. It was really hard to say the words ‘thank you’ because I could feel the tears coming again.

To be honest, (and I’m sure it’s very obvious) I’m not sure how one is supposed to blog about their last day of work. I was mainly saddened by the thought that I won’t get to work with my colleagues and overwhelmed by the fact that they managed to prepare this surprise (especially since I tried to keep the fact I was quitting quiet). So this is my more-rambly-than-usual blogpost about my last day of work.

Now to pull myself together and start preparing to go back to Singapore.