Wrapping Up 2010...

2010 is finally coming to an end soon... Time for me to look back and give 2010 a wrap up. 2010 has left me with many thoughts and I really hope that 2011 will be an even better year ahead...

Work...
Work has been hectic for the whole of this year. I hardly have a chance to really breathe at work throughout the year. The moment I have slightly little more time for myself to take a breather, work starts to pour in again. :( It is probably quite lucky that we managed to hire someone to help me out. She is not perfect, but she is young and I believe, can be guide and coach to be a better help.

I have probably learnt more things at work in 2010 than I ever had to or get the chance to be exposed to if I stay on in this job if my bosses did not leave. I had learnt to fend for myself, defend my position, argue with people about what works and what don't, see how ridiculous some people can be, work my way around to get things done and see the true colors in some people. It was also great that I managed to get more exposure at work by meeting customers and etc. It was a whole new experience that if my bosses did not leave, I probably won't get exposed to so soon. In a way, the leaving of my bosses are both a plus and minus for me. It sort of accelerated my progress and I have to learn to survive.

I guess I can say that I am a survivor at work now...

Study...
I have finally finished my Uni studies after 2 years. It was definitely not easy for me to juggle both my work, travel and studies at the same time especially when I had been much busier at work this year compared to previous years. My results showed how bad it was for me. :P It was a relief to me when I received my results as I thought I will need to "da bao" one of the modules. Phew~

I am still contemplating about the job switch thingy. I have started looking out for jobs but not actively. I may or may not want to switch... Let's see how it goes...

O... crazy me went and signed up for a language course to learn Japanese. It should start in Jan 2011. :P I guess since I suddenly have so much time on hand, I can use it to learn something too. :D

Grow Up...
I hate to say this but I had to tell myself that it is time for me to grow up and not to just trust what people have to say. There are many times when I put trust in my friends, to find that it is all a lie after all. I have to learn that they may no longer be the person whom I used to know. Everyone grows up. It's time for me to grow up and not to put my trust in everyone. I guess this is why some people always say "The only person you can trust is yourself."

Changes in work...

There are to be going to be a very big change at my work place. There is some sort of Organisational restructure because some people left the company. At the some time, some people will be promoted, relocated and etc. I have a new boss to report to and my functional reporting boss is the Indian colleague that I had some problem with. That will not be a good thing. :S

The workflow at my side is kind of messy ever since my bosses had left so there will be a lot of things that we need to sort out. There are new things that they will require us to cover, some of which is my boss boss think is without reason. I don't know... I will just do what I can...

I am still thinking if I should change a job after I get my degree. There are pros and cons to it.

Pros: I have very good opportunity to grow and develop in my current job. After all, I am the most experienced person in the Asia technical team for my division right now. Even though I do not know everything, I still know enough of my work to be able to contribute. Sometimes experience is really more valuable than everything else.

Cons: I am honestly abit bored of doing the same thing for the past 6+ years. Be it that I am having more responsibility to do things, it still boils down to doing the same things. However, if I change my job, I will have to accept a much lower salary than what I am getting now. After all, a fresh graduate in marketing will never be able to get as high salary as what I am drawing now. In fact, I think I will probably draw a salary that I drew when I first started work. It is just very hard to accept getting such a low pay after so many years.. Sigh...

I have been thinking about this for a very long time. As my final exams for my degree is approaching, I guess it is really time for me to think about this and at the same time look out for other job offers. I really should not drag any further...

Travel for work...

I am now waiting to board the plane to Tokyo! I have been travelling quite a lot for work this year. One trip after another, none of it was expected. I went to ShenZhen for a tradeshow at the end of May, Pune India for work at the end of June, Shanghai for work and training in mid August and this time Japan to meet customers.

Everyone have been asking me why am I travelling so much this year. I honestly have no idea. I guess it is a good change instead of staying in the lab all day long. The only problem is that it is disrupting my schedule a lot too. Anyway I guess this is probably the last time I will travel for work for this year. Till next year~! :D

Hi India~!

I got into Mumbai last night at around 11pm. My first impression of India is that it is not as bad as what I had thought.

Security at the hotel is much stricter than in Singapore. They actually check all the cars that come in, even the bottom of the car. Visitors of the hotel have to go through a metal detector like those that you find in the airport.

I stayed over at Le Royal Meridien, Mumbai for the night. It is quite a nice hotel. A little different from what I used to stay in the other previous hotels in China, but still nice. The hotel staff are really friendly and helpful. Most importantly, they bother to remember your name. Sometimes I feel that it is the little things that matter.

I flew into Pune in the morning flight today. I got to the hotel pretty quickly. I met my colleagues for lunch before heading to the office. Food was honestly good. I have always think that I will probably starve to death overy here. Now, I think I can safely say "No I think I may actually enjoy the food here."

Ok time for me to go to bed. Pictures to follow up soon... :D

India

Damn! I am asked to go to Pune, India. For what purpose? I honestly have no idea at all. I HOPE it won't be as bad as I thought... I am already cursing and swearing at the flight timing now because Singapore does not have any direct flight to Pune. So I will be required to do a transit. The transit timing is ridiculous. I have to wait for at least 6 hours before my next flight. In the end, I decided to fly in on Sunday evening and stay overnight at Mumbai so that I can catch the morning flight to Pune. The only problem is I will arrive in Mumbai only at 11pm. Not a very favorable timing if you ask me. :S For my return flight, I decide to just wait for my next flight at the airport. I wonder how am I going to spend that 6 hours... If only Mumbai airport is as nice as Changi airport. Sigh...

Busy Busy Busy...

I hate it when I am so busy at work. Maybe that's because I used to be able to work less and get off work on time. I have been getting new responsibilities which is good but it also means that I am much busier now than I ever was. Given that I am now working and studying at the same time, it is not fantastic news... I am like so busy until I actually wished there's more than 24 hours in a day so that I will have more time to complete whatever stuff that I have to do.

On average, I am now working until 8 everyday IF I don't have school. That is considering that I almost don't need to OT at all all the while I was working here. Ya lah... I do OT once in a while but not often. Or maybe not as often as I have to nowadays. Worse thing is... I have no idea when can I get out of this "busy-ness". It sucks to be so busy... It sucks even more when I can't even sit down and complete a simple task without being called away... damn...

Looking good in front of the Boss? I'm not so sure...

I am currently organising a team building event for my department. The event is scheduled sometime in mid November so we had a briefing for everyone this afternoon to make sure everyone are ok with the activities.

The briefing had ended when suddenly W started making a pt to the others about safety. Nope, it's not wrong to talk about safety. In fact, talking about safety in my company is good because my company is always very concern about safety. I was quite taken aback when I heard him talking about the safety thing because it's really weird. You see, the problem is, it doesn't sound like the things he should talk about because my director and K, both higher position than W, did not say anything because K who is organising the event with me, had JUST made the point about things to look out for, safety being the priority and etc during the briefing. It became very 抢台词 kind of situation. Very weird... Then for a moment, I started thinking myself, am I the organiser or is he the organiser? Very weird feeling lah...

I thought it's me only... Until tea break came and the ladies were all talking about it. So I am not alone in this... The ladies said it is all because he wants to look good in front of his bosses, not knowing how stupid he looks in front of us... faint lor...

Exams and work

My exams are coming next week and I have almost not study at all. So good right? I think burning my textbooks and drink them maybe a good idea... Wonder if it will really help me to absorb the stuff written inside. If it really does, I will definitely be game enough to try that method...

We were talking about "not touching enough wood" at work recently. Work load is usually rather manageable but after my colleague started taking her maternity leave, work load increased like 2 fold. Faint... Just at a time when I was praying that it will cut down so that I can go on my leave in peace. Damn... Now I can only try to clear whatever I can before I go on leave on Friday...

Wish me luck for my exams. I need ALL that I can get... :P

Left...

I talked about I will be facing some changes at work but did not go into any details. Anyway... my boss had decided to quit his job. This means the two managers that I was under, left the company within a span of 3 months... -_-'''' So now I am officially boss-less liao... As I don't have any boss anymore, I am now going to report directly to my technical director... Diao...

It's kind of sad that this boss of mine left. He's a really nice guy and quite a good boss too. Too bad he has to leave due to some circumstances... I will look forward to have a chance to work with him again in the future... Provided there's this kind of chance lah of course...

My company has yet to find the replacement for my boss... No matter what it is, I do hope my future new boss be a good one... After all, I always think that the boss is the most important part of the job...

Changes at work

There will be quite a few major changes in the next few months that will be affecting me and my future prospects in the company itself. The changes will be a great opportunity for me to grow and develop but I am currently having mixed feelings about it too...

Whatever it is, I do hope I can be up to the mark and take on whatever is coming along the way for me. I can foresee seeing myself being VERY busy at work from now onwards...

Played Out

Last Friday, C and X asked me if I want to join them for lunch at Vivocity. Since I did not lunch with them over the past few days and plus it was a Friday, I decided to join them for lunch.

It was already almost 1 by the time we finished lunch. C said she wanted to go 2 shops in Vivo and X said she need to drop by Starhub for some errands. As S did not eat much, she had already went to run her own errands before we even finished lunch.

As I had nothing much to do in Vivo, I walked around Tangs for a while before calling S. S was helping her boss to look for something so I met up with her. While we were walking around, S recieved an sms from X saying C and her is going back to the office first as she was having a headache.

I was quite upset by it as X could have told us and we could all 4 go back together. By the time I got back to office, it was really late. Once I stepped into my lab, C tried to explain to me why they came back first.

C : After I went to the 2 shops, I was very tired already. I keep thinking why are you all taking so long? Then X said she is having a headache so we decided to come back first.

Me (trying to talk like I am not bothered or upset at all) : You have handphone lor. You could have called us one.

C: I was at Level 1 and I'm lazy to go up to Level 2 to look for you all mah.

Me (Thinking to myself "wah kao... she's damn lame lor) : We can come down and find you one lor.

C: I never think of that mah...

Really damn lame lor... I felt so played out by the both of them. I strongly suspect that they did it on purpose for whatever reason that only they know. The worse thing is, after I came back into office, X don't look like she's having a headache at all lor. I relate the whole incident to my other colleague and my colleague said that X don't look like she's having a headache as she's "jumping" around in the office. Damn crap lor...

I did not really talk much to C and X after that as I was quite upset. In the future if we are out for lunch together, if I have nothing to do already and have to wait for them, I will go back to the office on my own first. I will not waste anymore time waiting for them and risk getting played out by them like that day.

Lunch

I have been feeling quite uncomfortable lunching with my usual lunch kakis nowadays. Ever since my ex watch-the-clock direct boss left and my current don't-watch-the-clock direct boss takes over, they seem to be taking longer and longer time to have lunch. My office is not very strict about lunch hours. Often, we will go out for lunch at around 11.30 or 11.40am and comes back around 1pm.

Recently, lunch hours have been from 11.30/11.40am to 1.15/1.30pm. If it's occasionally then never mind lah... But it seems to be happening too often. I did not lunch with them the past few days as I was not very hungry and I was tied up with some work to do. In the end, they have been coming back from lunch at 2pm over the past few days. C will come back and tell me excuses like it took very long before the cab/bus comes or they went and buy stationary or they lost their way looking for my other colleague's car. I don't give a damn but I just feel that luckily I was not with them as it just doesn't look very good to be taking such a long lunch even though no one said a thing about it in front of us. You never know what people are saying behind our backs. Especially when I know how vicious the people on my office can be...

My bf told me to do what I think is right. However there is hardly a way that I can avoid lunching with them without being too obvious. See how lah... sigh...

Clock

The other day, I was "lucky" to be in the pantry alone when my MD came in and talked to me about the clock in the office which had slowed down by 20 mins. He asked me to get someone to adjust the time back. Instead, I asked him if we can get a new clock since this had happened quite a couple of times. He said ok but he wanted us to get a similar clock and told me some history about the importance of the clock to our BIG BIG boss.

When I told A, who is also the HR of the office that I had the approval of the MD to get a new clock. She told me that she had already planned to get it. So we went to Ikea to get the clock over lunch time. I told A to get a similar clock because of what the MD told me this morning but she insisted in giving the office a new look and getting a much nicer black face "New Arrival" clock. She said she will tell the MD this one is new arrival so will be good one. Since there's no way I can changed her mind in getting a similar clock to our existing one, I decided to shut my mouth.

Within minutes of A getting someone to put that clock up the wall, she was asked to remove it. One of my colleague who is also one of the pioneer in this office told her that we cannot use that clock as it was black face or something. A LL have to remove it from the wall.

I can't help but think that "I told you so" when I heard that she had to remove it. She is the one who refused to listen to me. 做人有时不可以太铁齿...

Farewell Card...

I have no idea why some people always love to leave things to the last minute then ASK other people to do. It's not as if they just know what they need lor...

My boss last day is supposed to be on this coming Friday. Our OM from the other side knew the news since last Thursday and she was supposed to help organise the farewell gathering. I offered her my help last Thursday and see if there's anything she needs me to do. She said that at the moment there is nothing she needs my help for and will let me know if there is anything.

She contacted me today and asked me to make a farewell card for my boss. She said that if I have no time to make, then I have to go and buy it. She wants me to buy or make it by today so that there will be time tomorrow to pass the card around for other people to sign. In that case, the card will be ready to pass to my boss by Friday.

It took her 6 days to realise that she needs a farewell card for my boss??? Can she not be so last minute or not? It is not the first time that she do things so last minute liao lor. What gives her the impression that I have all the time in the world to make or buy the farewell card? What the hell!!! Even though I had already made a farewell card for my boss and I can just pass to them to sign it, I have no intention to doing that. After all they bo sim and I intend to keep the thought of that farewell card to the few of us.

I had already had an appointment in Toa Payoh tonight and I had to push it back so that I have time to find a decent farewell card. It took me 2 hours and going from Vivocity to Plaza Singapura to find a decent card lor. What pissed me off is not getting the card but rather her expecting me to do it with such last minute notice. Plus I do not like the idea of getting a card for the sake of getting it so I had to go to Plaza Singapura to hunt for a card even though there is an appropriate but damn ugly farewell card in Vivocity.

I was quite upset with that stupid woman. My bf was telling me that since she ask me to do it only so last minute, then I should give her the result of last minute work. However, to me, I need to do it at least to a standard that I can accept. Bloody shit... Stupid woman. No way will I "do up" the card until as nice as the farewell card that I made for my boss.

Tio Stabbed...

I got stabbed again! This time really very 冤枉 because I tio stabbed by a very 小气 man... He's an ass lah...

Incident:
Man entered my "territory" and went to one of the drawers wanting to take some bags. I stopped him since I obviously can't just let him take my stuff without asking. Come on lah... It's my stuff and it's common courtesy to ask before taking. Not as if I am not there. So the conversation goes like this:

Me: Ermm... what do you want?
小气 man: I want to take some bags.
Me: Ok. How many bags do you want? I take them for you.

I took the bags and passed them to the 小气 man. Then I told him..
Me: Do you know that Marketing also have bags?
小气 man: I don't know because no one told me before.
Me: Ok... So now you know lah. Then next time if you want the bags, you can also ask from S.
小气 man: But S is not in today.
Me: Ya. S is on MC today. But I just tell you that so that in the future you can get from her too.

小气 man left after that but came back shortly to change the size of the bag that I gave him as one of it was too small.

Shortly after, AL came in and asked me what happened earlier when 小气 man came in. I told her the whole story. The AL told me that 小气 man told my MD that we refuse to give him the bags!!! What rubbish!!!! ~!#$%^

In order to help me, AL boss even wrote an email about the whole incident to my MD to help me 声援! All these crap over 2 bags... Really a bit the diao lor... -_-'''' To think he still dare to go around telling my other colleagues about it also...

What an ass that 小气 man is... I will learn to siam him at all cost next time... He better don't come and look for my help next time...

My Boss Quit~!

My boss came into the lab this morning to tell us that he had tendered his resignation letter on Monday!!!

Actually, together with another 2 colleagues of ours, we had been speculating since last week that my manager was intending to quit his job. Don't ask me why we speculate it. It's just sixth sense I guess... Some behaviour last week sort of makes me wonder if he is quitting. It turned out that we are right!!! Think we can go 四马路摆摊算命 liao...

I am thinking of putting an album of photos of his memories in the company... I will go office and dig out all his old photos, burn them into a dvd for him I think... I see what I can do... After all, honestly, he has been a good boss to me most of the time and he really taught me a lot... Good luck to him in his new company!

Sian 1/2...

Wah liao... The first email that I read when I was back at work today is that there will not be any pay increment for us this year due to the economy and blah blah blah... Sigh... I was still praying hard that I will still get it this year... What to do... Economy is bad... Everyone is cutting cost. On the brighter side, our 13th and 14th month is promised. So at least I will still get my bonus this year...

Reflection...

Maybe it is time for me to go and reflect on what is happening around me. For some reason, I am not very surprised to hear from my other colleague that apparently someone is not very happy working with me. I guess it is inevitable to have conflicts while working together especially after working together for so many years. I just feel that, don't feel one way and yet act like you are very gam with me. At least let me know of any displeasure especially when I do know I am one who don't know how to "package" my words nicely and often offend people unknowingly.

It is probably good that I know how she is like and thus is abit weary of saying too much things in front of her. Maybe that's why I am not surprised ba... After all, I hear her gossiping to me about things of my other colleague that really shouldn't be told. This make me even more certain that there really are somethings that I should keep to myself. So most of the times even if I do gossip with her about somethings, it will be about things that I don't mind reaching other people's ears. You never know what will happen once the information gets through her.

I guess I really should think about what are the things that I can do better. After all, sometimes I do agree my "honesty" to some people are making me enemies in the company. I must learn to "lend a listening ear and otherwise, keep my mouth shut!"

Tio suan siao...

For some reason, my colleague and I have been feeling that my manager is getting weirder and weirder as the time goes by. We just ignore him because there is nothing much we can do about it also.

Recalling an incident that happened last Friday... I came into office on time on Friday and although he was seated at his desk and I walked passed him while getting some water from the pantry, I did not greet him good morning as he seem occupied with his stuff. His face was also quite "black" so all the more I want to avoid him at all cost. What for find trouble for myself right? He left the office for a meeting with his boss later in the morning so by the time I saw him again, it was already after lunch.

He left 2 ang baos for me on my desk and I went out to look for him to thank him for the ang bao and also to discuss some work with him. Anyway, I ended up tio suan siao by him whereby he implied that I wished him Happy CNY just because of the ang baos. Fine, he can think what he wants. Even though I got suan siaoed by him over that, he was only throwing his own face. The rest of the people in the office came and commented things like "Why is he so petty one?" "Your boss not in good mood today arh? He's very moody leh" over the things that he said to me. I don't even need to go and complain to the people outside about what he suaned me because everyone heard him suan-ed me. I don't think I am at fault for not wishing him a Happy CNY the first thing I come into the office. Nobody says that it is a must for me to wish him a Happy CNY. To think you suaned me about it just because of this? So who's at fault here? Definitely not me. Just too bad for him for throwing his own face...

Clear Leave~!

It's the time of the year to start clearing leave liao... I still have 5 days of annual leave to clear, of which I will be taking one on 26 Decemeber since my good friend from Poly days is getting married in Malaysia then. I need to go there earlier because I have to be her jie mei! I am starting to pity her husband liao... I can't imagine how we will "torture" him especially when there's a no food rule since he has a weak stomach.

As I am going back to school next year, my manager actually offer to let me bring forward some of my leave to next year! This is great news since there's a no carrying over of leave policy in my company. If there is any carrying over of leave, there must be some valid reason and it is usually "under-table" kind of arrangement. I think I will trying carrying over one or two days leave to next year since I can foresee myself taking quite a bit of leave next year for exams and all... Another lucky thing is that next year, I will have more leave since I will be hitting my 5th year in the company liao... The more leave the merrier... :P