Slight breathing space as the dragons are busy with other work that I'm not involved in. Seriously though, my work generally leaves me fairly independent. I love the bits where I build a model though the mindreading/finetuning in the end usually leaves me a little frustrated since it takes up so much time.
I'm not sure why people seem to think that my boss is very demanding. I mean, yes she is demanding but I actually enjoy that aspect of her. I think it's easier to take pride in your work when people hold you to higher standards. It's annoying at times to be as detailed as she wants you to be because of the time constraints and I end up making annoying mistakes due to the rush which really ticks me off.
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Side note, I had my haircut about a month ago and it's starting to look like how I intended it when I told the hairdresser to give me a chin length fringe. She seemed a little shocked at my request which made me waver but now I'm really loving it. A soft fringe that ends near the chin to mask my round face and longer hair at the back. The longer hair by the side and back has these really nice wavy look to it today, which really made my day. In reality, it's probably not half as pretty as I think it looks.
What I'd really want to try is to get curls at the ends of my hair but I think it's a bit too much maintenance for me. I want a simple kind of routine where I can wake up brush my hair and go.
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
The 6-month Qn
My colleague K came up with an interesting question about what you would do if you had 6 mths to do whatever you wanted, constraints like financials aside.
I realize that in the end I still want to write. But I think I need more life experiences to write the kind of books that I want. I need a better understanding of people.
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I realize that in the end I still want to write. But I think I need more life experiences to write the kind of books that I want. I need a better understanding of people.
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An Affair with Work
I liken my relationship with my company to a marriage. I've been thinking of leaving when the end date arrives but a niggling part of my mind questions, should I really leave at the first sight of things not going my way? It seems like I'm running away from the problem. Should I then stay and try to change the environment instead?
From a personal viewpoint, I've enjoyed my work here. I like working with my current boss and I've picked up good working ethics. But I've been here for too long. I'm no longer learning anything new. I should have been moved to another department to grow other aspects of my professional skills but the company has deprived me the priviledges that others have been granted.
I told myself before I ever got into any relationship that I would never put up with abuse. Especially physical abuse. If a guy ever hits me, that's it for the relationship. I believed that abuse should never be tolerated. It signals a lack of basic respect for a fellow human being, regardless of whether you love someone. People are not objects that you can throw around; they will feel pain.
In my mind, I knew you can only change someone only if they feel a sincere need to change themselves. And even then, fundamental beliefs will remain the same. By the age of 18 and beyond, most of the ideas that make you uniquely you has crystallized. Your personality can change but you can change what you believe in easily. I didn't want to enter into any relationship expecting to morph the person I'm with into the ideal I have. I wanted to accept the ones I love, just the way they are.
Maybe it's naive of me to apply this to a company. Do I want to fall in love with it? We no longer live in an age of life-long employment yet I have such fanciful notions of the groups that I belong to. I do not enjoy the act of leaving. I want to be loyal to a cause I believe in. I would not leave because someone offered me a better paying job but I would leave if my company does not show appreciation for who I am and what I do.
Even in a game such as World of Warcraft, I took my guilds very seriously. When I left my previous guild, I was truly unhappy. Then I joined the current one and have stuck with them for the 1+ year ever since. Through the thick and thins, it was a long journey and many of those that I know are no longer even there. Why then do I still stay? In the end, perhaps I am still living in a land of fairies and honor and justice. How do such archaic notions fit in this world?
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From a personal viewpoint, I've enjoyed my work here. I like working with my current boss and I've picked up good working ethics. But I've been here for too long. I'm no longer learning anything new. I should have been moved to another department to grow other aspects of my professional skills but the company has deprived me the priviledges that others have been granted.
I told myself before I ever got into any relationship that I would never put up with abuse. Especially physical abuse. If a guy ever hits me, that's it for the relationship. I believed that abuse should never be tolerated. It signals a lack of basic respect for a fellow human being, regardless of whether you love someone. People are not objects that you can throw around; they will feel pain.
In my mind, I knew you can only change someone only if they feel a sincere need to change themselves. And even then, fundamental beliefs will remain the same. By the age of 18 and beyond, most of the ideas that make you uniquely you has crystallized. Your personality can change but you can change what you believe in easily. I didn't want to enter into any relationship expecting to morph the person I'm with into the ideal I have. I wanted to accept the ones I love, just the way they are.
Maybe it's naive of me to apply this to a company. Do I want to fall in love with it? We no longer live in an age of life-long employment yet I have such fanciful notions of the groups that I belong to. I do not enjoy the act of leaving. I want to be loyal to a cause I believe in. I would not leave because someone offered me a better paying job but I would leave if my company does not show appreciation for who I am and what I do.
Even in a game such as World of Warcraft, I took my guilds very seriously. When I left my previous guild, I was truly unhappy. Then I joined the current one and have stuck with them for the 1+ year ever since. Through the thick and thins, it was a long journey and many of those that I know are no longer even there. Why then do I still stay? In the end, perhaps I am still living in a land of fairies and honor and justice. How do such archaic notions fit in this world?
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Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Delusions of the Creatures of Vice
So I lament yet again about the poor quality of my writings but in truth, I'm glad that I write at all. Right now, I just want to subscribe to the thought of quantity over quality. I used to want to be a writer. It's still a small dream of mine but I think to improve and get back that writer's mindset, I can only continue to write, however poor they turn out to be. As I go along, it's nice to be able to chronicle my thoughts about people and things around me. Maybe many years down the road, if I stray from the path called "I", I will remember what it was like to be the me now that I enjoy being.
There is this old 50+ year old guy in my department. As is the norm in his time, he had very little education. He barely even knew English at that time. After 30+ years, he is still at his old position doing similar work. The company was quite generous in the early years in giving out stock options and those who stayed long enough would have had a tidy sum to retire with. But this old chap frittered it all away on luxury goods, women and alcohol because he wanted to live the high life. He would boast to us about how he spent hundreds on a night on karaoke or how he generously bought an expensive dish of kobe beef for a girl he saw at a restaurant. And all the while, he living on borrowed money. He owes a large sum to creditors and I imagine that his financials are in dire straits.
The company recently awarded him about $1000 as a token appreciation for his long service. From what I can hear, he has spent it all gambling. He was loudly proclaiming to his colleagues that if he still had the money he would have treated them to lunch but he already spent it before it was even received.
"The possibility of winning is slim but at least I bought some hope. If I don't gamble, there is not even any hope left", he said. Is this the mentality of gamblers? I'm personally not a gambler. It's interesting but me and darling have no interest in the vices: gambling, drink, smoking. In fact, we stand quite strongly against smoking and dislike alcohol.
The sad part is, many Singaporeans believe that having money will make them happy. The old man above continued, asking his colleague to spend her windfall money treating him to lunch instead, "Just spend the money on other people and make them happy. And it will make you feel rich". And at some point you realize that some people like him cannot be saved. Instead of thinking about what he did wrong, he was blaming God for not helping him (win the lottery) especially since, in his own words, he is such a kind and generous person. Do people really think that money is everything? There are ways you can be kind without money. The way he was boasting about obnoxiously makes a scene at customer services, or calling up employees of banks and harass them, I can hardly believe so.
It is people like him that makes me feel strongly against welfare. I do not want to give money to people, old, pathetic or otherwise who do not even help themselves. If he spent all his money frivolously and ended up in poverty, I do not want to be the one supporting those like him. There might be people who sincerely need funds to pick themselves back up but an indiscriminate welfare system that will help support the dregs of society just feels wrong to me.
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There is this old 50+ year old guy in my department. As is the norm in his time, he had very little education. He barely even knew English at that time. After 30+ years, he is still at his old position doing similar work. The company was quite generous in the early years in giving out stock options and those who stayed long enough would have had a tidy sum to retire with. But this old chap frittered it all away on luxury goods, women and alcohol because he wanted to live the high life. He would boast to us about how he spent hundreds on a night on karaoke or how he generously bought an expensive dish of kobe beef for a girl he saw at a restaurant. And all the while, he living on borrowed money. He owes a large sum to creditors and I imagine that his financials are in dire straits.
The company recently awarded him about $1000 as a token appreciation for his long service. From what I can hear, he has spent it all gambling. He was loudly proclaiming to his colleagues that if he still had the money he would have treated them to lunch but he already spent it before it was even received.
"The possibility of winning is slim but at least I bought some hope. If I don't gamble, there is not even any hope left", he said. Is this the mentality of gamblers? I'm personally not a gambler. It's interesting but me and darling have no interest in the vices: gambling, drink, smoking. In fact, we stand quite strongly against smoking and dislike alcohol.
The sad part is, many Singaporeans believe that having money will make them happy. The old man above continued, asking his colleague to spend her windfall money treating him to lunch instead, "Just spend the money on other people and make them happy. And it will make you feel rich". And at some point you realize that some people like him cannot be saved. Instead of thinking about what he did wrong, he was blaming God for not helping him (win the lottery) especially since, in his own words, he is such a kind and generous person. Do people really think that money is everything? There are ways you can be kind without money. The way he was boasting about obnoxiously makes a scene at customer services, or calling up employees of banks and harass them, I can hardly believe so.
It is people like him that makes me feel strongly against welfare. I do not want to give money to people, old, pathetic or otherwise who do not even help themselves. If he spent all his money frivolously and ended up in poverty, I do not want to be the one supporting those like him. There might be people who sincerely need funds to pick themselves back up but an indiscriminate welfare system that will help support the dregs of society just feels wrong to me.
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Get-by Age
My apologies for the quality of my writing. It partly has to do with me rushing them out at the office in between phone calls, work and other distractions. Sometimes I reread them and they make no sense at all. Instead of having a consistent thread of though drawn out from me, all I got is a bundle of knots.
I am getting annoyed with work again. Firstly, I just realized that this work that Finance passed to me had an error in it. Well we were short of one resource and they made a mistake in representing that as one additional...It's partly my fault for trusting their summarized number in the first place.But I had no time to look through it at all since I was rushing another project. So now I'm picking up the pieces. Then there was another suggestion by a. sales to move forward some of the resource without considering that a) we need a counter-movement to that to maintain our requirements and b) those are committed resources that we shouldn't move. Granted this fellow from a.sales is serving his 3 mths so there's probably no motivation to get it right. But I get annoyed with people who don't put in the effort. In a sense, I like the way I do things. I try to summarize the changes that I do so that it's easier for people to understand what I have been doing.
But it surprises me to see the attitude of those around me who do just enough to get-by. I guess I shouldn't be so annoyed because this is one feature that distinguishes the wheat from the chafe
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I am getting annoyed with work again. Firstly, I just realized that this work that Finance passed to me had an error in it. Well we were short of one resource and they made a mistake in representing that as one additional...It's partly my fault for trusting their summarized number in the first place.But I had no time to look through it at all since I was rushing another project. So now I'm picking up the pieces. Then there was another suggestion by a. sales to move forward some of the resource without considering that a) we need a counter-movement to that to maintain our requirements and b) those are committed resources that we shouldn't move. Granted this fellow from a.sales is serving his 3 mths so there's probably no motivation to get it right. But I get annoyed with people who don't put in the effort. In a sense, I like the way I do things. I try to summarize the changes that I do so that it's easier for people to understand what I have been doing.
But it surprises me to see the attitude of those around me who do just enough to get-by. I guess I shouldn't be so annoyed because this is one feature that distinguishes the wheat from the chafe
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Thursday, August 07, 2008
Resentment
A male colleague was ranting to us about the low pay, the poor working environment (why doesn't the company pay for transportation?). While they might be valid to some extent (the pay is truly not fantastic, and it is very far from civilisation), I find it hard to see where the resentment comes from. Especially from someone who has not even tried to adapt to the work culture or put in effort in his work.
Indeed Singaporeans are a materialistic bunch. This chap was doing part time work in his spare hours to supplement his income. But it is nowhere a necessity. Me and my partner both work in the same poorly paid job but we are well off enough. Money is honestly not the reason why I would quit my job. Basically, you can't pay me enough to make me stay. But even if I don't like my job, I won't slack off and leave the dirt to someone else to clean up after me. I wouldn't do unethical things like push to the front of the queue to get a seat and deprive someone of their rightful ownership. It's shameless. If you think it's okay and blame it on the environment, then you heart is not set right. Is it really alright for the ends to justify the means? Honestly, even though I thought he was an outright slacker, I'm disappointed that he doesn't have the integrity to be fair to other people. It's a big disgrace. And there he was complaining that because of the company, people were shoving each other as they get out. It's not the fault of the company that people shove their way out of the door at 5:20pm. 10 minutes before the official end of the day.
And then shortchanging on the bus fare because you had to stand? Why don't you just not get on? Yes, the company could have done better by providing additional shuttle buses to the nearest MRT but that doesnt make it alright to do things that pleases you but penalizes others.
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Indeed Singaporeans are a materialistic bunch. This chap was doing part time work in his spare hours to supplement his income. But it is nowhere a necessity. Me and my partner both work in the same poorly paid job but we are well off enough. Money is honestly not the reason why I would quit my job. Basically, you can't pay me enough to make me stay. But even if I don't like my job, I won't slack off and leave the dirt to someone else to clean up after me. I wouldn't do unethical things like push to the front of the queue to get a seat and deprive someone of their rightful ownership. It's shameless. If you think it's okay and blame it on the environment, then you heart is not set right. Is it really alright for the ends to justify the means? Honestly, even though I thought he was an outright slacker, I'm disappointed that he doesn't have the integrity to be fair to other people. It's a big disgrace. And there he was complaining that because of the company, people were shoving each other as they get out. It's not the fault of the company that people shove their way out of the door at 5:20pm. 10 minutes before the official end of the day.
And then shortchanging on the bus fare because you had to stand? Why don't you just not get on? Yes, the company could have done better by providing additional shuttle buses to the nearest MRT but that doesnt make it alright to do things that pleases you but penalizes others.
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