But at the same time, every moment of this figment of your imagination affects you in a very authentic manner. Every single feeling in this realm is brought back into reality, right into your soul.

Maybe it is because some of the events in the script is similar to what you had experienced in your life before, giving you a special connection to this ‘parallel world’. Or maybe it is because you are just another person with a battered heart, someone in an emotionally vulnerable state. On a normal day, you seemed just like every other person on the outside, getting along reasonably well with what life is giving you. But unnoticed inside of you, is an incandescent bulb as your source of emotional stability, waiting for the smallest trigger to break off the fragile tungsten wire.

It is now only a dark black screen in front of you, as you slowly come to terms with all of that has just hit you. The sensational rush of so many different emotions overwhelms you, leaving you at the edge of tears. You try to figure out the real cause of your vulnerability, is it because of the lemons life throws at you? is it because of love? the loneliness? friends? relationships? or is it because you are missing that special unexplainable ‘something’ in life?

Spending more time that you ever expected, you finally dozed off to the exhaustion all these have brought onto you. Just hoping that you wake up the next day recovered although strangely at the same moment, you wished the story would continue in your dreams, the never ending story created by your figment, the one wholly fueled by your emotions.

Tonight, I am that person.

And still in search of that special something.

Empty

Hmm…

Ohhh shit!

2009

Well, not exactly. Most of all it’s because some of my friends ain’t there anymore, ‘Disneyland’ has gotten a minor makeover and the fab is much more in order in terms of 5S. Coincidentally I’m also using the pedestal and car sticker of my former colleagues. Work wise it’s getting a bit more serious that what i encountered before, no more extreme slacking around and sitting in the office surfing the net for the whole afternoon. Anyway, I’m glad I retained quite a lot of the things that I’ve learned the last time around, that I have a kick-ass boss and for having the rest of my colleagues I know that are still there.

2288

It’s still too early to tell how crazy work will get, good or bad I’m still determined and looking forward to what is ahead. Bottom line is that, I’m satisfied with where i am with my work now. Of course we can always complain about work, about the pay but we often overlook the good and what we have currently. Everyone wants a higher pay but how much is enough? We often feel that we’ll be satisfied with ‘this amount’ of salary but when we’ve reached that point, dissatisfaction can still surely take over if we don’t learn to appreciate the basics or what we had in the first place.

2010

Also at the same time I’m gonna have to channel every possible extra juice that i have left to finishing my studies. Thankful for my latest results as it was a better than i had expected so now I’m on my final year, my final stretch to crossing the finishing line and i do hope i make it!

:)

9 months ago i joined the company for what would be my first real job and nothing could have prepared me for what i have came across in a real work environment…not with what i studied in uni or even not with the personal accounts of my fellow friends who have already joined the workforce. I must admit that at first i was naive because i expected for things that i could never get in a real work environment and that really got me struggling with the whole ‘work-life’ thing. For one, i couldn’t really understand and accept the fact that backstabbing, people taking credit for other people’s work and stubborn people boasting as if they are Einstein happens quite often at work. I allowed these issues to bother me emotionally and so i got very unhappy and dissatisfied at work…i was ready to walk away.

Factory shoes

However, slowly i’ve learned. I’ve learned that no matter where i work, there are bound to be people that i will not get along with. I’m far from perfect too and i’m prepared to accept that other people would not see eye to eye with me. We’re just a big bunch of very different people trying to work towards one goal, how can i expect everyone to agree to the same methods? But of course there are cases where stupid actions from certain colleagues are just not right, beyond the line of individual differences, plainly stupid and unethical…but that too, i’ve also learned to accept. Another thing that i struggled with in the beginning was the Japanese work culture which is far different from our Malaysian or European work cultures. It’s not that it’s bad because we see a lot of huge Japanese corporations around the world doing very well…it just took me a whole lot more time settling into it.

Anyway, for the last two months, i tried to channel my thoughts towards a more positive manner…i told myself that i had to be patient and be thankful that i have a job and able to bring home a humble paycheck every month to support myself. Well, it helped! I didn’t give a damn on people who pissed me off anymore, i just concentrate on my task, i let those who wanna take credit for my work to do so because i know there’s a higher power above that always knows who does what and so i was much happier at work.

During my free time

With that, I thought i would stay put at least for quite some time. Then, an unknown call one January afternoon created a detour for me and soon i was on my way back to the previous company that i trained with. After putting much thought into the situation, i finally decided to leave my current company. I handed in my letter and i got mixed responses from my colleagues. Some wished me good luck and told me that it was the right thing to do but some weren’t that ‘friendly’ about it. There were the bitter ones who said i was stupid for leaving because i’ll just be more busy, get more stressed out at my job. Fact of the matter is that i think it’s very much up to personal preference. I can be super free at my current job but still i don’t have my own table or computer to do my own things, i would still need to hunt for a place to sit down…and to me, that’s not rest or freedom…it’s agonizing. Imagine putting yourself in an empty room with nothing, you’ll be very free but you’ll probably go insane also.  Is also like choosing between starving for 5 hours and then having to eat grass, or starving for 7 hours and have a New York Steak. I think those who strongly believe that they just want a super free job, are just lazy people and for sure we would still be using two rocks to start a fire if all of us humans are like that.

So yeah, even though i was getting happier, it was more about me pushing aside the negative things. I mean, the negative issues were still there, just like a pebble in my shoe. So when another job opportunity came along, i thought that it’s time to give it a try, and maybe get rid of the pebble. I told some of my friends that it’s like you walking under the hot sun, you wouldn’t die, maybe it’ll just be very uncomfortable…then along the way if someone hands you an umbrella (an opportunity), wouldn’t you take it?

Lunch that taste much better that it looks

Finally, I’m not saying that my new job will be better, i know i’ll need to struggle and learn everything from scratch. There will be people that would pissed me off and times that i’ll get stressed out but having a prior knowledge of the place, the culture and most of all the friends that i’ve acquainted from my tenure there as a trainee is i think, sufficient for me to want to give it my best shot at making this new chapter of my life work out in its best way!

Time to hang up my suit for good

Tomorrow is the 25th of February…

My last goodbye at work

My gratitude to my current colleagues who have taught and supported me throughout the whole 9 months, and thanks to those who respected my decision to leave. I wish u guys the best and hopefully we’ll meet again someday. Thank you.

Anyway, I know i’ve neglected this blog for quite a while but just right after my last post, i started on a ’summer’ semester which was a lot shorter with more lectures and assignments in between. I’ve also been picking up pace at work because of increased orders and new equipments arriving at our doorstep, all brought on by the recovering economy. Then there were the Christmas and new year holidays. I only had time to sit down and take a breather after my 3rd semester’s final exam ended a week ago.

So, I did some changes to my blog layout as i got kinda bored with the old black theme. It felt dark and gloomy and brought on a sense of a sad, emo blog (i guess it was one but…oh well nvm). Hence the very white theme now. Sometimes change is good because it freshen things up although to be honest i don’t really know whether there would be anyone reading my blog anymore, thinking that ‘it’ has passed on :P

Anyhoo, this will be a short entry just to signify the return of my blog. Yeah there have been certain positive changes to my life since the end of last year in terms of my outlook on life and a career change that i would blog the next time around. I’m also running out of time because it’s Chinese New Year and i’m gonna be late for reunion dinner.

So Happy Chinese New Year everyone!! Have a blessed Tiger year. And no, don’t have any Chinese NEW YEAR resolutions ;)

Semester 2 exam
I had my exam one day after my last post. I hate the fact that the exam time is never enough for those exams that require lots of writing (essay/short answers). It’s writing all the way from start to end and sometimes it feels like if i pause to think, i’ll be losing my marks from not having enough time to finish answering. My right hand always feels abused after ever non-calculation exam. Anyhow, i felt a bit better about this sem’s final and although i knew that i was only 1 mark away from the next best grade when my results came out 3 weeks later i was still overall satisfied. Classes for my third sem started even before my results were out and because it’s sort of a short/summer semester, everything is squeezed into a much tighter packed semester. Bad news is that i have less time in between assignments and my up coming final exam is a week before chinese new year. cock!

Penang
I was over at Penang in one of the weekends after the long wait (I bought the ticket in July this year). To be honest there aint a whole lot more places to shop there compared to Kuching so most of the time i was just going places, looking for food. My top priority was the cendol (mission accomplished!) but other than that i got to try the indian ox tail soup, super delicious dim sum, prawn mee, loh mee, curry mee, lok-lok, some roti-canai look alike wrap with hot-dog and cheese, J. Co baby donuts, Winter Warmer afternoon tea, Char Siew Puff and Paddington HOP Pancakes!

Cendol

My last trip to Penang Hill was probably almost 20 years ago so it was great to be back there on this trip. The weather was perfect and we could not have gone at a better time (5pm sunset).

Bukit Bendera

Indeed i had the holiday withdrawal syndrome when i got back to Kuching 3 days later and im really looking forward to another trip somewhere. Only problem is that i practically have z-e-r-o leave…nada. Sigh…it’s especially hard having to see all those Airasia promotions almost every month and not able to plan a freaking trip. Case of got money also cannot go holiday. WTF!

Big THANK YOU to my friends in Penang who were very accommodating.

Work
S-U-C-K-S!

A lot of factors contributing to the fact that i getting very demotivated at work. In OB this sem, i came across this topic about motivation in an organization. Apparently there are many theories about motivation such as Maslow’s. Yeah it’s just a theory but it’s fking true because i can so relate to it. Really i’m not trying to be a fussy/fked up/over reacting employee and everyone knows there’s no perfect place to work.

However, at my current position in my department and the way the organization is structured,

1. My bosses will never know who’s doing the real work because they spend a whole lot of time away from us in the office. I once read somewhere “You’ll be surprise on how far you can go if you careless about recognition” and for a short time i tried to live by that motto but I’ve come to realize that it’s only true in a certain way. I mean, when everything is going right, when im trying to work my ass off to make sure things are going well, no ones really gives a damn. Ok fine i can live with that but once something goes wrong, it’s like all eyes are on me, grilling my ass over how did it happen. Another scenario, sometimes after a hectic morning working like a horse i go for my lunch break and i may take a slightly longer break (knowing that all the machines are running ok)…but any of my top superiors see me, they give me the ‘wtf are u still out here catching snake for’ look. In a way i cant fking blame them rite, they dont know who actually did the freaking work. So how? I’m not ‘recognition’ crazy but i believe personal development also relies alot on feedback and recognition. Feedback good or bad help and recognition (higher appraisal marks) motivates people to work but if your bosses don’t know who’s doing what in the first place, how are they gonna rate you based on individual performance. It’s sad to say that just few days ago, i was putting in some extra effort refurbishing some of the machine parts and few of my colleagues walked pass and said “Don’t need to do lah, do so much for what? Nobody sees what you are doing also”. At the end of the fiscal year, everyone gets almost the same pay rise/bonus even for those people who never put in any effort. How would the employee feel? So yea, the culture that has been around is “Why do so much? Got do or not also same” and 10 years down the road, everyone is not very far off in terms of personal development from where they started, no?

Who's who, doing what?

2. We all know there’s no place on earth that’s free from people that just plainly get on your nerves but amplifying to the first issue above, there are people who are experts in taking credits but never do anything. I know one who not only does exactly that but also a retard in prioritizing his work. Not tending to important machines that have broken down to do something extremely unimportant. So retarded that is like telling his wife who is in labour at home that he has to finish mowing the lawn first before taking her to the hospital, so retarded that is like him insisting on trying to finish brushing his teeth in a burning house.  Almost 99.9% of the time either he finds something unimportant to do or not do anything at all when there’s an important task at hand. Not only that, after everything, he claims credit for the work or at least act as if he done something in front of the bosses. Sadly again that’s how he climb the corporate ladder to where he is now.

And all the little other things regarding leave, duty on Saturdays, no office table, computer for us is enough for me to want to leave. I wont die there but i rather not be there. Of course there are wonderful colleagues there too who can make certain days less agonizing that it really is.

Semester 3
Im taking accounting and organization behaviors this sem but i only have one exam. The latter only requires me to submit two long assignments in which one is about scenarios related to organization behaviors such problems with communication, trust, motivation, employee behaviors, appraisal, empowerment , corporate culture etc. Maybe my problems mentioned above are, in a way blessings in disguise.

I admit, sometimes

There are times i feel like this part time study thing is such a burden and i feel like giving up but say what you say, i really do learn a whole lot of new interesting stuff foreign to my current discipline. Sides, no pain no gain.

END
I should end here. A too long of a post gets boring. Till then.

*Photos copyright of Jenny Sun Photography (www.jennysunphotography.blogspot.com)

Do take a look at the slideshow of her latest work too. Simply gorgeous! Needless to say, Im gonna save lots and lots for my wedding photos, if i ever get married that is :P

Tryin to be funny

Super cool products always have super funky things written on the packaging.  That’s er…usually the case lah as I came across one today. Yeah!

andd….my freedom awaits me. just one more week.