A Reluctant "Vacation"

When I first met the new boss, he told me I joined the department just in time for an offsite retreat in Phuket. Not bad. I've never been there before. Free trip. That was back in June.


Less than a week into the new job I was willing to give up any and every thing, including the "vacation" to Phuket for things to be better. The plants in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan were all having problems. And they seem to develop new sickness every other day.

May be a year later I would look back and be glad all these created great learning opportunities for me within such a short time, just may be. For now, it is a nightmare. It does not help to have a trader who only know how to throw abuses at you, no matter how senior or experience she is. The other leg in the plant is also in turmoil. Three people have been in that leg within a month. They are overloaded as they are holding multiple slates. The first is an old "bird", forget about asking more from him. The second is a helpful young in-experienced guy, whose son is in the hospital. The third is a blunt lady whose first words to me are "what you want? I don't have time".

Everyday I'm faced with either tank top or tank bottom situation. One save is only the prelude to another attack wave. A lot of time one will have to depend on luck. This happened last Friday just before I was about to call it a day. Got a call from the blunt lady. She told me there was an error in the spreadsheet. After correcting for it, the tank top situation disappeared. It seemed too good to be true so while waiting for my girl's tuition class to end today, I rechecked the working. She was right...*punch air*...saved....for now.

Things seems to be improving. Got to concentrate some energy back to my running. Next Sunday is the half marathon. I'm totally not prepared. Have not run for 2 weeks and only managed a 50min on Thursday. Ahhh... look forward to the serene view.....

Surviving New Assignment

Change is painful, very cliche but true. This is the second week into my new assignment and the pain seems almost unbearable. It comes from all directions.

Number one pain comes from less time with family. Having been home based for the last year, and despite some heavy traveling, there were big chunks of time with kids and wife. Time was flexible. Work can start from 4am when I needed to talk to colleagues in New Zealand or have some quiet time to think. Work can end at 11pm to clear emails after the kids had gone to bed. Family time can be 8am going marketing with wife or 9am at the gynecologist with wife (going to be father third time, yipee!) or 4pm going for a swim with kids.

Number two pain comes from dealing with the dynamics in the new function, a.k.a. politics. I will admit I'm suicidal in politics. Usually, I will unconsciously stick my neck out and get myself killed many times over. Worse of all, I get lots of heartache from the comments by others. I was labeled stubborn before, and now I can add threatening to the list. At the same time, my supervisors are saying I need to be more assertive. These seems to be extreme characters for the same person. It is not so extreme if put into the context of communication. I am non assertive. And is something I need to work to improve. But how to reconcile this with the "stubborn" and "threatening" label? It depends on the listener. There will and always be people out there that will turn good or neutral to bad (white to black). A lot of them are what we typically call "friends" too. They will hear what they want to hear (remember the Gold 90.5 FM advertisement?). So how to deal with it? Wish I have the "always" correct answer.

Number three pain comes from learning new technicalities of the new job. It helps if I have super memory. Unfortunately, I am just a normal guy. I figure only time can resolve this.

In the end, I will survive. I am not worry about the outcome, i.e. what people thinks of me (yeah yeah). My focus and priority is still the family and gaining financial security outside of the "full time" work place.

The Beginning...

This is it. Something I never thought of doing till today. I was inspired after reading a friend's blog. TLK showed me what seemed to be a great way to let out my thoughts could not escape my mouth. At the same time, I can now understand the bloggers' vanity in showing the world their inner-self.

I'll have to stop here for the first blog. I'll have to get ready to send my daughter to art class.

Hmmmm, wonder if I will ever find time to keep this up. Only time will tell.