Some thoughts....After a week, and its coming to Nov.

Well, its Oct 28, and its time to pen a few words.......

I am currently writing this while chatting my friend currently in Singapore....Mr. Ti. You can locate him at http://tmnet.blogspot.com/. His name is unique. I claim that he was descended from that remarkable fella, Shih Huang Ti, who used to rule China some 2200 years ago.

He is an interesting guy, no matter but he is not the topic of my blog today. If you want to see a pic of him please go to the above address. This blog has no space for his pic....Hahaha.... :D

Its been an eventful week...It was raining from Monday to Friday, cats and dogs, frogs and no hail...

But among others, i am not sure what the heck is happening to some people nowadays...

Back when i was an engineer, i would take whatever project or job my boss gave me, no matter whether it was great or it was sh**ty...Nowadays, when you want to give the job to someone, one gets the reply, "No boss, this dun suit me..." or "Sorry boss, not interested...." With this kind of attitude, it won't win much praise and understanding from the boss.....Oh yeah, if i had forgotten to mention, i am a manager actually..... :P People are getting picky and starting to hijack the department. I had this same experience when i first became manager, but now that i have been on the job 15 months, there are other ways around it.....And its going to be different...

Moving on, there's gonna be an audit in the department by some Russians...Yup, the Vladimirs, Ilyas, Olgas, Mikhails, Olegs, Yuris from the North are descending!...We had a meeting with our company's Russian engineers yesterday, and for the sake of heavens to the seas, I could not understand a single word...Not ONE word....except for the part where the speaker went..."In general, in general!..." I think she must have had some training in the Russian army some time back....Hahahah.... :D

I am going to have 2 engineers leaving the department. One moving to another department and one moving to another pasture.....The grass is always greener on the other side, but my experiences have been that they quickly dry up and become a big Sahara after a while. So i like to stay where i am thank you! But talking about this, i remembered a few things from the book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins.....

#1. People are not your most important assets, the RIGHT people are.

#2. First who, then where....Make sure you have the right people on your team, then only start the bus engine going. So that while you are on your way and the going gets tough, the tough can get going. Hopefully not abandoning the bus, but pushing it.

#3. If there were someone leaving, you can gauge if he/she was a favourable employee through these 2 questions:

a. When the resignation letter was handed to you, did you feel an impending doom that you would find it difficult to replace the person, or were you secretly relieved wondering only why it took so long for the person to do the resignation?

b. Would you hire the person again if he/she came back for an interview?

Today's blog is pretty long, but it covers the week. Here is a pic to share....Its called the 5 Patricks....Because there is one real human Patrick clothed in red, with 4 toy doggies call Patrick and they are all in red....Hahaha....Was there fun getting this done! :P And you can see some folks in the background enjoying the moment too.

Overall things are pretty ok. There's something brewing at work but i will take care of that next week.

I will be off work on Monday & Tuesday, so probably there will be a short entry on the weekday. I am looking forward to my working rest....

I am taking this rest to strategize and re-organize the department. Wonder what will turn up. But anyhow, that's more or less what i wanted to blog....A few things noteworthy happened too this week from the news....

1. Hu Jintao remains President of China. Wen Jiabao is still the Premier. Nothing earth shattering. Its business as usual in the People's Republic of China.

2. The Malaysian billionaire, Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong, who built an empire from $2 to $20,000,000,000 over the course of 70 years, died at 90. I can just see the $2 at the end.....It should be $20,000,000,002.00. Remarkable! This man is truly an entreprenuer, businessman, philantrophist etc. RIP.

3. John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, is on his way out. Out of office, out of Parliament and will soon be out of job. Afterall Australia has been employing him for some 11 years. So perhaps new & fresh ideas are required.....

Now, i need a haircut and i couldn't contact my hairstylist. I juz hope she has not changed her mobile number or quit the profession....I will need to look for a new one then...Haizz...*sigh*..


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I was flirtatious....And it was fun...Hahaha.. :D

I just wondered wat happened today......

Apparently there was a birthday party for Wei Kee, whose girlfriend Beverly and WK's mom and WK's family (and his extremely naughty sis) arranged for a surprise b'day party for WK. So there i was, later than was normal and suddenly the entire attention of nearly 15 people were focused on me. Actually more to the attention of Kevin, Jocelyn, Joshua, Joni, Beverly, Wei Kee & Grace.

Anyway, the story....they started taking lots of photos of me...eating or being interviewed and then putting lots of Patricks....errr...a Red coloured dog, around me...Of course, they were all having the loads of fun too...And they were very alert to the mood i had placed in Facebook.com --> I was being in a flirty mood...Hahaha...Didn't know it would garner lots of attention...Someone must really have been noticing....hahahah... :P

:P I only wonder where the pictures will end up. And the interview....YouTube? Facebook? Friendster? Urrrgghh....The thought scares me silly....hehehe.... :P

Jocelyn (i noe its u who let leak my mood), that's Wei Kee's cheeky sis, mentioned that following the publication of the photos, i would see a drop in my value....Hahaha....I think it won't be a drop lah....muz be realistic mah...i think it's going to be a market crash....d'oh!

I think its good for people to once in a while play a fool....Guys who can't be sporting and fun loving are just guys who are not sporting and fun loving...Blehhhhh.... :P <-- What was that?? Some mountain high guru advice?

And i just thought how nice this Christian household & family is. So many people coming over for the party. In fact, Wei Kee is so popular that the parking lot opposite his house was full of cars of the people going for the party... :P And mostly the fun, the loving and the "aggressive" chit chatting of the folks.

So, though this blog is not much on Wei Kee, I'd just like to dedicate it to him, for his usual fun lovingness and his fondness for fine foods and food. He is 30. A great guy & a wonderful worship leader!

Happy Birthday, Wei Kee. May God continue to shower His blessings on you.

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Does it need a title??

Hmmm....#1. does every place need a title? and #2. i realised i should not put a date though today is 15 October. 2007.....I wonder what will show up on blogspot. 14 October or 15 October?

Can't say i have been up to much. It was basically church and squash....That's about it, except again for my mom's fantastic cooking. And also the Theory of Relativity. I just could not think how the conversation got there with my squash partner but it did.


I am still unhappy over my inability to play a good game of squash with Tim....As usual, he whacked me up 3 games to 2 games....Now why am i not beating him??? Darn, if this goes on, i will be as thin as a bamboo tree.

.....Its 20 October today....As one can see, its no 5 days since the above blog. Though i found out my squash partner is not a morning person and beat him flat in all 3 games after which he refused to play anymore....We had another game on Wednesday, and he beat me 2 out of 3 games.....but still he is human, so there is always a chance i can win... :P

The Eid-Il-Fitr holidays ended and it was back to work and quite a hectic few days even though it was short few days to the weekend. I cannot really think of much that happened except my friend, Jerry, passed me some episodes of Coupling, Naruto (Shippuuden) series and Heroes Season 2. He is a terrific guy and just like Tim, lightens up my more than boring life...Hahaha...
So i have spent the last few days viewing some of the episodes, having a good laugh from Coupling and resting watching some episodes of Naruto. Top Gear is also fun and they come from another friend, TC.

Hmmm....i have to depend on some of my friends to make life more interesting...hahaha....But they really do. And more often than not, they do give me a reality check.

Hmmm....dats more than say quite a lot about friends. Its the weekend, and seems like that's the only real time i have the time to write anything. One of my uncles passed away yesterday, quite unexpectedly. His name is Krishna. Aged 64. I'll always remember him from his Kris Corner diner. Its a late nite diner and i used to go there in the wee hours of the morning or late late at night, whichever is your perspective. My parents will be attending his wake. I have been invited to a lunch and hopefully my friend returning from China won't forget to drop me a line and set up a meeting this evening.......Lets see how. I haven't met him in 8 months.

Oh well, i haven't much to write left, except that my boss has allowed me to hire another one person to replace another engineer who is leaving. I have already another candidate for a recent graduate position, so i hope with all this new hires i can get my team more focused on the future projects and current undertakings. Its going to be another hectic week as its a month end and we really need to make the revenue numbers....

Its going to be a boring week too.....Tim isn't around & Jerry is off to Japan with his girlfriend, QF, for vacation, Tommy (another great guy is stuck in Japan). I'm left with YH...


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Blogging.....Start....

Oct 14, 2007 - So i started blogging.....Perhaps its fun...Haha....

It was pretty hectic yesterday.. Its 630am, nothing much happened today yet, so its about yesterday....

There has been 1 complaint at work from Japan, and it totally sucks (the situation, not Japan)....So the team here had to come up with a solution.
We have made more progress in 1 week then in the last 1 month, the case been handled by another guy...Thank goodness he went off for Eid-Il-Fitri celebrations leaving us to handle things ourselves....The lady taking up the task is doing a fantastic and marvellous job.
Only thing is we landed with a 7am teleconference on a holiday morning between ourselves, Japan & US. Gosh...7am! On a Saturday morning :( that sucks too!
Anyway, it went well, but there are still things to improve. I must have been having my eyes closed as the product & the process of making the product has degenerated into the state its in....
I think a total revamp of this thing needs to be done....

Well, then once that got done, I went off for breakfast with another colleague for Flat Home Made Noodles....Perhaps one day you'll get to see what that is...Hahaha.... :) Not like many people are interested to see it... :P or even this blogspot.....I am really laughing now....

Well, during breakfast, I started expounding on what i have been recently reading. There's this book by Jim Collins. Its called Good to Great and a really wonderful book. It has pointers on how to make a company move from good to great, but i think it also provides good pointers to get a team from good to great. In fact if the team's not good yet, then better be getting it to good. After all, a great company is made of many great teams.

I thought you've gotta have a sense of loyalty somewhere. What the heck...Some of my colleagues have decided to ostracize me. And to what end? Does it make sense to ostracize people especially those you work with? I think that's bad character, that is....Don't know where people pick up such attitudes. Well, sometimes you had better not ostracize your boss though, dunno how the boss will take it....Hahaha....There's this one engineer, i believe, hates my guts, so is getting everyone else corrupted.....Damage Control Time!!!

Once you have worked long enough to know your passion, and mine happens to be my work and my team (oooohh....i manage a team of engineers...i forget to write that), you'll realize that the work is the satisfaction and although the monetary reward is essential, it's not primary. So my heart's totally in it, and what happens? I find my engineers ostracizing me. But no matter....Jesus told us to forgive, so lets forgive. But I gotta set them on the straight road, ostracizing is not leadership character. And i gotta get some correction done, otherwise i can forget having lunch with some of them forever...hahaha...

Anyway, once breakfast was done, i went for some Guitar lessons. Thought i was already making good progress. But my guitar teacher thought that my strumming wasn't up to par as i couldn't change chords in timing with the beats well enough. So i got my homework cut out for me....Hahhaa.....

A real nice guy, my guitar teacher is....He is also my favourite squash partner.


Once dat was done, it was off to Borders...Its been so stressful the last week, i forgot to get a b'day present for my brother....I got him a b'day card but forgot the present...What a dumb a**.
Anyway, as i was scampering around, i saw my brother there too....hmmm.....I still got him a Birthday Gift Card of $50, so he can spend it for whatever books he wants....And i got myself another interesting book (i hope its interesting, its in the bestseller list)...True North by Bill George. You'll see a short review in 2-3 weeks. Hahaha...

I always look forward to home cooked food....My mom's the best. I like all her cooking, though she has experimented on some things and i thought they still tasted ok. But today's lunch was simple with portions of spinach and steamed chicken. There was vegetarian duck too....How do you get vegetarian duck? :P.....

Had a nice hike later in the evening. On the normal step trail, it takes me 16 mins up, but on the tarred road today it took me 24 mins. And on the way down the step trail, i met one of the church pastors. We had a nice chat, though at the end of it, he confessed he had forgotten my name...But that's fine...My chinese name ain't that easy to remember, but once i told him, he remembered the Mandarin version. Hahaha....Now, i have revealed my ethnicity :P

So i have some pointers to make.....Up the step trail and down the tarred trail. - Pastor.

Oh well, the rest of the day past pretty fast, with me ending up with a Quarter Pounder for dinner. Nothing much else happened except seeing me sitting in front of the tele watching Ueki anime. I think that's a pretty cool anime, makes us try to think what powers the different characters have. And as usual i fell asleep on the bed without turning of the power. Darn....

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