One Giant Leap

December 29th, 2008 The author

This year has been quite an experience for me. I never would have thought that I would be involved in so many different things, some painful, some exhilarating, some pure adventurous.
I’ve gone from coping with a loved one who was diagnosed with cancer and passed away as a result of it, to exploring a new hobby (photography); from jumping careers and landing in a job that is different from my past work to finally making the effort to take care of fitness and health.

Yes this year, has been truly an year filled with a myriad of experiences. And given the recent developments in my life, I don’t see any signs of slowing down.

As I write this piece on my bed, stacks of magazines on home and deco lay beside my bedside lamp. Yes yours truly is now into the home improvement and deco design! All this only came about fairly recently when we (my brother and I) decided to buy a place of our own. Yes that’s right I’m going to be a home-owner pretty soon. And the sweetest thing about this property is that it’s an actual house with land by the side, which means, gardening could be a future hobby of mine some day!

But for now, I’m soaking everything that’s related to home design like a sponge, starting with the kitchen! Yes I’m a guy and I’m looking at kitchen countertops and cabinets! It’s really quite interesting to broaden your knowledge and learn about something which has always been thought to be a “feminine” thing. Yes I consider, or at least I USED to consider anything to do with the kitchen or home deco and design to be classified under “women interests”.

But the fact that I’m now into it, I think just goes to show that … well I’m growing up! A year or two ago if you were to ask me whether I would be interested in such things, I would have sincerely said “NOPE!”. But I guess sooner or later you gotta grow up and … in the words of the well-known phrase of Russell Peters - BE A MAN .

There are things you just got to do and see to as you get older. I have to be candid though, it’s overwhelming; getting absorbed into this whole home deco ‘project’. I had spent more than an hour today at the bookstore going through books on home improvement and design.

But I gotta admit, like most of the experiences that I’ve gone through this year, (except for mum’s death), it’s enjoying. It’s enjoyable to learn something new, to read up with enthusiasm in your mind as you try to absorb and understand everything as much as you can.

Tomorrow morning, we are going back to the house to meet up with the agent and I’m going to use the time to study in greater detail on the house and the rooms.

Next year is sure gonna be an interesting one

Posted in Life, me, stuff | 1 Comment »

Too much to write; too much to do

December 24th, 2008 The author

I have been on radio silence for quite sometime for a good reason. Yes it is indeed the holiday season and I was on leave for the entire last week. Despite the 1 week “holiday”, I have been pretty much busy being a tour guide and a driver to my relatives who have come down from Canada. In fact I have been quite busy for the whole of last week I didn’t even get time to do my own work.

Nothing at all. Zip. Nada

No time to even catch up on my readings, let alone time to blog. In some ways it has been great to spend the entire week with my uncle and his family. I’ve never done such a thing like this before (i.e - spend the entire week doing nothing but taking them around day after day to visit places).

I have thought up quite a number of ideas to write for my blog, alas, I have much to write, and much to do. It also doesn’t help that the internet has been fairly poor over the last couple of days. I’ve not been able to log into my dashboard properly and frankly, everything seems just slow on the net. I don’t know whether it has anything to do with the cable disruption in europe, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is so. With major cables
being affected, most traffic will be routed through other networks, thus causing heavy traffic and bottlenecks at some important locations.

Oh well, that’s what happens when you depend on technology abit too much at times.

Posted in Life, People, Relationships, me | 1 Comment »

Why Does “Management Crap” Happen? Part III

December 8th, 2008 The author

Pride is the mask of one own’s faults 

Jewish Proverb

In my last entry, I mentioned that politics is one of the culprits behind management crap. Too often time politics get in the way, and we often see the “fruits” of it within a short period of time : unqualified executives warming the seats of important poisitions and making poor decision choices.

Now as humans, granted one of the attributes that we all share in common is our need to learn. And part of learning requires making mistakes, that’s a natural byproduct of our lifelong learning process. And of course, they higher we go up in life, making mistakes naturally becomes costlier.

But another thing I have observed is, the higher we go up, be it whether it’s in our careers or our own lives, the harder it gets for us to admit our faults. I have seen this happen too many times in my workplace, especially among my supervisor and managers.

I have always wondered -

Why is it so hard for someone to say sorry for something?

Why is it so difficult to admit it was your mistake?

Is there some unwritten rule that says apologizing makes you look weaker?  Okay maybe you might hang you head low in shame for a couple of days, but so what? Humbly accepting your mistake with sincere humility actually can help improve the situation because people have already AKNOWLEDGED the problem and it’s time to move beyond the issue and concerntrate on finding what to do next.

I say this method works because I’ve gone through it myself. I remember being a project manager for one of my IT network projects, we had done a fanstastic job with implementing the network system, but we missed out on a small part, the installation of the network printers. Rather than pointing who is to be blame for it, I immediately took up to responsibility and told my management “okay so we made a mistake, we overlooked the printer, what do we do now? How do we recitify this?… How do we move forward from here?”

Although management was a little unhappy about that incident, coming clean with the error and pressing to move on really helped the whole project. Admitting to the client we overlooked the printer and promising to rectifiy it immediately helped pacify the client and we could move on. 

Sadly, most executives are too proud to admit their mistakes. They’re too proud to say “okay we messed up, what do we do from here, what contigency plans can we take?”  

Rather what do most executive do? They look for scapegoats, someone to shoulder the blame for them. They complain about how the other party has not been working properly with the team, or they complain about the individual not pulling his weight blah blah blah.

Someone else, just not me is their attitude

True, there are instances where it’s really the other party’s mistake, but most often than not, whether it’s someone else’s mistake or fault, very few will actually own up and try to stir the team. In a crude way, when shit hits the fan, no one wants to be near it.

Instead who’s to shoulder all this? Indirectly it’ll be the lowly powerless employees. Suddenly just because of somebody else’s error and refusal to bite the bullet, lowly employees get pressed to the wall ; they’re forced to complete their deadlines, they’re forced to stay back late, they’re forced to produce flawless work in a ridicioulous time frame. 

Management’s mistake, no one takes the blame, lowly employees take the shit.

If only we had senior managers who had the balls to admit where they’ve gone wrong and just carry the team back to the original goal, now that would truly be a real leader…

Posted in Life, People, Uncanny Philosophy, Uncategorized, work | No Comments »