squareberry’s

Archive for the ‘Work (‘s In!)’ Category

Confirmation

Time flies. Come 1st Aug, I would have been a full-time staff for a year and I’m glad to say I’ve no urge to leave yet! In fact, I feel lucky. Got this in the e-mail yesterday…

13 July 2010 

Dear Cheng Wei

We are pleased to confirm you as a member of our Senior Staff with effect from 1 August 2010.

We congratulate you on your confirmation and look forward to your continued good performance.

Yours sincerely

XXX

Road Building

One of the highlights of the trip to Bangkok was visiting a refinery, a blending plant, a limestone quarry/mixing plant and finally. witnessing a road being paved. The whole value chain was very fascinating, I swear.

Never will I view a road the same way again. It’s so much more than a grey slab!

Thanksgiving, and whine

It has been a tiring and intense week, but I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend this course. It was invaluable, especially for an inexperienced junior staff like little old me. One of the most satisfying experiences of work life thus far.

BUT more about that later, I am devastated by the work I need to do in the hotel room now!

Musings: Speeding Down a Highway

Time flies. More often than not, living feels like speeding down a highway (old cliche right?), passing many different cars. There’s always something going on, something to do, and usually, there’s something to rush for and little time to stop and stone.

But my life’s also predictable- a long straight highway. Every week, I work, practice piano, teach, run have Lennel-days, go out on some evenings, and it repeats itself. But hey, I’m enjoying the routine most of the time. I enjoy familiarity, I enjoy predictability and more importantly… I like it that there’s always something waiting for me to do. Its boring, but very exciting to me- too much time doing nothing makes me feel unsafe and empty.

I think the the biggest unknown is which exit to take to get off the highway (well, if I were really driving, that will definitely be a huge question mark). I don’t know how long the balance will last, and in someone else’s words, ‘You mean, you don’t know how long you can sustain your double life.’ But hey, I don’t really care, because I’m enjoying everything that’s happening and sometimes, it pays to live for the moment. I really do treasure this moment in time- the people, the routine, the work- I love them.

One year ago, I taught just 4 students and found it to be exhuasting to handle on top of a full time job. But that was easy to get used to, and soon I needed something more. Now, I’m teaching 8 students…I thought it’d be really tiring, but actually, it turned out to be not that different! With more students, given any random week, the chances of having 1 or more students cancelling lessons due to exams/illness/holidays/etc seem exponentially higher- so I rarely actually teach 8 students a week, lol. So things do work out, how lovely. =D

I’m trying my best to work on sleeping on time.

Cake 3

Cake 1 and Cake 2 on Wednesday.

Cake 3 from my colleagues! =D

Everyone came to wish me Happy Birthday the moment I stepped into office, so touched.

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My almost job at BT

Many of my friends are graduating this semester, and in the midst of hunting for jobs, thinking of the ideal job, and choosing between jobs. I think it has rubbed off me, because last night I had the weirdest career-related dream…

I dreamt that while working at The Shore, I went for an interview with an MNC called ‘BT’. I initially confused it with British Petroleum (BP), and felt it was a very prestigious job. I later remembered it was actually British Tabacco. It also offered a pay of $400 bucks more than my starting pay at The Shore.

I got the job, and signed a contract with an agreement to start months later. 

Months later, when it was time to submit my resignation letter to The Shore (one week notice only!), I started having cold feet because-

1. I had a 10% pay increment, and I realized it was so silly to want to job-hop for $400 bucks more.

2. I started worrying about what others might think if I worked for the tabacco industry. Furthermore, it was somewhat a moral dilemma even for myself.

3. I had begun enjoying my work at The Shore, and wanted to complete my 5 year program there. (What this 5-year program is, that’s a mystery to me.)

4. I realized I would be better off at the end of 5 years at The Shore.

And I was sorely regretting signing an agreement to work at BT in just 5 minutes, without even properly considering the pros and cons. And I kept asking my colleagues/bf/friends if it was illegal to break an employment contract, and no one knew.

(In my dream, I also kept thinking ‘its okay, in real life, I wouldn’t do anything as stupid…so I just have to bear with going to BT now, and it’ll be fine when I wake up later’.)

On the day I was supposed to start work at BT, I wanted to call up my interviewers who hired me, but didn’t know their numbers (WTF?!). I changed across a ‘healthy lifestyle’  poster at Sunshine Plaza, put up by BT, and quickly called the hotline.

(In my dream, I also thought, ‘even though this will be untrue when I wake up, I cannot stand my stupidity any longer, I need to get out of BT and get back to The Shore!’)

I can’t really remember what happened after that, but I woke up feeling pretty relieved that the nightmare was over. And just in case, I did a mental precautionary check and asked myself,

 ’Look, I’m going to work at The Shore today right? There’s no BT! Yes, correct, good.’

Guess I should feel grateful to be at work today, haha.

Fashion Disaster: Black

All my favourite officewear are black. Well, black’s my favourite colour after purple, and the colour of most pianos!

 And today, I’m in my new black office top and beaded necklace, mentioned on the day of financial decadence.

Wonder if its cool to wear all-black with purple heels?

What do geeks buy?

Well, the office will be migrating to Vista/Office 2007, so I figured all the Excel 2003 tricks I’ve learnt over the past few months would be made irrelevant.

Sherry and I met for lunch and saw this selling for $8, so why not?

Take a Break, go to Japan…

and get me some KIT KAT please!

I love the Japanese kit kats. A colleague came back from Tokyo lately, and bought us Kit Kat in Soya sauce (this is the best, serious) and Sweet Potato (way too sweet) flavours.

Winston once bought me the Kit Kat Azuki. Red Bean! I LOVED IT the best, and it made me happy for two minutes during my thesis writing. I want more!!!

Check out pictures of the 100+ flavours of Kit Kats in Japan here!

The wide variety of flavours and packaging reminds me of  the Global Marketing course I took- great example of global products successfully adapting to local palettes.

I used to only know Kit Kat in its original version (still one of my favourite chocolates ever) and White Chuky varient. Never knew what Nestle did in Japan!