Something

A relocation strategy.

Now everyone gets to read something.

Realizing a break is to make the journey ahead seem shorter.

Pro-Procrastinator

Oh, i have been procrastinating this post for so long, I dont remember how procrastinatory it has been. Not sure if there's such a word there, but I am not here to improve your vocab, or mine.

First things first. Boss is back, and I am truly amazed at the trueness of the phrase, "absence makes the heart fonder". It is not the fact that I really miss having her beside me whilst she was away, but also how being with her is so different even when we were whatsapping all day during her semester.

So, I am a kept man for awhile, and am ready to meet friends. Hehee.

Secondly, my short stint the UK eagle has ended. I mean, after tomorrow that is. Sure it was a great ride, but with the impending relocation of bank operations to cheaper hubs like India, India and India, and the grant of only a contract extension, I went out looking for something better.

Still am waiting (fingers crossed), but hopefully I land the job I do actually want. It was a struggle between staying for the namesake, and moving on with half an eye on the long-term path. So, wish me luck!

Then... I just love this post. It spells almost everything I have said here in my blog (somewhere), or have been wanting to say. Like the first two points, which I truly believe in; those who matter, do. 

And for those who wont, you dont have to do anything for them to fade away into oblivion.

Boss and slave.

Nobody said it was easy, and saying doesnt makes it any easier.

L.D.R.

Every couple knows this one. The one thing that may make or break a relationship. For me, it is actually the toughest legitimate test to a relationship. I mean, on the other spectrum, there is always infidelity, but that is erring on the unwise.

So Boss and I have had it. LDR i mean.

To be honest, can I just say firstly that I didn’t know how to deal with it? I mean who does? Especially when you have no prior experience like me. Its like going to a test without knowing the subject to study. You cant really prepare for it at all. No Wikipedia solution.

Yes there maybe case examples and advices on how to deal with it, but after this whole experience (or at least almost through 2/3 out of it), all I can say is that you would never know how to deal with it until you actually faced it in the eye.

But what I can say now is that I have seen really bad examples of how a LDR breaks a relationship. Just think of D and Y, the ones who were overseas, and happened to step out of line. Okay I probably don’t know the entire story for either of them, but at least I know the break is initiated by the one faraway from home.

Definitely thoughts of apprehension then for me.

So, and I am not saying this smugly, but we are doing ever so well. Sure there are times we feel disconnected with the cui Stinktel network and the different timezones we operate in. But, overall, I think we can give a pat on ourselves for forging through this minor episode of our relationship.

And come on, it came when we were in our supposed “honeymoon period”, been together for less than a year, and then poof, Boss is off to Kangaroo land. 

“Pat pat”.

Which makes me come to another point.

That, I believe maybe just maybe, we were wrong all this time. That even though the one that we have not seen eye to eye and isn’t exactly a saint (and we all know it). But, truly the problem lies in the other party. 

I believe in independence even as a couple, and if it is not life threatening or otherwise, I would freely allow my boss to do whatever she wants. I trust that she knows her limits, and that given the odd occasion, we should be allowed to let our hair down. Yes, I am talking about that particular incident for those who are in the loop, but I really think it was uncalled for.

Must everything circumvent around you?

Downer, if you ask me. And its not the first time drama steps in to steal the limelight from the fun we were having all night. I don’t know, maybe even as friends, I find it hard to swallow the fact that people can act this way.

Will saying help?

In retrospect, I am not trying to be mean or sway anyone towards my POV. But at the moment, I think the friendship is so fragile. Its on the brink of a make or break where things get ugly. We, and I don’t mean just me because I believe there are others who have been holding back as well, and have tolerated this long enough.

Grow up?

I am so mean.

Meanie me. Sounds like something that shortfart would say.

On happier notes, its another 6 days before Boss is back. And this time for another 7 months before she flies again. Wohoo! Totally cant wait to be bossed around by Boss.

Heh.

 The older I am, the lesser am I able to care for people.

Novemeber

LONG WEEKEND

And this is the first time since I joined the firm, where I dont have to work on a PH (public holiday).

Which anyway also means my contract is ending in another month's time. Not so much to celebrate, but apparently the plan is to shift me into another contract role due to the "freeze in headcount". Yes, I know drachma is threatening to make a comeback to Greece, and investment banks are reporting losses in U.S.

BUT STILL.

Still got to look for more permanent opportunities out there, with the outsourcing happening cruelly to some shared services, it is soon to coming to treasury.

Cuicui.

is this the time to be choosy in determining where you want to be in your career, or hope on somewhere within the industry to grab a foothold, and see how it goes?

Leave that thought while I hunt around for interviews.

But November will end well when Boss returns in exactly 20 days' time. Wheee! 

ARGHHH... Chelsea sucks these days. Its like they are just going through the motions and hoping the opposition will gift them a goal. No cutting edge, no creativity, no goals, no sight of Torres going back to his best.

But then again, I dont feel so much these days. Not so much angst when they lose, or delirium when they win. Just...

"ok loh."

Shit I think I am becoming emotionless like JS.

Taking in the differences in people, if and when I can.

Weather report

The weather in Singapore is crazy.

I know its supposed to be hot and wet, but not at the same time in a day?

And I am feeling rather under the weather recently, with the late nights, the emo colleague and the weather that twists and turns dramatically, all in a day's work. It switches from sunny hot day to hot and wet, before turning into thunderstorm i-need-yellow-boots flooding.

All within my lunch hour.

Goldenshoe Market seems so hard to get to these days.

And ever since I have started adding colleagues after colleagues onto my Facebook collection of friends-I-add-but-dont-really-know, bitching has been downsided to the network of Twitter now. I am officially joining the whiners aloud on Twitter.

Hail whiners!

Boss will be back in a month's time, which is about the best thing that can happen to me now. I mean, other than the gloomy global economy, and the outsourcing of my firm, I dont really see any glimmer of hope in the next year or so. 

And the cui weather, of course.

But who knows, as my VP said she would lengthen my stay in the firm. Enough for me to want to stay in a reputable bank, but not enough for me to job-search periodically. I have this feeling we are all losing our back-end jobs to the blacks, and its only a matter of time.

Not who, but when the entire team is writing procedures for Chennai-ians to take over our roles.

How sad is that?

Moving on, I realise something we all already know.

That, as I grow older, I care lesser for people. Okay I still do for those who I keep close to. But the space seems smaller for me. I dont really "give face" these days to people I used to do. It is like I have this within me,

"If you bochup me, I dont really have to chup you."

But I do feel guilty for people who chup me and yet I do the exact opposite.

I am learning to. Without Boss around me to tune me emotionally and morally, I feel a little less humane. I am cold-blooded, as she says. 

In other minor non-exciting story of my life...

Colleagues are people who will see your mistake and not bother about rectifying them if it does not really affects them. Colleagues, are not friends.

They may be he-he-ha-ha on a frequent basis. But at the end of the day, its a close-by-proximity relationship. I am learning to deal with that, along with the emo colleague I so do not understand. 

Yes, it is a girl thing. And yes, you can be smiling and laughing with/at me now, and next moment you are sulky and just being deaf and mute to all interactions. 

As fickle as the end-of-year weather.

You can never understand women, can you?

At least for Boss, I know exactly why she is emo. PMS.

HAHAHAHAA.

Thoughts of change.

Scoring brownie points (outrightly)

I was just telling Boss that I had a thought in mind, and really wanted it to be published here.

But it was only a couple of sentences, and I thought I could have lengthened it to a short story.

That was...a week ago.

Obviously, I have not done much about it.

Which leads to this post.

I am a boring person.

I like my weekends to be spent nua-ing at home, watching movies I have pirated online, running errands I dont have the time for on weekdays, or just talking to my Boss and disturbing her while she mugs.

Such a selfish boyfriend.

But.

That is how it works. And I am sooooo lucky to find my Boss who is equally nua-ly. I mean, aside from the occassional gastronomical treats to test new food places, we do what I have explained earlier.

Just together.

I miss those days, but they are coming back (at least for the next 7 months) in about a month's time.

Tmd, Chelsea trailing 0-1 to QPR, and down to 9 men with Bosingwa and Drogba off within the first half. Crazy match, but less than the 1-6 Manure suffered under Citeh.

I will...work on that post I was talking about.

It is interesting.

You grow when you grow.

iSad

I remember my first Apple. That shiny rectangular iPod Mini I received from my brother for my 21^st birthday while dining at Triple3. It was packaged in a simple white box, a signature that would resonate to the subsequent family of Apple products. The successful generations of iPod, of Mini, of iMac, of iPhone, and of course of iPad that revolutionized the tablet industry.

iSad.

I never knew a music player can be so cool, so fashionable that you often want to pull it out of your pocket, not to check the cheesy pop songs I am listening to, but to admire the work of art. It would not be too far off to say that Steve Jobs fashioned the coolness of portable music players.

And of smartphones, of tablets too.

Steve Jobs was a college dropout, started his business in the garage of his adopted parents. Then he got kicked out of his own company by the man he hired to grow Apple thereafter. Came back when it was going down several years after (not before starting Pixar which gave us Toy Story and Up), and grew the company remarkably as his final third act, before leaving  us all on October 6^th 2011.

It is now, the second most valuable company after ExxonMobil. He is like the Buffett of technology, the God of technophiles.

Somehow, when I got news of his demise whilst walking to my office, I felt a deep sense of sadness in me. It was as if someone close to me passed on, and I was reeling in shock. Was this for real, I thought to myself.  Or was Straits Time running a mock story. So to Bloomberg, and to Reuters, I confirmed the inevitable.

He may not be the most philanthropic billionaire out there, and probably is one of the most reclusive ones. He also rules with an iron fist, and we all know he fired people in elevators in his office at Cupertino, California. But at the end of the day, that is not what he is known for. He probably is the only man without any technical excellence of business background to come out and rule on the three markets he ventured into. His iPod series has total ownage of the music players with 70% market share (sorry Creative), his iPhone has smartphone pioneers RIM and Nokia losing huge market share even since it was launched, with Apple currently the single biggest smartphone maker.

And what about iPad?

Well, there was no market to begin with, but Steve Jobs created one, of tablets that you see people playing Angry Birds on in MRT trains these days. Other companies such as Samsung and even Amazon are just playing catch up now.

Its amazing because when asked if he did any consumer or market research on the lead-up to launching iPad, this was his reply:

“None. It isn’t the consumer’s job to know what they want.”

So basically, he is saying we are all herds of sheep following his products’ direction.

Willingly.

Stunning.

For someone who has shaped many of our lives, for us who have owned one Apple product one way or another, I am truly mourning the loss of a true genius. 

Cant wait for the only bio authorized by Steve Jobs to be out this month by Walter Isaacson!

 Apple lost its crunch.

Wealth is subjective.