Office Christmas Parties

Only in 2004, its the very first time I attended an office Christmas Party. In the old company which I worked for previously, there is no such event. Perhaps its a kinda Chinese family owned business, they don't celebrate Christmas, but the irony thing is that we don't even observe Chinese celebrations e.g. "Mei Nga", "Kor Thong" etc. The only event we celebrate or get to celebrate is the "Hoi Kong Zhou" (or dinner after the start of work after the Chinese New Year holidays).

However, when I came over to this new company, the first party I attended is the Christmas Party held in the office. Food is catered from an Italian restaurant, in which we get pasta, roast lamb, grill chicken, fresh salads, garlic bread etc. Beer and hard liqueur is served free flow.

The "Mat Salleh" (this is the term we use to address the people from oversea) boss had started hurdling the team to the pantry by the time the clock hits 3pm. He went round the office to every floor and slam shut all the laptops regardless if you are still half way writing your mail or doing some official works. He will say (and I still remember) ".... stop working, its CHRISTMAS!!" I remember I saw him outside my room slamming down my engineer's laptop and I quickly shut off mine before he makes into my room to slam mine to prevent my laptop hanging.

We will then make a beeline into the pantry and the boss started with beer for everyone and then there comes Johnny, walking into the pantry and "he" didn't come alone, along with him came a few other pals of his e.g. Vodka, Red Label, Gordon and Baileys.The party had started way before the caterer arrived.

Then, when the caterer arrive at about 5pm, food is served. By that time we had had enough drinks in our stomach that we can hardly eat anything else. Somehow the food also find its way into the stomach.

By the time dinner is over by 7pm, we started exchanging gifts. There is a memo communicated across the office beforehand, that everyone attending the party must prepare a gift. There were some rules for this gift, e.g. no less than RMxx, Not something perishable, No Chocolates, No Food stuffs, etc etc. All this rules / guidelines are made by the secretaries. However, I was surprise to see the team is very discipline to adhere to those rules.

Its kinda lucky draw scheme where all the gifts are numbered and the person draw a number from the "black box" and the gift are matched to the number on your had drawn.

The party went on until about 830pm, then all went back with a gift in their hands, a stomach full of food and a floating head. Its really an enjoyable party and at that time you can see the whole team having fun.

Well, this year as everyone knows there is a slowdown in the economy, there is no such party organised. Hopefully, by next year or the coming years, the economy will pick up and there will be such Christmas Party in the office again.

Anyway, have a great Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

Automatic Out of Office Reply

Every time when comes year end, there is definitely a time whereby whenever you call anyone, be it your suppliers or your customers or even your colleagues, most of the time you will hear some common lines - he is not in or on leave.

At times the advancement of technologies have moved into so automated in the sense that the person can actually set an automatic reply to his e-mail that whenever you send him / her an e-mail, the server will response to you telling you that this person is on leave / out of office from a certain dates and even personalize messages like who to contact to appear in the replies.

This advance feature of the mail server is not widely available. Only certain servers enable their user to set this feature. There were once (and this happen to myself) I was on leave for 3 workings days i.e. Wednesday until Friday and joining together with the weekend, I had enable this function on my office mail server.

One of the supplier who never came across this feature actually called me and argue with me if I am not in the office, how can he get my "Out-Of Office" reply almost immediately as he send his e-mail to me.

He actually told me that and I quote ".... if you do not want to reply to my mails, just say so, I can call and discuss with you over the phone. No need to send my a reply saying that you are out of office." And mind you he was saying it with a serious tone and not joking in any sense.

When I heard the words he said above, I don't know whether to laugh or to feel angry with this person. Of course, I laugh my head off when he says those words to me. And I did forgive him for being naive of the advancement of the technology / mailbox features.

So, to all of you out there, when you get an Out Of Office reply message from any mails you send, please do realise that this feature is a feature they have in the mail server that can be activated by a click of the mouse. Please do not call that person and accuse the person of not being wanting to answer / reply to you ok.

Have a good holiday!!!

Weekend Mails

It is funny thing that people like to send you e-mails over the weekend which I don't know what is the reason for it. The reason I am saying this is because we tend to get so many mails on the first day of work morning.


It get on my nerves that there had been so many mails on a monday morning. Are the people too tempted to send out e-mails over the weekend? Are they so hard working that even on weekend they can't get their mind off work?

Imagine this scenario... on Friday evening, when the day is over at approx 5pm, you check your mail for the last time and call it a week. Then, you shut down your computer and leave the office expecting all correspondences to clear for the week.


To your surprise, there will be some people that send you e-mails over the weekend. Some are so crazy when you look at the time and date it was send on Saturday 10pm, or even Sunday at 8pm.


Hey, what are you guys doing there working on your mails on Saturday night at 10pm or even Sunday at 8pm where you suppose to spend time with your family members for dinner or other family activities? Can't you just leave work at work and only start working on Monday morning instead? Weird.


I don't know, perhaps I have been working too long already and really cherish weekends breaks. For me weekends is the time you use to catch up with your loved onces and have lunches or dinner or even supper together and then spend time to sit and chit-chat. It is also for you to rewind the whole weeks workload and be prepared for the coming week.


Are these people that anxious to start their working week already that even weekends to them is just like any other working days?

When I first started my working life, as a fresh graduate I didn't care much about weekends. Perhaps for my first 5 years of working life, I was working on a five and a half working day week company.

Therefore, I don't really appreciate weekends. Also at that time, even weekends, I need to wake up early to go for my part time classes which is from morning 8.30am until evening 6pm on alternate Saturdays and Sundays. Even those weekends without classes, most of the time is spend reading the books. At that time, the only thing that I like on weekends is when my gf is back for her holidays, which I really look forward to seeing her every weekends, even including now. But, now we get to meet more often... (that's a different set of stories for later).

So for me, for the first 5 years of being a young engineer, weekends means nothing much to me. However, things starts to change when I join a different company in the 3rd quarter of 2004. This company, which I am still working now works 5 days a week. At that time, I had also completed my studies and suddently, I woke up realizing there were much more time in my hands than I previously knew.

On weekends, I get to do the things I like, e.g. dating my lovely gf, going for movies, watching life EPL football on TV, swimming, having lunch and dinner with my whole family, swimming, servicing my car, washing my car etc.

It never came into my mind to even work on weekends. Work for me stops at 1700 hrs on Fridays or the eve of any public holidays.... but, if you ask my gf, she will disagree. Because I have my teams all around Asia Pacific, therefore, the work goes on even on weekends. But, I told myself I will not do my mails or call anyone with regards to work on weekends, however, you still cannot stop people from calling you instead right?

To me now, weekends seems to fly by so quick. The quality time I spend with my family and my gf seems so short to me and 2 days in not enough. But what can I do??

Just have to cheerish every minute of it and stay out from the daily 5 days routine and don't send mails on weekends!!

Lunch Food

After discussing about lunch time, lets talk about lunch food now. There is lots of variety of food for lunch.

If you feel like having Chinese food, just go to a Chinese coffee shop for the variety of food. It starts from various type of BBQ meat rice / chicken rice, mixed economy rice, wan-tan noodles with various types of noodles and their variety of condiments, e.g. wan-tan in soup, fried wan-tan, with BBQ pork, with mince pork, with curry chicken, with chicken feet and mushrooms, with sherded chicken meat, just plain wan-tan noodle dry or in soup, pan mee (a flour base dough cooked in soup or dry), clay pot yee mee, curry noodles, clear soup noodles with again various condiments, 'hakka' noodles, chee-cheong fun / yong tau fu, bak kut teh, yellow rice wine chicken either with or without noodles.

Even if you were to go there on daily basis, just try one type of food a day, you are not able to cover all the varieties for the whole week, anyway, one week is just 5 working days, i.e. 5 lunches only.

On rainy or cloudy days, something spicy is a great option. Indian curry houses are popular. There you will get variety of curries, e.g. chicken curry, fish curry, mutton curry, prawn curry, squid curry etc, anything you can think off can be cooked in curry. The way of serving is also similar to the Chinese economy mixed rice where the variety of dishes are displayed there and you will take to the amount that you think you can finish eating. No wastage of course, please.

The difference is that when having a typical Indian cuisine, eating with your fingers is so common and you can see many non-Indian actually does that. I myself eats well with my fingers too. It adds taste to the food and if the food is served with banana leaves, it enhance the appetite.

One of the best part of having lunch in an Indian restaurant is typically, the rice is served "all you can eat". Don't feel shy to go for second round of rice serving as this is a typical Indian custom. When I was younger, I remember my dad once told me before that a typical Indian meal will have 3 servings of rice. The first serving is with curry, the second serving is with 'rassem' (a kinda soup cook with tamarind juice and spices) and the third serving is with 'thairu' (basically it is yogurt).

At times, for a more economical option, Malay food is also as good. Again, the base of the food is rice. For rice variety, there is various options, nasi kandar (nasi = rice in Malay), nasi lemak, nasi dagang, nasi kunyit and many more. Of course not leaving behind the economy mixed rice with various dishes where you can pick and choose to you likings.

The next type I am not sure if it is a typical Malay food or it is a food from the Indian-Muslims, typically addressed as 'mamak' and it is the 'roti'. There are various kind of roti. Roti is in Malay language which basically translate to bread, but the 'roti' here is some kind of a flour dough which is stretched so thinly and re-folded to make it fluffy and pan fried on a hot plate to make it crisp to perfection.

Just for 'roti' only, there list is long. There are 'roti kosong' (kosong = plain), 'roti banjir' (banjir = flooded, where the curry is poured on to the roti when it is served serve), 'roti pisang' (pisang = banana), 'roti bom' (bom here means it is double folded for extra texture), 'roti salad' (salad = salad in english, what they have here is the vegetables, i.e. iceberg lettuce is dressed with generous portions of mayonise and wrapped in the roti and pan fried to perfection), 'roti telur' (telur = egg), 'roti john' (again an english name is used and this time, they add-on a fried egg and dress with mayonise and chilie sauce to the roti salad), 'roti goreng' (here the 'roti' is sliced into strips and stir fried with chicken meat and a few miserable pieces of vegetable), 'roti tisu' (nope, here the roti is not wrapped with tissue papers, but the 'roti' is stretched so thin like tissue paper and pan fried to extra crispy), 'roti bawang' (bawang = onions) and many more.

All the above is typically served with various curries, 'dhal' (a lentil base curry) or for those that cannot take spicy food, it is also common to have the 'roti' with sugar and condensed milk, yes you read is right, sweet condensed milk.

Those mentioned above are just the main type of food to choose from the 3 main cultures we have in Malaysia. There were others not mentioned e.g. the Japanese cuisine, Nyonya food, Western food etc etc.

Looking at the lunch food options we have here in Malaysia is really abundance. Therefore, how can it be enough for the employers give us just one miserable hour for lunch where it would have taken about 20 minutes to drive to the shop and find a place to park the car and 20 minutes to sit in the car to think what to eat with so many options????

So what you feel like having for lunch today??

Bon appetite!!

lunch time

Every company will have a typically one hour lunch break. Some companies works on the basis of rotating lunch hour among the staffs, whereby some will leave earlier, some will leave later to keep the company business running uninterupted even during lunch hour.

Other companies observe a very strict lunch break in the sense that no business will be entertain during the lunch break. Even when the potential customer walks in, there will a note stating that it is their lunch break. Even phones have pre-recorded automatic system that informs you that its their lunch hour and call back after lunch.

I think this practice is a good practice. It is not fair for the staffs to take turn for the lunch time. Just imagine half the office is gone for the first hour of the lunch break, typically from 12pm to 1pm leaving behind the late lunch group of people going from 1pm to 2pm. I had observed that companies that operate in the rotating lunch manner will effectively loose a total of 2 hours of productive work from their staffs.

Why I say that you might ask? Simple. Just put it this way. At 12pm, the first group of people walks away for their lunch break, leaveing behind a group of people that is suppose to take their break at 1pm onwards continue working.

How many people do you think will have to mood to work when they see their friends heading out for food? Matter made worse when the staffs on their lunch break gather at the pantry with their packed food and the aroma of the food lingers in the office re-circulating air conditioner.

Just imagine yourself hungry at 1230pm, but it is not your lunch time yet and the nice smell of hot food coming through the air condition ducting blowing at you. I am sure your mind will just be thinking on what are you going to buy for lunch later and not concentrating on the work.

Then, you might say, then we only loose one hour of work right? Wrong. The second part of the stories goes this way. The first batch of lunch staffs return to their workstation at 1pm, then the second batch of people leaves at that time heading for food. Do you think the first batch of people that had return will start work immediatly after setting the base on the chair? This never happen. Typically this is what happen, when the second batch of people leaves for lunch, the first batch of people will sit and chit-chat among themselves until the second batch of staffs returns.

Don't think so?

Have you been to an over the counter customer service window during lunch time and you will observe at some counters, there will be a small signage there stating "Out for Lunch" and some windows servicing customer and those that is open will operate slower than usual? Then, when the all the counter opens, the process gets faster, not that there is more people sitting in the counter, just that when they see their counterparts sits back to work, they will work faster. In a way a mechanism inside them telling them that it is back to work time and that is after 2 hours.

So enjoy your lunch...

Tea break

When I came out to work back in 1999, (wow, its almost 10 years now, so fast... anyway, will discuss this topic some other time) I was with a metal fabrication company. As I had never worked in any factories before this, I was surprise to see that there is a tea time break officially allocated for the team of work force. At 10.30am and at 3.30pm, the siren will sound for a 15 minutes tea break. Then, 15 minutes later, the siren will again sound to tell them tea break is over and back to work!

During this time, you will see a group of men / women storming towards the wooden shed to get their hands on their favourite drinks and snacks. In some mass production factories, you will see a bee line forming infront of the vending machines or canteen. The people seems so discipline to adhere to the tea break.

This is not the practice in the office. When I left this factory and came to work in an office environment company, there is no official siren for tea breaks. The beverages are served anytime of the day with bottles of powders and hot water left there up to the office staffs to enjoy anytime they desire.

However, ironically, there is an unspoken rule of tea time in the office. The office staffs will gather around at a specific time for break in the pantry without any siren telling them its tea break time. One by one will come into the pantry at a specific time and start a mini-gathering around the pantry. Sometimes, all you need only 2 people in the pantry and they will become like the "honey" to the bees, everyone will start to gather around.

Since 2 different working environment, one in production factory, another is the office environment, the tea break practised and the management will actually allowed this during the working hours. At times you see even the bosses are the in the pantry chit-chatting around.

Then, I came to realise the logic behind tea breaks. Tea break is the mid point between breakfast and lunch and if you put the time into prespective, if an office starts work at 0900, then at 1030, it will be 1.5 hours since they started working and we need to lay our eyes off the computer and work as concentration will decrease over time.

Just by walking to the pantry, you will touch base with some of the colleagues and just to say hi and take your mind off the computer screen, when you get back to your workstation after the tea break, you will find yourself spotting the mistake you did not see earlier or solving problem you are not able to solve before 1030.

It is not the magical cuppa coffee or tea that you had drank during the tea break, it is just the simple fact that you loose your concentration over the 1.5 hours and when you take a short tea break, you mind is refreshed and start to function better as you become more alert.

So, enjoy you tea breaks... and happy working!!!

Motorbikers

Motorbikers get on my nerves most of the time. I don't know, whether all the motorbikers have a same mentality that makes them rides or do they attend some kind of classes / training that makes them all the same.

They never realize that they are riding on a unstable machine which can fall anytime. They just zig-zag in and out as there is no tomorrow. They never realize the fact that they are the ones on the loosing end. When reckless four wheelers (or more) driver 'kiss' them, they suffer the pain, even when they become the reckless two wheeler, the face the same consequences.

I am not sure have the car sizes become wider or have the roads become narrower, the motorbikes seems to have less space between the lanes. The thing is when the motorbikers squeeze between the lanes, not all riders have good sense of judgement of distance and they tend to "touch" the cars on their sides and leave their marks on the gloss finish of the cars.

Sometimes, they were so lazy to put their legs down to support their unstable machine when they come to a complete standstill, they just use their hands support against the car beside them leaving their handprint on the paint work.

The thing that makes me sad seeing motorbikers is the fact that some parents like to carry baby in the motorbike. At times, you can see the innocent baby are not even old enough to give a firm grip to anything and they just sit / stand in the front bucket to the riding parents. I know you love you baby and want to bring them together with you wherever you go. However, have you being the parents given even a single minute of thought to the cruel fact of life that if even the most slightest meeting between the metals will have severe consequences? Those baby are so innocent.

I know this posting can be a bit bias in the light of the fact that not everyone is lucky enough to be able to afford a car and the public transport here is not as efficient as everyone wanted it. But is this reason worth for the parents to risk the life / permanent injuries of the innocent baby? I don't think so.

noisy office

I don't know how some people can work in cubicles.

I have my own office room and outside my room sits a few secretaries from various departments, when they talk over the phone, I can practically hear every single word they say.

Our office practices open door policy, i.e. when you are doing your normal routine office work, you will keep your door open, unfortunately, when the secretaries talk, most of the time I have to close my door.

I don't want to be rude or cold, but at times, the noise is very irritating... the giggles, the shouting etc etc. I just can't imagine how the people can work on cubicles. Won't the noise irritate them?

Worse is when the secretaries chit-chat across the cubicles and also walk to other cubicles to gossip. I suggest that the office equipment manufacturer comes out with a sound proof sphere to encapsulate the noise maker to make the office a better place to work..

2008....

There were so many major events happened in 2008.. even though the today is not the 31st December 2008 yet, i.e. the last day of the year, I hope there is nothing more going to happen this year for me... below are the events that took place this year for me in random order....

1. My beloved dad finishes his journey of life
2. Learn to care more for the opposite gender
3. Learn to listen more and talk less
4. Pick up my swimming exercise
5. Became a self proclaim swimming coach
6. Successfully train a swimming student
7. Scuba diving into the deep blue sea for the first time
8. Bought myself a new handphone
9. Bargain for a house and nearly bought one
10. Accumulated flying points with airlines
11. Blogging for the first time
12. Took on more responsibility at home being the man of the house
13. Started playing futsal (indoor football)
14. Had a slip disc
15. Stopped playing futsal