Friday, July 09, 2004

25 years and counting...

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who remembered my birthday!!! Muaxes all around!!!

Having more fun this year than the previous years! My dance team took the Cancerian babies for dinner last week at TGIF, and it was really fun. They made us stand on chairs (as usual) during the TGIF birthday sequence and of course had to give speech as usual (and I went into my overly-dramatized Oscar-acceptance-like speech). Even on my birthday night, my team kinda poked fun by going through this extremely simple dance routine (extracted from our competitors' choreography) while singing Happy Birthday. It was so cute and totally unexpected!

My aunt took me for dinner on Wednesday, and one of my best friends took me out for lunch today. Another of my best friends gave me a very useful gift - aromatherapy diffuser (for use in a car). And it was really nice hearing the beeps of SMS wishes throughout the day!!!

I was supposed to go for a yacht cruise with a friend tomorrow, but due to constant recent bad weather she's decided to pull out of it :( .... however in place we're going to go for a nice dinner instead. AND I'm expecting a dinner this Sunday as well as next Saturday. Woo hoo! I've never felt so special. Certainly a far cry from my 21st birthday which I spent all alone in my room at college while doing Math homework......

There was no family celebration this year though... mainly because my parents aren't here :þ They went for my sister's graduation in UK (who sent me a card via snail mail) so the house is pretty quiet.

This year less people actually remembered though. Many of my supposedly close friends have not remembered. But hey, there's more activity this year. ;) And the
ones who mattered remembered! And the ones who remembered matter!

:):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

Thursday, July 08, 2004

I lost my poem book! :'(

Argh!!! I can't find my poetry book which I've been keeping all the original poems I've written over the years. Wanted to put some up in my other blog. Well I've put up one of my song lyrics. Wrote that years ago. I suppose my poetry book will turn up eventually....

By the way I did submit some poems to http://www.poetry.com. Look for Last Name HOO, First Name SZE YEN. I never got around to submitting more poems... too lazy :þ Besides, all I keep receiving from them are lots of solicitations for money to publish my poem, and to attend their conferences and what-nots....

It's raining! What a wonderfully cool night to sleep in!!!!

What a day!

Today was not one of my best days... started off fine with my going to the office. Afternoon was damn hectic though. I had to visit SEVEN different offices in KL to pass them some brochures as our resellers needed them to be included in a tender which ends tomorrow. I wore these new pair of shoes that were killing me. They seemed comfortable when I bought them but surprisingly they weren't made for walking! They're open-toed but I think the size was slightly too big and they kept cutting my little toes and I nearly twisted my ankles a few times. However I couldn't get a smaller size as they wouldn't fit. Sigh.... I spent a good deal of my time walking the first 2 hours to 3 different offices, which although were in the same vicinity, were not near one another, and there was really no point for me to drive and park again as parking fees cost a bomb in KL.

And then there was heavy rain and I got sloshed... of course I was smart enough to carry a small umbrella with me as preparation, but with those killer shoes and wrong addresses given by my colleague and offices hidden in 'secret' locations.... plus, I had to carry the office laptop around with me all the time as I daren't leave it in the car (although thankfully there was a backpack I could use instead of the normal sling bag).

And I was having stomach cramps which made me double up over the steering wheel the whole day....

The night went better, thankfully, with a nice dinner with my aunt and brother, and dance practice with my team. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

I won't have a laptop to use from tomorrow until Monday :'( My colleague as to borrow it for training on Saturday and she's taking it tomorrow as I'll only be seeing her then and won't see her on Friday.... so no broadband for me! All I have is Webbit and none of the other computers at home have a network card, except my bro's but that's already connected to Streamyx. Sigh.... I guess there will be other ways to fill up my time.

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Current Job Situation and Previous Jobs Disillusion

For those who don't know, this is just an update.... I've changed jobs again! The lost little bird is trying to find her niche in this corporate jungle.

I'm back in the CAD line, doing sales... so it's something like a combination of my previous two jobs. I'm working in MLST (but the website isn't completed yet so don't visit it) where the lady boss is really nice and willing to teach me. I'm not allowing myself to be blinded by first impressions though; in my last job, the people looked really friendly but the ugly side began to rear its head after merely a few months. Thank goodness I didn't stay there long!

This job allows me a lot of flexibility; however it doesn't mean I get to slack off. There's a lot of pressure and definitely a lot of hard work needed; but as long as I get my results and get what is due it will be worth it. My boss lets me work from home and I don't need to report to the office every day. This is a far cry from my previous job at Dancom (don't visit this website either, it's hideous). The sales cycles were long and weary, no commission scheme in place (even though they have been distributing the products for years), a lot of tight monitoring and control (we have to clock in every morning before 9am before we go for appointments. With this policy in place, I certainly couldn't be bothered to clock out in the evenings after my appointments....), a lot of politics... in fact, the bosses wanted to make it a requirement for the women to wear skirts!!! I felt that it was a shot at me because I NEVER wear skirts to the office (if you see my legs, you'll understand why....). Initially I always thought it was a joke because my GM and the Corporate Services Director always told me to "wear a skirt" in a rather joking manner... but until the Human Resources Manager came up to me one day and asked me if I could consider wearing a skirt 2-3 days out of 5, so that she doesn't have to make it a policy (she apparently was being pressured by her boss, the CSD), I realised that it was serious. My dept was being targeted, but I felt most victimized, as among all the girls in my dept, only I and one other girl never wear skirts. And that one other girl (who is a close friend of mine) had never been approached on this subject. Although she is quite pretty, she is not very slim; and she feels this may be why they didn't ask her to adhere to such a dress code.

I feel it's extremely discriminating. In this day and age, pants are perfectly acceptable as business wear. I know that in previous generations only skirts were allowed but things have changed and we no longer live in the ice age (it would have been really cold though to wear skirts then! ;) ). The only plausible reason I heard from GM for such a request was that as a woman, I should make use of my feminity to meet sales clients.... granted that may work for some, those of you who know me know that I could never use such feminine wiles to get attention. But I don't see how a beautifully cut pair of pants that show off the gorgeous figure of a woman would not work any less.

Anyway from the day I started to my very last day of work, I never once wore a skirt to the office.

Don't get me wrong about my GM though. He's a really nice person, I just happen to disagree with some of his ideas.

Hmmm... I don't know how I got to start writing the above topic. I just wanted to talk about job disillusionments! :)

As for my first job, let me put it this way: it was a great stepping stone, but things went stagnant after a while. I felt that I was stuck in a rut, and the only thing I could do then was to break myself away from it. I was an applications engineer for CAD and civil engineering software, where I could marry both IT and civil engineering which seemed to be my dream job back then. Between here at Acad Systems (this website you can visit! I designed this website and they have not updated it since I left!!!!) and Dancom, this job was actually much better. It was kind of like from the pan to the fire but I have learned my lesson. I've received many job offers since I left Dancom but I was very careful in considering my options. It was bad enough that I took a paycut between my switch from Acad Systems to Dancom, but there were even some companies who wanted to offer me an even lower salary! (The reason I accepted a paycut was because I thought I could learn a lot more and that I'd receive my rewards in due time... only to find out from a colleague who was there for 3 years had never received an increment and whose pay was still exactly the same as mine)

I'm not writing this to vent my frustrations.... thought I'd just share with everyone some of my experiences. For you who are eagerly anticipating the working world, be careful about the companies you choose to go in. For you who are working a job you love in a great environment, good on you - you are one of the lucky few.

Monday, July 05, 2004

Nestle Line Dance Competition

Well... since I'm blogging, I might as well make my announcement here.

On the 3rd of July, I entered the Nestle Dance for Your Heart Fest line dance competition, where everyone went straight to semis (due to lack of participants). There were still quite a number of people though...

I joined both the team category and individual category in the youth division (ages 16-29)... and I made it to the finals for both!!! Wooo hoooo!!!!

Finals will be on August 21st in Berjaya Times Square. More details later!

Oh my! A blog!

I'd never thought I'd see this day. Not because I'm looking forward to it, but because I never thought I'd do it. I've always dismissed online journals as I'm not one of those kinds of people who'd like to share my private thoughts with the world.... but then again, I have my own website.

Anyway I've registered for a blog ages ago but never got around to putting it up. And since I have some spare time on my hands.... well, here it is!

However don't expect regular updates. It's bad enough I have to update my website (takes me between 6-12 months to update THAT!) and a few other websites. So I'll probably blogging only once a week....