Last Day of 2015

I thought I better type the last blabbering of 2015 before the clock strikes midnight. So here I am on the train to my cousins' place for dinner after a whole day of shopping in Liverpool Westfield. My first time in there btw :P

2015 has been a tiring year. Buying our first home, dealing with unreliable solicitors and too relaxed broker, had to hear how my crazy neighbors still trying to make troubles on our last day there, being left behind by more of my closest friends, lost trust in one of my closest colleague, fed up with work, had my temper exploded so many times, one of my closest friends turning into such judgemental and annoying person, etc etc... Even my dentist said to me, "We might have to look at the spleen in the new year, coz it seems to me that you've been under stress. You've mentioned about clenching your jaw on last visit too..." Yeah, I did tell him that I wake up with tight jaws on both my visits this year. Per his suggestion, I started taking calcium and magnesium this year. Btw, they do give you good sleep! I don't have trouble sleeping, but I noticed that when I take those vitamins, I have deeper sleep :)

Apart from the bad ones, of course I had good moments in 2015. Let me try recalling them: moving into our new house, realising that I still have friends who're willing to help with the moving even the ones I thought were not that close, living in between 2 very good, friendly and helpful neighbours, getting even closer with my other bunch of friends and realising how good and helpful they are, winning competition as the results of someone pissing me off, seeing how my dad is not depressed anymore, trip to indo and meeting my bestfriends again and still closer than before. Plus, I started going to gym and tried out the classes :) I got closer to my colleagues too!

I can't remember what my 2015 prediction was, but if it says friendships, then it's true. This year I've been asking so much favour from my friends, to the point that sometimes I'm ashamed to actually ask. But the people who actually helped me, they genuinely wanted to help and werent feeling troubled at all! And we got closer to the ones we weren't that close before too.

I didn't have much time to do crafts this year, but I will try to do more next year. I'm more into planners now. One reason is because I get forgetful, I have to write it down to remember. I don't like using the mobile phone as I realise using reminders make me forget even more. Having it written down in a planner let me review the plans for week ahead, and that way my brain gets reminded. I also write down things I have been meaning to do and start ticking them off the list.

I lost trust in some people and also got put off by some people. Well at least I learned not to give 100% trust in people. Regardless how well you know the person, you won't know exactly what they are thinking.

I will enjoy my last moments in 2015, and I hope 2016 bring me more exciting things and happiness in the way I could never have imagined it would be :)

It Is Going To Be A Nightmare

I didn't plan to have a long post, but I have a feeling this is going to be a long one. So, bear with me please :)

Christmas is coming. Most people are excited about it. But of course not everyone. I remember when I was working in retail, Christmas was a very very busy period. It's cool of course having all Christmas decorations, lollies, songs etc. But what if those Christmas songs are blaring in your ears from morning to night everyday? By the end of day 2 I wanted to vomit when it's on.

Plus, you would think people are nicer because of Christmas. Not really. They are stressed and crankier than normal because the things they wanted to buy have been sold out! True though, most of our Christmas tree decorations were sold out within first week of December. Don't even forget about the long list of people they need to buy presents for. In Australia, people take Christmas presents quite seriously and buy presents for each of their family and friends. And also for people who take care of their kids I.e. my sister :P every Christmas, the bottom of our Christmas tree is always full of presents. Her presents from the children parents :P but no worries, I can always borrow them of her ;-)

Now back to topic. Christmas in our company is a NIGHTMARE. Ridiculously big projects all due for first working day in January. We had an awful Christmas 'break' last year. We worked overtime the whole Christmas to New Year period including Xmas eve and New Year's eve. I shouldn't have used overtime. We weren't paid for overtime. We involuntarily gave them our time as Christmas present. While the directors were on real Christmas break.

This year unfortunately and unsurprisingly is no difference. We have 2 big projects due first day back in January. One is a 100++ hours project and the other one is a complete new website. We knew we were getting it since months before, but only last week or the week before everything was settled to go ahead. I say "settled to go ahead", the other department was still having requirements and layout meetings yesterday. What date is today? 10 December. How many working days we have until Xmas and New Year??

Our team is the smallest it's ever been since I joined the company. IT team is half of what it used to be and the other department is half the size too. At the beginning of December, Superexcited said this line, "We are very busy. That's why we are asking Slitherin to come and help us. He is available and is willing to help. We just need to decide what parts we are going to give to him. It is of course an additional costs for us, but it is a cost that we're willing to incur in order to deliver the projects on time and relieve us off the extra pressure."

The truth? Slitherin only said he might be available. He hasn't even discussed about his hourly rate and stuffs with you know who. He was surprised when I cheerfully messaged him once I heard the news. Nothing was really arranged. And guess what? 2 days ago, Lao Er asked Little Missy to come to work at 7:30am-7:30pm in order to finish the project. "A cost we are willing to incur" MY ASS! A cost you are willing to incur or a cost you are making your employees to incur??? Don't bother asking me if Little Missy got any overwork pay. I doubt he got even dinner paid last night. No, make that I'm sure he didn't get dinner last night.

I told Little Miss Nice about it the other day. Here's the convo:

Little Miss Nice: I wish Superexcited would man up and tell them they briefed us late and that we can't meet the deadline they want.
No overtime pay ay?

Me: No overtime pay. I did ask Little Missy just to confirm, I kinda knew, but well I shouldn't assume :p

Little Miss Nice: Hahah true we shouldn't assume but our assumption are almost 100% right lol
Is Little Missy angry that Little Missy needs to come in early?

Me: Nah, still happy. Unlike us :p

Little Miss Nice: Hahahah ohh I'm glad him for that Little Missy is happy. I'm sure eventually will end up being like us and hating it

See that assumption part of it? It's true. Most of our assumptions are proven true.

About man up and tell client... That's something that our company lacks of. I usually blame the other department for it, but this week I realised it's not them. It's the directors.

1. The 100 hours project timeline says it's due next Friday. Yesterday they were still discussing about the layout. We are in no position to deliver next Friday at all. In meeting with the client, neither the director nor creamer said anything about it. Little Miss Nice who's not a manager at all had to bring it up herself that we are most likely not going to deliver!

2. On Monday a director of a big company we have a website for logged in to the site to do an assessment. He clicked on the link to go to the page, and waited. The page took forever to load and he gave up. Shot an email to us saying it doesn't work. Poker Face went panic and got me and water tap to look at it. We did do something prior week that made it slower, but that was expected. So we took it off, put it back to how it was before and told Poker Face. He logged in, load the page. It took 15 seconds to load and said, "It's not acceptable. You have to fix it". WTF??? That page has always been like that for the past 2 years and now you say it's not acceptable?????? Why didn't you say a year ago when there wasn't urgency to have everyone finish the assessment that day?? I'm sorry to say, but this is a typical behaviour of a store managers when they hear that area manager is going to visit tomorrow. What a joke! Water tap and me took 4 HOURS to try and fix it, and it the end we had to give up the whole reporting page to just have that page loading in 1 second. Originally they wanted all fixed. Which I replied, you have 2 choices: have all working, but that page loads in 15 seconds, or sacrifice the reporting and have the page loads in 1 second. Fixing it will take days. So they sacrificed the reporting page and said to revert the code back the next day. If I didn't say that, I think they are going to force us to fix it.

3. There's an issue within the site. It's only affecting 2 stores, and it's been like that since the beginning of that project. It's going to take 4 hours at least to fix. I don't have time and no one in IT is free, so I said no. Talk to the manager. He went to the manager and guess what? I got an email for that task due in 2 days time. Kill.Me.Now.

There are SOOOO Many of these examples happening. The funny thing is, they always say, don't say yes to the client all the time, manage their expectations, rah rah rah. All the nice talk and little quizzes to test our understanding. In reality? Of course we can do it!!! We have enough people to do it!! Again, my ass.

Apples NEVER EVER fall far from the tree.

Neighbors Stories

If you asked me what I like about moving into this house, I would say it's our neighbors. Both my left and right neighbours are very nice, but the one i'm going to tell you about are the older Croatian couple. They are a nice couple and very friendly. You know what, the husband is the one moving our front and backyard while my dad is not here XP

We didn't ask him of course. After we came back from holiday, the wife told us when it's time to mow the lawn, just ask her husband to do it. It's not girls' job, she said. Of course we just laughed it off, but then not long after when I got home, I noticed my front lawn was flat! My lawn is full of weeds so you do notice when suddenly it's flat. When we asked the neighbors, and thanked them, the husband asked said, "yeah, I wanted to do the backyard too but it's locked. So tell me when you want me to mow it". We told him don't worry, we'll do it ourselves but he insisted. Then, he did it then and there XD since then he's been mowing our lawn every 2 weeks :P

Plus, on taking the rubbish day out day, we noticed that by the time we got home the day after, the bins have been pushed in next to the house. Initially I thought it was one of my sisters as I'm the last one to return. However, later on my sister asked me if I did as neither her nor her twin did it. When we confirmed with next door, yeah it was them.

We met them tonight on our way home and ended up talking for quite a while. It's nice to hear their stories about the old times..

They told us in 70s, when they first arrived in Australia, the husband first pay was $50 a week and the wife's pay was $34 per week and it paid for rent and food for them and 2 children! 700 ml milk cost 20cents and a baguette cost 5 cents. Milk really doesn't have much increase. You can still buy a litre for $1 now. While baguettes hmm.. quite an increase. You can leave money for bread and milk delivery in front of your door safely, but outside generally wasn't as safe as now. There weren't much take away places, just fish and chips, burgers and such. You couldn't buy lunches on Saturdays because stores closed at noon! Getting a place to rent was hard if you had kids because landlords worried kids would damage the property. They said people with 2-3 kids usually lied and said they had 1 kid only if they wanted to rent. Childcare of course were not many, so the wife worked in the morning and her sister worked in the afternoon to take turns watching over the children. They had a tough life back then.

They said they had to work hard in a farm when they were in Croatia. They said it was a small village where they lived, probably 50-60 houses. Everybody knew everybody. When they took their children back there for holiday, their eldest was surprised, "Why don't people knock when coming to other house?? They just opened the door and walked straight in!". It's a pity now that that village isn't like how it was before. People don't know everyone anymore and it has grown too.

They were all good story and I guess, worth my blood being fed to mosquitoes listening to it :P

When Someone Quits and You Know Who Doesn't Like It - Part 2

Hellooooo, your long awaited story is back! I know you guys have missed a certain someone in my office. Just admit it, someone I know keeps asking about him every Friday morning...MUAHAHAHA :P

So, someone in our company has resigned this week. I was pretty upset when I heard the story. Pavarotti has been working in our company for 6 years. He's one of my 'generation' and we've been working closely together for the past 6 years. We've mucked around and bitched about people in our company, so yeah it was a bit sad. I've eaten his snacks and stolen his teabags too. But it's good for him and I'm very happy for him.

You all know how Superexcited has issues with people quitting. Be it one of his favourite or one that he doesn't like. Tell you the truth, I still don't know which side is better. So when Pavarotti resigned, he gave his famous lecture. The content of that lecture I don't know, but don't expect something as easy as "I'm sad that you're leaving, we will miss you, but we wish you well". Expect something more like, "How dare you to go behind my back finding jobs. You are supposed to give us 3 months notice. I always give and give and give, but people never give anything back to me". Something along that line. Anyways, Pavarotti successfully resigned. Well done.

The next morning, Pavarotti went to Superexcited's office to ask if he could take lunch at 1:30-2:30 instead of his normal 1-2 lunch as he has a baby appointment. Superexcited's reply was, "What? You quit yesterday, and now you're asking me for a favor?". What.A.Jerk.

The rest of the conversation went like this:
Pavarotti: "No, I'm not asking for a favor. I am entitled for 1 hour break". Superexcited: "Yeah, you're asking for a favour! All these 6 years, you always come to my office asking for a favour. You never give anything back to me!".
Pavarotti: "I work my ass off these past 6 years for you!"
Superexcited: "I pay you for it!"

In Little Miss Nice's words, "What a BABY!"

What about all those overtime? We don't get paid for overtime and he always comes to the office WAY earlier than the office hours! All of those goes unnoticed, oh sorry, should be forgotten and unappreciated.

The whole conversation happened in his office with the door opened, so one of our colleagues heard the whole thing. He was actually about to turn down a job interview, but upon hearing how bad Pavarotti was treated, he decided to go for the interview. Not sure how it went though. If he got it and is going to leave, everybody is going to laugh. That's really Superexcited's fault.

I wonder how it's going to be in the other department. They only have about 7-8 people. Pavarotti already resigned, another one has resigned too according to my source (eventhough the person still have few months to go), little miss nice is going to start looking for a new job, and if that one person got the job, that would be 4 gone out of 7. Little Miss Nice wondered if Superexcited's going to finally realise. I really don't think so.