Cogito ergo scribo

Had dinner with colleagues in KL this evening and totally enjoyed it.

Today, instead of just the little brother who always keeps me company for dinner everytime i come to KL, there were 4 others who joined too, two of which are my subordinates. We had a great time chatting, gossiping and making jokes. I am glad that my subordinates can regard me as normal colleagues instead of a distant boss, and i also realise how i miss going out with colleagues after work!

Basically i do not have any colleagues back in SG whom i can really hang out with. There are only 5 of us in my department in SG office. Excluding little boss and big boss, that leaves two other guys whom i could befriend and talk to, but both of them are married men who gotta go home to their wives and children right after work.

KL is different. There's a big team here and most are single. These are more energetic young people who can talk nonsense and joke around. This is probably the only thing i enjoy coming to KL now, beside staying in this 5-star hotel and can eat/drink anything on company's expenses.

I was actually in a lousy mood today. Other than the reasons mentioned in my post yesterday, big boss helped to worsen it. He gave us ridiculous timeline to produce something, just so that we can impress the UK top people. I think he's quite pissed with me, for i sounded very negative by kept telling him how impossible it is to complete the tasks in such short time. Of course it is of no use, as he still insisted we keep to it.

Basically, big boss is spoilt by little boss. All the while, whatever he pushed to the little boss, it will be delivered on time. Little boss did it either by working long hours himself, or in turn pushed his subordinates to do it. That's why little boss' team members always work very late and even over weekends, while my team members can more or less knock off rather on time. They are all envious of our team and even commented that they should have joined our team instead.

Now, big boss would expect the same from me since he is already used to getting what he asks for all the time. I think he is unhappy about why i do not just work on it but kept telling him "no" instead.

The thing is this - nothing is impossible in this world of course. It is not totally impossible to achieve the timeline. We can either work like hell everyday and over weekends just to get it done, or we produce something sloppy just to meet the deadline.

But then, the question to ask first is why are we doing such?

If it is a project that goes wrong due to some unforeseen factors or it is mission critical, then i have no problem in working my ass off just to get it right. Yet, he is pushing us for this thing simply because of his ambition to take on US and Europe, so that his power and presence in the company would be strengthened. Then i really do not see the values in us rushing for it by sacrificing our own time, or produce something not to my standard. Also, it's not as if we will be rewarded for it. I heard that bonus and increment will be frozen due to the bad economy. Furthermore i am already underpaid when he failed to give me the increment that he promised me last year.

I know i should be grateful that i still have a well-paid job. I am really. But being grateful does not mean that i should then become a slave to my work, which was the mistake i had made for the past years and indirectly resulted in my marriage failure. I need to have my life back; i need to have my personal time to do something that would make myself happy. I already lost my love, so at least i should have a fulfilled life through other means, and that is definitely not through filling my life with work every night and day.

Well, whether he is happy or not with me, seriously i do not care much. I know he has his limits, as we had an IT Director who used to contradict him all the time was asked to leave earlier this year. He needs us to help him to build his empire now, so he won't do anything to any of us. Otherwise, one day when he reaches his limits with me, he may probably get rid of me too.

Back to my point is that, bosses cannot be spoilt too, otherwise they would have this unrealistic expectations of the employees, thinking that all of us are wearing red underwear outside with a cape and a big S on our chest, and have the superpower in getting anything done.

Anyway, today i had a good look at the new girl again for the whole day. Ok, she is not the stunning beauty type but has the kind of looks that grow on you slowly (耐看型). I think she looks like one of the Miss HK, Lee San-San (李珊珊). She did ask questions and provided input during discussion. So far my assessment of her is still good.

Labels: rant, work