I am now working on a design document that is due for release tomorrow. After that, there is another piece that is due on Wednesday.
March is gonna be extremely hectic for me. We have been under pressure to complete the process design for our project, but due to ambiguity of task ownership and some office politics at play, the progress was somewhat impeded. Now the target is to confirm the design by end of March, but we are still only drafting the documents. These documents will have to go through several iterations of reviews and validation by Asian and European businesses before the design can be finalised. This means that we will have to send out the first draft to all parties involved latest by mid-week. In view of the tight deadline, the task is now given to us, and our team will have to work our ass off to make it happen.
Other than rushing for the design documents, i am also having two back-to-back business trips this month - to Netherlands and Vietnam.
I was invited to join the design validation workshop at The Hague, Holland. I will be flying off from SG to Amsterdam on this Saturday (10/3) and then return to SG on Friday (and arrive on Saturday, 17/3). Before anyone is to utter any envious remarks, please know that if given a choice, i would rather not go.
First of all, i believe the attendees for the design workshop will mostly, if not all, be European guys of Director level (from UK, France, Portugal, the Benelux, the Nordic, etc.). I will be the only Asian there, who would be a young lady in their eyes. Having worked with these angmo men for so many years, i know how they view us. Our words carry less weigh and it is difficult to make ourselves heard unless you are in really high up position. I do not foresee my participation in the workshop will be easy.
Secondly, and perhaps a more compelling reason for being not so enthusiastic about the Holland trip is that i am supposed to fly to Hanoi on the following Sunday (18/3). This means that i'd get back to SG for just a night and then fly off again the next morning. Having such back-to-back trips will be really tiring, and i will need all the energy for the Hanoi trip.
Our annual Asia and departmental conferences this year will be held at Hanoi (it was at Bali last year). The conferences will last for four days, and a few KL colleagues and i are gonna take leave for Friday and extend our stay over the weekend. We will take the chance to go touring around Hanoi and we are all looking forward to it.
So, i will not be going back to JB (and not attending church) for the next three weekends. It's gonna be work work work, travel travel travel, and hopefully fun fun fun too.
Labels: work
