Short-lived

As I knew it would be.  I retreat into the “darkness” that I have gotten used to. 

 

For two weeks I enjoyed the freedom of accessing web sites and checking my free webmails at every whim.

 

The network admin also activated the in-house emergency messaging system. 

 

But I found at that the company migrated to another connection, one that will give us better connectivity to the NY, Cardiff and Boston servers..yada yada yada.  Whatever.

 

But, this freedom is transitory. 

 

For fourteen days, I surfed cyberspace yet still aware of the 24-hr monitoring system that had us wary about doing too much browsing. 

 

It was also 14 days of prolonged system downtime. There were outages at any point of the day.  Birth pains expected from a supposed improved system infrastructure.

 

The operations director made sure everyone gets free merienda to motivate operations guys to extend hours as workaround to the intermittent system outages. 

 

I am not from operations, but I get to share in the free food!  System downtime didn’t affect me much.  All I knew was all blogsites were accessible!!  Oh look, I can go to blogger.com!  I can actually see my template again!  Mwah mwah. (sigh)  I missed my template.

 

It was euphoria.

 

Now, I get the familiar “Not accessible” message.  I am back in my myopic world where one of the sites easily accessible is the company website. 

 

Ho hum.

 

Circumspect

The listless waters now begin to show ripples.

Each wave a wee bit stronger than the one before.

The force underneath threatens to bubble forth.

The whisper of the soft winds hovering above the water begin to stir up waves of uneasiness.

But the ripples may become waves and the

whispers of the wind may become constant echoes that float in the air

 

Mixing vanity with comfort

Impossible to do.

Especially when you are dressed to impress.

I am wearing a pair of white linen pants and an old rose floral top. The only obvious choice to complete the ensemble is my 2-inch light brown shoes.

After almost a year, I am wearing those shoes again. You see, after that near disastrous fall in October, I hurt my ankle again a few months back. It was excruciatingly more painful not to mention more embarrassing. That, while wearing a pretty sensible pair of black shoes. Okay, it was a slip on shoes. No heel support. I had to bandage the poor ankle for two days.

But for vanity’s sake, I am trying my brown shoes again and hoping I won’t step on some misplaced rock somewhere.

So help me God.

PS
Just to argue my case a little bit more, I have been wearing either boots and flats. How much more ankle support do you need that those?! Can't a girl wear uncomfy yet flattering shoes once in a while, accident-prone notwithstanding? I can almost hear the reaction: Go ahead! It's your ankle, anyway.

Terror of a boss

I think I could be one. Or have the potential of being one. Believe me, I have reached this conclusion long before I watched The Devil Wears Prada.

I am no Miranda Priestley, Meryll Streep’s character in the movie. Heavens no! But the twice a week conference calls that I go through together with some of the junior guys in the Manila operations office made me see how demanding of a boss I can be. Fortunately for the junior analysts, they don’t report to me. (hahaha)

I think I need to digress a bit.

I have no staff working under me so extra help will have to come from Jovie’s team. I get very little difficulty getting assistance because the things I do benefits Jovie’s team in the long run. It also helps that I have a very good working relationship with her. Jovie willingly ‘lends’ me some of her more experienced analysts to do overtime work. They usually volunteer, according to her, because these guys want the extra performance credit and are usually the achievers.

“Overtime pay charged to your cost center, ha?” I would often get that line from Jovie. So, after coordinating work schedules with the team managers, I have an adhoc team at my disposal.

That is when my demanding streak rears its beautiful head.

I think the analysts in Jovie’s group have gotten used to just listening during calls and leaving the talking to their managers. Let me correct that. I think they have gotten used to half listening and just waiting for instructions from their bosses after the call. I think they have gotten used to making their own offline conversations with the phone on mute when the topic does not concern them. Only when they hear the word, “what about Manila” would they stop and say, “Ano daw?!”. To which they would speak over the phone and say, “Can you repeat that, please?”

It is similar to hearing your name called in class by the teacher in the middle of a lecture because you were doodling, looking out the window or chatting with your seatmate. Then you stand up, scratch your head and try to find out what the discussion is all about.

It irritates me. (And yep, if you see the nerd who religiously takes down notes and listens intently to the teacher…that would be ME.. geeeeeky)

Okay, that is just a small part of what irritates me. It irritates me that they cannot articulate what they want to say. It irritates me that even their team managers fail to prepare before the call. Imagine me having these irritations even when I am a mere participant in a conference call. Now imagine how I feel when I get the responsibility to lead the team. Which happens to be the case at the moment.

Maybe, because I had demanding bosses. Prior to joining this company, I worked with Filipino bosses who assumed that I can handle things. I had superiors who pushed me out of my circle of confidence. I had bosses who passed on work and allowed me to work on a very steep learning curve. Ergo, I had bosses who stressed me out but gave me the confidence I need.

Maybe that is why I am behaving like this. Maybe I want to push these guys out of their comfort zones. They seem so complacent.

I know I am a pretty reasonable boss. But, if you let me think you understood but actually didn’t and you failed to deliver when you said you will…!

“You can be very scary, “ I remember a former teammate tell me.

“You have people but you don’t manage them. Lucky you.” That was how Gilda, my college girlfriend, described my set up. She said that after whining about the pains of handling people. She has 19 people under her.

Sigh…

So, with all the effort I can muster, I loosen up a bit. Once in a while, I drop a hint and say, “Maybe you can ask that question during the call so they’d recognize your voice.” As of this writing, they are just happy listening in. As of this writing, I let them be.

From a control freak like myself, letting them be takes a lot of willpower.

For now, it seems to be the more plausible way to go. We are working on this project until December so ……

Ask me again in four months.

LSS*

A Filipina singer revived the song and gave it a different sound but nothing beats the original. One phrase kept playing in my head and I realized how romantic that line was.

“Trace of forever lingering, drawing me closer to you..” I wish I wrote the song, or at least this line.

*Last song syndrome

Accountable

"Nobody was ever meant,
To remember or invent,
What he did with every cent."

Words from Robert Frost's The Hardship of Accounting. Certainly, every accountant wishes the poet's witty attack on bean counting were true.  

My tribute entry to my friends from my previous department on this season called the 'month end close' with another season overlapping, called the 'budget season' and another event called 'exodus'. One regional manager from the HK office is rumored to be resigning, only a month after another regional manager submitted her resignation.  Plus two new expats that recently took over the reins of the Asia business. 

Discussed over breakfast this morning with my former teammates.