First Day

Today's my first day at Cisco. So far, nothing much to report. Except the building's nice, toilets are nice and my new notebook's cool.  :)



Feeling Vegetarian

I don't know what's come over me but I've been really into vegetables lately. I insist on having vegetables at every meal, I snack on vegetables when I watch TV, I even dream of vegetables when I sleep! Which is not in itself altogether strange, except for the fact that I used to hate vegetables. Well, whatever it is, I hope it lasts.

New Haircut and Hairdresser

Decided to change my hairstyle in preparation for my new job next week. Tried out a new hairdresser's: JasonSally. Ended up cutting, perming and colouring my hair. Am very pleased with the outcome. Finally, after 6 (almost) years, I've found a hairdresser in Singapore that I'm happy with. :)

Before:

After:

Nice Neighbour

We came home one day to find a tennis ball in front of our front door. Turns out our neighbour from the 4th floor had taken the trouble to pick up one of the used tennis balls from the courts where he plays and bring it back for Patch  (cause the last time we ran into him in the lift, Patch had gone crazy at the basket of balls he was holding). How sweet.  :)

Moving On

Today's my last day at Frost & Sullivan. This is probably the shortest I've stayed at any one company --- 7 months. I'm starting to feel like a serial job hopper  ;p. But to be fair, I was not actively looking this time round. Sure I sent out a couple of applications at the start of the year, but that was about it and I'd done it more to test waters and find out my market value (rather than actually wanting to leave). And yes, there were things at Frost & Sullivan that I was not happy with but then they were not in themselves reason enough to leave. After all, which employee does not bear any grievance towards the company??? At the end of the day, it all boils down to 1 thing: the offer was simply a better offer i.e. better company, better pay, better long-term prospects. So nothing personal against Frost & Sullivan or my boss(es), I'm going for it.

:)

Coach

Bought my very first Coach handbag today. Feel so frivolous yet so happy.  :)

Second TV and PS3

Bought ourselves a second TV and PS3. Nothing wrong with the old ones, we just wanted to have an extra set in the master bedroom so that if I wanted to go to bed early and Ed wanted to play PS3, we can still be together  (idea is to later buy headphones so that the noise doesn't hinder me from sleeping). Interestingly, the two TVs look almost identical.

The New:

The Old:

Project from Hell

I had the opportunity (misfortune?) to work on the most poorly managed project in all my 12 years of working:

• Project was finalised on Friday and work commenced on the following Monday. I had absolutely no time to do proper research or homework prior to commencement!?! 
• Topic of the project was trade liberalisation. ... Honestly, my company had no business taking on this project as we neither had the skill nor expertise to handle this topic. 
• Scope of the project was unclear. We had no clue what the end-game or the expected deliverables were. Worse, we were under the impression that we had 6 weeks to work it out along the way, but learnt the hard way that the real work happened in the first 2 weeks. 
• Underestimated the scope of the project. We thought it was good money; MYR200k for 2 consultants over 6 weeks. Ended up allocating 2 senior consultants plus 4 consultants/analysts on the back-end to do research. To rub salt into the wound, we later learned that the client had paid other consulting firms close to MYR1m for a similar piece of work last year. Ha.
• Suspect someone (either the salesperson or my boss) had grossly misrepresented my company and made false promises in order to secure the project. The client was under the illusion that we had an extensive database of liberalisation best practices from around the world that they could use as benchmark data. Big fat lie. 
• Client is highly fickle and contradictory. Says one thing one day and the exact opposite the next. When under pressure, we were the scapegoats. Nice. 
• Team member is extremely lazy and annoying.

Interestingly, the one thing that bothered me the most was the last point.

Just glad to be off the project now.