All in a day's work in Singapore - real-life office stories as told to me (Part 7)

"Work can never be finished. We should always complete what we set out to do. Though both sayings are contradictory, they can be resolved by a third saying: Find a job you love and you will never work a day in your life." 

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"Two pleasant-looking female colleagues were debating the various interpretations of an internal company-wide contest and concluded that the rules are confusing OR they are bimbos. I'm happy to say that they are wrong. The correct conjunction used should be 'AND', not 'OR'."

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"Today, I need to cramp two days' work into one. If I can't deliver, it means that I'm inefficient and lack time-management skills. If I somehow make it, then it only gives the impression that I've been slacking all these years. Damned if I do, damned if I don't. Or maybe I should just call in sick? Then I'll be labelled as a weakling. Damned again!"

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"Common sense dictates that we should always clear the most important or urgent emails, but I always enjoy replying immediately to those without common sense."

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"It is the sign of changing times when the first thing my foreign business visitors asked after shaking my hand was not for my name-card, but for the right visitor Wi-Fi network to log in."

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" My Untried and Untested Office Survival tips when the Boss is on leave"

1. Email all projects that need your boss's approval and you will be effectively free for the rest of the day, unless if your boss happened to be on-the-ball and replies emails, in which case, you will need to repeat this step until he gets fed-up/ impressed by your 'hard work'.

2. Plan dept or inter-dept lunches so that there will be at least one common gossip agenda item.

3. Make [Alt+Tab] your best friend to switch screen should some idiots turn up at your cubicle and disrupt your full-time Facebooking or doing holiday research. Said idiots are most likely not your colleagues since they will be as busy as you doing the same thing.

4. Learn the delay/scheduled email sending function to give the illusion of your omnipresence at your desk where in fact, you are out for extended brunch cum lunch or gone for the day to catch the 6pm movie.

"My tried and tested tips on surviving happily in the office"

1. While you can steal a peek at your colleagues' screen, don't be a busybody and comment whatever is on their screen, unless initiated by the colleague.


2. If your colleague buy snacks or cheapsake souvenirs from overseas, accept them graciously even if you are faking it.

3. If you are leaving your computer for extended period of time and can't be bothered to lock your screen, at least show your desktop or email programme and not face-palm sites like Facebook or travel sites researching for your next holiday.

4. If you are goofing during working hours by watching YouTube videos or playing online games, don't be an idiot and announce to the whole dept by blasting your speakers.

5. Don't compare salary or working hours. Life is unfair, get over it. You win some, you lose some.

6. Make common enemy from other departments amongst your colleagues, great for bonding.

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HACKED!!!!

I finally managed to hack this Winston blog account using password ChickMagnet. Now I can write any nonsense I want and nobody can stop me! But after reading his posts I think he has written much worse than anything I can think of. And maybe I should return the only thing in the world that he has control.

Words of wisdom (Part 2)

Senses

Best Taste – Anything cooked with love from your kitchen.
Best Sight – Your spouse drooling on the pillow while sleeping.
Best Sound – Your mum’s voice on the overseas call reminding you to wear and eat more.
Best Touch – Soothing tummy rub for your cat/dog (Non-pet-owners to replace pets with kids)
Best Smell – Your blanket after more than 3 months of daily usage. (6 months and above for best effect)

 :)

To have a frown-free day ahead, you don't need to wear your power-suit or your most alluring perfume. You just need to wear a smile. However, the most effortless item one can have with them is often left behind at home before they go to work each morning, and only realised what they have forgotten when they saw it on the faces of others.

Shopping

Why do women like shopping so much?
Isn't shopping a waste of time and energy?
What is there to gain from all these shopping?
For clueless men who don't know how women think, just replace "shopping" with "football" and everything will be clear. This comes from someone who has attained enlightenment after years of undergoing retail-therapy.

Pirates

We are used to looking at online piracy from the viewpoint of the downloaders. We should shine the spotlight on the magnanimous uploaders instead. They provide a buffet spread of content like movies, TV shows, books, software and songs online for everyone to download for FREE and asking neither fame nor fortune in return. They should be hailed, not jailed.

Life

If we want peace and love in our lives, we have to take the effort to make them, preferably on a daily basis ;P

 *****

I know of someone who likes to meddle in everything but no one appreciates. I would recommend everyone to take sometime to do absolutely nothing which your body and mind would certainly appreciate.

*****

I've learnt that when you have your loved ones by your side, no matter where in the world or what you are doing, it is never a waste of time.

More Words of Wisdom

Why Seven Deadly Sins are considered sins ONLY if you don't practice them

Lust

If great men didn't fall at the feet of beauties like Cleopatra and Marilyn Monroe, history would be so boring and we wouldn't have tomes and movies on their steamy sexploits.

Gluttony

Life would be meaningless if we eat to live and not live to eat. Prisoners on death row don't ask for a chance to read 50 Shades of Grey or listen to Pharrell Williams' Happy. They want their last meal to be out of this world before they go out of this world.

Greed

Modern civilisation as we know it wouldn't exist if one person don't desire to have just a bit more than the next. New York with its cathedrals of capitalism would only be a figment of our imagination.

Sloth

All work and no play makes Jake a dead man at his desk without anyone realising it for days, thinking that he was the most hardworking chap to arrive the earliest and the last to leave. We should all stop and smell the roses and live an enchanted life.

Wrath

We owe a huge gratitude to a raving mad whistle-blower Edward Snowden to sound the death knell that echoes across the world, reminding us that we are living in a paranoid world gone mad.

Envy

An envious JFK succeeded in landing a man safely on the moon and back. And a bunch of green-eyed Chinese tycoons will ensure that the world's tallest buildings continue to sprout at their own backyards, pushing civil engineering to its limit, and Dubai out of the way.

Pride

Without it, we will be swimming in a sea of mediocrity not knowing the limits of human capabilities in achieving the highest, fastest or the strongest with trailblazers like Issac Newton, Usain Bolt and Steve Jobs being superheroes that exist only in our wildest dreams.

All in a day's work in Singapore - real-life office stories as told to me (Part 6)

"I was having lunch at my neighbourhood coffee-shop and had an interesting time observing the congregation of elderly folks seated at the next table. The loudest ones dominated the conversation, and they would repeat their lines a few times to the rest who were either zoned out or playing with their phones. Hey, this is exactly like my weekly department meetings!"

"After witnessing quite a few major changes in my department in recent months under new leadership, I'm beginning to see myself as a character in Game of Thrones, trying hard to survive the cloak and dagger intrigue and the office skullduggery. While I'm contemplating forging alliances, I'm also wary of going to meetings behind closed doors or getting invitation to lunches in unfamiliar territories. I just hope my character survives in the next season!"

*****

"For buying afternoon tea snack for the department for no special reason - $10. For realising that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach - priceless. For my new Lady Boss mentioned above in her first month at the helm - I am your loyal servant till the end of time."

"First my new Lady Boss bought the bunch of us tea snacks and breakfast. Next, she was the only one today who voiced that my new CK polo tee was nice. Though she is still on official probation, to me, she has excelled beautifully in becoming my next BFF. Comparatively, my girlfriend turned wife needed more than a year. Tsk tsk tsk."

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"I've decided to stop grumbling about the lack of work ethics from my Gen Y intern. You know how some old arcade games will stop calculating points after it hit a ceiling and just show 999,999 points? My intern has reached that limit... with a 'minus' sign in front."

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"I was commiserating with a male colleague on how a mutual female colleague has touched us in places nobody has touched before. A pain in the ass is much worse than a kick in the groin."

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"I realised that there's such a thing as 'Old Man colours' when it comes to work shirts. And I have to thank my pastel-loving male colleagues in my department for being my fashion consultants in leading by example on colours that I shouldn't touch."

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Not bad for my neighbourhood coffee shop to have a waterfall feature...but only during torrential downpour like now.  I'll expect delays for the morning commuters who will utter this to their bosses "Blame it on the rain", which is also the title of a song by Milli Vanilli a quarter of a century ago. Nope, never heard of it as it is before my time. Girl you know it's true. 

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