Pāto 7 ~ To Go Or Not To Go

Which one is the correct answer???

It was a lovely afternoon, when suddenly a guy from Bumiputera Entrepreneur Development Unit (UPUB) came to our office and asked whether some of our Muslims CBGs would like to go for  a video recording session at Islamic Information Centre(IIC). At first, I thought it was just a voice recording session but after I signed the participation forms(its just a plain white paper actually), I was soon to find out that its a video recording session. So, I guess I just have to deal with it since I had no other plans to do.

After breakfast, I goggled the place to find the venue because I’ve never been there even once. I got the information wrong but I’m pretty sure the shoot will be at IIC. I tried to memorize the directions to get there but in the end, I failed. After I had taken my shower, I even ironed my Malay traditional cloth so that I looked well groom for the shooting but everything was not in order. I couldn’t find the buttons for the shirt and I had no idea where my brother put his extra songkok. After a while, I managed to find them.

I went out 15 minutes past eight, where the shoot will start at 9.00 pm. At first, my journey was quite enjoyable. When I was about to reach a traffic light, it went green voluntarily. But in the end, I got lost because I missed a junction. After a few minutes, I managed to find the landmarks to Jalan Ong Tiang Swee , where  I reached there with some time to spare.

But once again, I lost my way towards the main entrance. I guess I’m not really good with directions. So, after all congregations of Terawih prayer had gone out, I tried to find my colleague but he was nowhere to be found. Awkwardness started to take over me because I felt that I was just a stranger and I started to think about getting away. I asked myself whether I should go for the shoot session or should I back myself out. I kept thinking about it when finally a few minutes later I stood up from where I sits and just go straight to where I parked my car.

At that moment, I was thinking how am I suppose to answer if someone ask me why I didn’t go for the recording session. After I figured it out with some of my lame excuses, I started the engine and drove my car way past the guard post without ever looked back. Until at this moment, even though I have made my decision, I am still figuring whether it’s a good or a bad decision. I guess I’ll never find out until I see the video, where it will commences on Raya Celebration.

Future Note: Make up your mind and get ready with the consequences.

Pāto 6 ~ Simplicity is the Key to No Misery

you see...everything is not so much complicated than you think...

Today. Yeah today. Today is the day where my misery ends for a while, coz it’s the day I presents my pamphlet design to BB. I was supposed to present to our second-in-command-officer, our chief of assistant directors, Mr A but unfortunately, he was not in Kuching since he’d went to Miri for a meeting. So, whether I like it or not, I had to pass my design to BB through my supervisor.

As I expected, he didn’t accept a single one of my four designs, instead I had to redesigned a bit to his satisfactions (luckily its just a simple design). After lunch hour, I had presented my final design, which was supposed to be a final product but once again, there is something which is not to his likings. There was an error to the venue of one of the events in the pamphlet. Earlier, I had told my supervisor that the venue is a “closed stadium” but BB insisted that the venue is a “district stadium”. In the end, it is a “closed stadium”.

Fuhhh~~~now my life goes back to a normal life. A life where I don’t have to crack my head about photoshop design(which I have no expertise at all) even though I’m home. A life where I get a nice sleep on a comfy bed and pillows. A life where I don’t have to think about work at all. Moral of the story, don’t brings your work at home coz in the end you will get a burden with the consequences.

p.s: now that was over, but another story about a speaker hasn’t yet to uncover….

Pāto 5 ~ Here we go again

First Draft

Two days ago, I presented my first draft design(pamphlet of our national day) to my supervisors to get their comments and they gave me some good reviews.

‘Just need to add a few more details’, they said. And some said that I need to change the background into a bit lighter and I also need to change the flower because it doesn’t look natural without its real color.

So, I said, “That’s fine, I can do that.” So, I worked tirelessly tweaked the design a bit. I changed the background and I added a few details. And so, here comes the big day;submission to the Big Boss(BB). It’s not that I was the one who presented the design, but a colleague of mine. Lucky me, coz I’m not a big fan in meeting with my BB.

I waited anxiously while doing some unfinished business. As my supervisor came out from his room, I rushed to him to get BB’s review. I was shocked to find out that he totally rejected my design, instead I need to design a much more simpler pamphlet; a black wordings with a white background plus some extra lines of colors(blue,red and yellow).

Second Draft: Can you see the differences?

Ah~~~~Here we go again…As I expected, this thing would happen. In fact, it always happens. As for me, I just need to bear with BB. He is BB after all. Who am I to question his judgments? As what I was thought, in our office, there are two rules that we need to obey all the time.

Rule 1: Boss is ALWAYS right.

Rule 2: If you think that your boss is wrong, refer to Rule 1.

Now, I need to crack my head again on how to fill the three colors into the whole background of the design, where Monday will be moment of truth. So, wish me luck.

Future Note: Be mentally prepare when I get a design task.

Ask BB for clarifications before design anything.

Pāto 4 ~ Fight or Flight

you get the idea...right???

TWO days ago, I received a message about a job vacancy on management and professional group  in Universiti Malaysia Sarawak(UNIMAS) from a friend, who is now working there. And yesterday , my mum gave me a list of vacancies at the same place and she told me to take this opportunity. Then, I started to wonder. Should I take it or shouldn’t I?

Hurm….actually, there were many times, where I got the opportunities to work somewhere else. BUT, I took them lightly, where I used my defense mechanism effectively. I started to give excuses just to ignore the opportunities that I got. People used to say to me, “Grab all the opportunities that you have before it gets away, where in the end you will regret.” But when I think about my current job, I love it very much, where I get to learn something new and travel to other parts of Sarawak beside Kuching(a place I have been living until today). Another reason which made me think twice was the fact that I was in the process of learning “English for Business Communication”, which took 3 months to complete. I wanted to finish the course because I think it  was very interesting and useful to improve my communication skills in English. It was also a good platform for me to be proactive and improve my grammar, which I think hasn’t change a lot. But, at least I learned something new and it is good, doesn’t it?

Okay, now back to the job vacancies. I know that my current job doesn’t promised much for a permanent post but I liked it very much. Then, I started to think that I am much more suitable to this kind of job. A management post would be less stressful than to be an engineer, where they need to design and know a lot of thing about theories and technical equipment, which I think I’m not quite good at. So, I took a lot of time to figure out what am I good at. After a while, I realized that I’m good at nothing. I like doing everything but on a negative side, I think that I have no focus in doing something. I love to try something new, because you will never know when it will be useful in the future. In the end, the weakness inside of me took over. I couldn’t decide whether I should take a career path on management or engineering, because this will decide who I am in 10 years time or maybe 20. So, my decision at this point of time is  crucial, where I don’t think a hunch will be able to solve everything but this is what I’ll do at this moment. Hopefully, with God’s help, everything will become clear.

Note: “If you believe in your choice, fight for it.”, The Adjustment Bureau.

Pāto 3 ~ Almost There

I used to be a button collector but not anymore

My lovely weekend is almost over. Well, what I’ve done today. I slept for a few hours in the morning after a sleepless night focused on doing something for this new addictive blog. Then, soon after woke up in the afternoon. I helped pa to clean the fridges. Not the fridges to be exact, but under the fridges. It’s been a while since the last time we cleaned the fridge because I didn’t have much time during weekends. It took about an hour to finish. I guess doing such a good thing like that doesn’t take much time.

After I watched TV for a couple of hours, here I am, writing this blog even though there is something much more important thing to do. My two-weeks-late minutes haven’t finished yet since I was too busy traveling for the exhibition and the fact that my supervisor was not around to check the minutes. It’s almost done but the thing is that the meeting wasn’t a meeting at all. It’s more like a discussion. We don’t have a proper agenda and we didn’t get any output or results. No nothing, except for the fact that we will have a follow-up meeting in two weeks time. So, that means I have to finish it by tonight. Hopefully. Another thing that I like to point out is that the discussion supposed to be about outstanding public complaints but then we talked about a proper format for a public complaint statistics. That was two separate issues. I guess all I have to do now is to finish the minutes and let my bosses to deal with it.

That is not too difficult I think. The most difficult thing is when I get a design task. The design part is not so hard, but the acceptance part is quite far from reach. When I talked about acceptance, it’s about whether my boss could accept my design or not. I have experienced a lot of difficulties with this part of the job, when I handled a montage project for our department and at the time when I designed a background photo for some of our booth display. It took a lot of time, patience and amendments. The reason why this had happened because they were not sure what they want and they don’t understand how designers do their job. If they kept on changing their minds, it’s quite hard to finish the products before the dateline.

Last week, I was given another task, which is to design a pamphlet for our national day, where it will be organize in Miri by the end of this month. However, we need to distribute the pamphlets 5 days earlier to visitors of another function in order to promote our national day celebration. So, I have 10 days to be exact, minus the time for the pamphlet printing, I might have only 7 days. But I’m sure my boss wants it asap, so I only have a few days to finish it and it might take time to align myself with their expectations. Hopefully, they want to take my design. Otherwise, worst case scenario, they will have to out-source the design task to someone else.

Note: Three more CBG (Capacity Building for Graduates) trainees will come tomorrow.

Hopefully, one of them knew much better than me about designing.

Pāto 2 ~ Long Awaited Weekend

A weekend for me is not much different from weekdays. I still have to think about work and sometimes, I even have to go to work. Our department is quite different from the others. We are specialized in protocol task. So, when there is a function will be hold on at certain places and time, we have to be there and work. So, an organizer does not care whether it’s a weekend or not. What they do care is that some of our staff will be there to arrange seating or tables for our VIPs. Well, that is not my part of the job. My part is about being usherette, that serves VIP to their seating or table. In order to do that, I have to recognize their faces and Alhamdulillah (Praise to God), I have recognized our CM(of course…who doesn’t), DCMs, Cabinet Ministers and some of our ‘Menteri Muda’. Even though it is quite hard to work at field during weekends, our work is not just in the office and the best part is that we can claim for our willingness effort :).

Aaaaahhhh....so envious of him...

Besides worked in a function, my weekend was filled in with a program called “Pameran Program Sejiwa Senada”. It’s a program that connects state government to the public. This program’s goal is to expose government core business, which aligned with our Prime Minister, Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Razak motto “People First, Performance Now”. This program has been organized in a few districts(Sibu, Bintulu, Betong and Sarikei) and it will continue in October, which will end in Kuching next year. My part in this exhibition is to be an exhibitor besides taking care of technical part of our exhibition booth, which requires a lot of time since we have to be there all the time entertained our visitors.

Now, you could see the reasons why I said weekend is nothing compared to weekdays for our department. Therefore, we are lucky, especially me because of the arrival of this Ramadhan fasting month. I could use a break for a while, where I could use the spare time to learn something new(such as: learn how to write blog… ;P) and have fun a little.

Well, how about YOU? What do you do during weekends?

Pāto 1 ~ The Beginning

Assalamualaikum(peace upon you),

Hope everything is doing great wherever you are. and yeah, Happy Fasting Month to all Muslim. Hope everything is going according to plan until syawal arrives…:) Talking about plan, believe it or not, I did not plan to have this blog. When I was reading some of my friends’ blogs last nite, something occurred inside me saying, “Why don’t I start a blog? Maybe I could use this as a platform to learn something new. ” After all, life is a journey and throughout the journey, we have to learn in order to create a better path of life in the future.

Actually, I used to write blogs years ago, when I was studying in university. After a while, I stopped. Maybe because there is not much time to write blog or perhaps the internet speed connection at the time was too slow. Now, I’m back with a new blog and a new objective even though at this moment, I’m still not sure what is the objective of this blog. Well, that is what I’m going to find out. Hopefully, this Tour of My Existence(TOME) will be able to find out the reasons why I’m here and create a path for my future.