Kitty Xu

2006-09-21T00:47:00.000-07:00

Raining on Sunday!!! Leong organised a BBQ this Sunday, but looks like it is going to rain!! I want to go to BBQ!!!! (not because of the food, it is more to do with gathering with a group of friends before I am heading back for a three week holiday) Well, hopefully, the weather will be good on Sunday.

Just got my Aust passport today, feel a bit sad as I will have to apply for visas if I am going back to china in future.

There is so much stuff I want to buy when I am in China. Here we go:
mobile phones (I know, I got a few, but I want a new one / two with a long last battery)

a new mp3
a new digital cam
clothes / shoes (very hard to get shoes of my size here, other than going to a kid section.)
badminton clothes, shoes, racquets, bags
gifts for my previous manager who got married this year (plus his wife now is pregnant, so happy for him)
some books to learn other languages, ie Japanese, Korean (really like Korean series!!) and some books for others to learn chinese!!

The list can go very long.

I am a bit bored right now, just waiting for the time past and catch up with Xue before she is going to HK tomorrow. Damnit, the weather forecast still shows raining on Sunday. It hasn’t changed yet!!

time to blog

2006-09-20T00:27:00.000-07:00

I have been sort of busy over the last few days (or a week or so), but now, I am running out of stuff to do again. Well, I only need to stand for another nine days before I am heading back for my long waited holiday!!!

One of my friends applied for a partner visa which was rejected. Apparently, an officer rang the girl’s dad who had no idea that she got married!!! She only told her mum and sister. I guess the reason she did not tell her dad was because my friend married once before. Anyway, now, they have to make an appeal. Both of them are now in China. Hopefully, when the dad found out, he wasn’t too furious. My friend could apply for a skilled migration / PR himself as he finished his accounting degree here. He should easily reach the minimum required marks for this category.

One of my managers is away a week next week. Good, I won’t be seeing him for a whole month!!

Comp tonight, although I will be filling in for another team as our team got a bye tonight. I really enjoy wed night comps, hope I will have some good games. I am really struggling to find someone filling for me when I am away in china. Hopefully, I can solve the problem tonight, I don’t want to let the team down. (that reminds me that I need to take the fixture with me tonight.)

Feeling really hungry now. Spent the lunch break shopping at city as I am really running out of time to do shopping, getting my car serviced this Saturday morning, BBQ with a group of badminton friends on Sunday, I don’t think I can do lots of shopping this weekend. I have got some stuff for my two female cousins, got some ideas for my aunts, now I only need to do some shopping for my brother and dad.

Thinking about getting another week off work around Chinese NY next year so I can go back and celebrate the Chinese NY with my family. The last time I spent time with them for a Chinese NY was 2002, given I want to save some annual leaves for 2008 Olympic Games, if I am not going back in 07, I won’t be able to do so until 2009!! Well, I haven’t found out when the 07 chinese NY is, will have to look into it.

Got to do some training before I am leaving today.

Really enjoy wed night comp doubles games!!

2006-09-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

Had really good games against one of the best ladies at kilsyth yesterday. We lost in three sets. I really enjoyed the games though. I never thought I could move that much (although I got cramp after that, and played pretty bad for the two mixed.) for some reason, I enjoy more of my doubles now, well, I enjoy my mixed with boiboi as well. Have booked in boiboi for the next year for all the mixed doubles. (only if he would like to run more than this year on courts when he is partnering with me!!)

I am a bit worried about the games tonight as I can feel it hurts a bit even if I am just walking around. But I guess I don’t normally move much on Thursday nights comps.

I woke up before my alarm went off this morning. For some reason, I seem to wake up before the alarm no matter how late I go to sleep. Need to catch up some sleep this weekend.

Not much work to do for me again, well, I will just need to take my time to do small things. I still have to be here for another 4 and half hours before I can head back home. I can’t think of anything to eat before the comp tonight. (had junk food again yesterday!!) it will keep me busy for a while to come up with something for dinner.

Junk food

2006-09-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

I am a bit bored again after completing a report over the last two days. I feel less motivated at work now and I don’t enjoy my work any more. Because I just moved to this position in March, according to the new policy, I won’t be able to move to other places for another 6 – 12 months. I should get a career break for a year. but then I don’t know what I will / can do in the break.

Had a choc muffin as lunch as I didn’t feel liking eating anything (other than junk) although I was quite hungry. There must be something wrong. For some reason, I only want to eat junk food now. Felt a bit hungry on Saturday night after dinner around 7:00. Went to McDonalds and bought a pack of 10 nuggets. Finished the whole pack and felt I did not have enough. Went to McDonalds again yesterday night and bought two packs of 10 nuggets, shared with Zel (but I had more), I did not feel full either!! Must be something wrong.

It is only half day, got another 4 hours to go before heading back and play badminton tonight. Talking about badminton, Sam was supposed to fill in for us because the first man in our team was away. Got a message from the other girl in the team who told me that the first man was back and we did not need anyone to fill in. Crap!!! Last few weeks, we gradually closed gap with the second last team and we will be playing against them this week. I so hoped that with Sam, we could, for a change, move up from the bottom!!! Well, it happens, nothing I can do about it, just try my best (if they hit to me) and enjoy as much as I could.

Jewellery

2006-09-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

Just realised today, jewellery is actually quite expensive. Went to a few jewellery shops today over the lunch break, I was surprised by how much a tiny little thing costs. Never thought about buying one before. Other than the cost factor, there are so many different types to choose from.
I can’t tell which one looks better / nicer.

Went to a shop to get my clothes alternated because the straps at shoulders are too long. She asked me to put it on, measured it and put pins to indicate how much to cut off. Then she told me to leave the pins there and take off the dress. I told her I couldn’t because it was just too tight to take it off. she said, just unzipped the dress, and I should be fine. I was surprised and told her that it did not have zipper for the dress. She looked at me a bit confused and unzipped the dress from the side!!! Then I realised that it actually has a zipper!!!! I tried it one a few times without even using it!! I couldn’t stop laughing myself for a while. Well, it happens. The good thing is I will get it back by Friday and can wear it to Gloria’s 21st birthday.

A small world!

2006-09-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Getting up prior to 6:30 was something quite challenging. As I have to be at the office at 8:00 on Monday mornings, I have to catch the bus at 6:43. It was actually not that bad other than it was freezing in the morning. I had my coat on for the first half an hour after I got to the office when everybody else was complaining about the office being too warm / hot.

Had dinner on Saturday after watched a bit tournament, for some reason, I really wanted some junks during the evening. Went to McDonalds and got a pack of 10 chicken nuggets, surprisingly, I finished the whole pack!! (and a bit regret not buying enough) then I had a big bowl of ice cream and some chips. Hopefully, it will not put too much weight on me. Really need to watch my weight before I go back to China (because I will eat a lot when I am there and always put on 3-5 kilos when I come back)

Sat next to a girl at the dinner table yesterday who is a friend’s cousin. I suddenly realised that I met that girl at my citizenship ceremony in late July this year. She was the one signed on my electoral enrolment form!!! I signed on hers!! What a small world!!! When you bummed into someone, you never know when you will meet them again!!

Caught up with a friend online the other day and she invited me to her wedding in China around the National Day when I am in China. I am quite happy for her and quite excited about catching up with a few uni classmates at her wedding. (zel, don’t worry, I will get my cousin to take your around on that day, in that case, you’d better learn some chinese, although she would like to speak english with you!! Just in case, your guys might be in different channels.) The only problem is that I really need to figure out how to get there!! I think it might be safer to go with others rather than trying to figure out myself.

Pretty much from me for the moment, I’d better get back to work. Well, another 10 mins, I will be on my normal lunch break.

I need to do some shopping this weekend!! I am so running out of time to pick gifts for my relatives, friends and my family. Booked in a car service next Saturday (very early in the morning), basically, I will have to spend half day at the service place doing nothing.

Whereis.com (should be posted yesterday)

2006-09-07T00:18:00.000-07:00

Left home quarter past eight and thought I would be at client’s office by 9:00. According to whereis.com, I only need 28 mins. And now I can say, it was wrong. I got there quarter past 9, please also note that I did not get lost, other than I had to take a u-turn as I turned one junction early. I will never trust whereis.com again (I mean, for the time estimation.) I think Melway is still better to get to a place (definitely not Yellow Page!!)

I don’t like driving when it is raining. My eye sight is bad enough not to read the road signs in a clear day, not to mention trying to recognise the signs in a rainy day. I know, I should get my eyes checked. As I am paying for private health insurance, the cost should be covered by the insurance. But I really don’t like glasses. I can so imagine I would lose so many glasses and the private health insurance only covers up to certain amount per year.

Won A mixed doubles at Monash Open over the weekend. I was quite happy about that. For some reason, there was not many interest in Open / A grade (they got 4 groups for B/C mixed, only two groups for Open / A). not many very good players played. But still, winning another A mixed is something very special. Zel said boiboi and I played well together, and I feel the same as he can really run to cover me. (I sort of enjoyed watching him running on the court to pick up the shots I missed. Heheee..)

Just reading others’ blog (as my managers are away again.), Shet Li is worrying about the dress code for Gloria’s 21st birthday party. I happened to ask Zel yesterday about what the cocktail dress was. The answer was ‘I think you need to ask a girl’. Ok, Shet Li doesn’t know either. Anyone knows what to wear? I know it can’t be outfit for badminton, does it have to be dress / skirt with high heel shoes? Anyone knows whether we will use lift? (my experience is that high heel shoes do not go well with lifts.)

2006-09-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

Forgot to get my passport organised again. Was on the phone with Xue for the whole lunch break. Since I don’t have the luxury of being dropped off / picked up to / from work, I rarely had a chance to catch up with her. She asked me to go for Yum Cha with her bf and her last Saturday, but as I had to play at Monash Open, I missed the invitation. I should really arrange a time with her and her bf before I go on the holiday. Have to catch up with all the gossips.

Not playing at Melb Uni open this weekend, in that case, I can take my clothes to dry clean again and I should be able to pick it up the week after. I also need to do some shopping before I go back to China. (really don’t know what to buy.)

Got something for mum and one of my uncles. Know what to buy for my two female cousins (the earing things), and still got dad, brother, another uncle, my aunt and my male cousin. Lucky, my mum only has two brothers and one sister and each family only has one child (no wonder, china needs one child policy!!). I would otherwise go broke. Actually, money is not a big issue, the problem is what to buy and I do hope they would like my gift.

It is very hard to impress my brother as well. He is quite picky (probably a bride is something he is looking for, but I don’t have anyone in mind to line up for him.)

Found out that I got to go for a client visit tomorrow at Dandenong. The whereis.com says, I need 28 mins. Most likely, I need 35-40 if I don’t get lost. Well, I don’t have to get up early. What a luxury bonus.

2006-09-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

There are a lot I want to write, but I don’t know where to start and there are something I want to keep it just to myself.

Had a pretty long conversation with mum yesterday. Although the line was not clearly enough to catch up all her words, I was quite happy that I could share some of my experience with her. And she is quite supportive. I guess at the end, parents are always there for you (if you can pass their long criticism first. I survived, thanks for the bad line coverage, I missed 20-30% of the conversation and guessed another 20-30%). For them, no matter how old I am, I am always their daughter. No matter what I do and how I do it, it always looks immature / not good enough to them. The worst part is that most of time, they are right!! Mum always says I am too idealistic and I am a bit childish / immature. I never really had major obstacles in my life. There were always someone / some ways let me get through. She is really worried that if, one day, I faced a major obstacle, I would not know what to do and how to do and might at the end stuff it up badly.

Mum wants me to buy two pairs of ear rings for my cousins. Now I got to do some shopping again. (I really don’t know how to choose those things, a new experience for me. Any volunteer wants to show me how to choose one?)

really hate the feeling that you know something bad to come, but you don't know when it comes or you have to wait for it to come. i would really prefer to know it asap, and deal with it and move on.

2006-09-04T00:38:00.000-07:00

No managers are at office today and tomorrow. Wooo!! all the people left at the office decided to get some pizzas for lunch which cost about $7 each. I had to go to ATM to get some money, and stupidly, I only got 50 notes. As a result, I had to keep all the small changes (got eight $2 coins!!!)

I am sort of busy at work now. On Friday, it was probably the first time I know that I had at least a full day work to do on the coming day.

I don’t like wasting time. I’d like to get things done ASAP. I am not the sort of person pretending to be very busy and completing a task in a hour or two other than 15 mins to half an hour just because other people can ‘see’ you staying late or ‘working’ hard. I really don’t understand that why I should stay late if I don’t have any work to do. For some people, they stay late almost every day and ‘being seen at work’ from 7:00 (or might 6 or 5 in the morning.), but they still have heaps stuff to do and want helps from other teams. Are they that busy???? I come in 8:30 and leave 5:30 almost every day (other than Friday, I tend to leave at 5 because most of people are off work from 4:00), and I get everything done, there is no backlog, everything up to date. Why should I be penalised for getting my work done quicker, faster and better? I really don’t understand.

I like being busy (or enjoy being busy at work because that’s when I learnt the most, I really don’t like wasting my time.) I ask constantly for work. They don’t have much. So manager decided to give me some standard legal documents to read. We have special business Unit, Legal Services, all the documents need to be perused by them. I really don’t see the point of myself reading it. (is my opinion going to be counted??? I don’t think so.) I know what the document is, I know what the document is for, but do I need to know nitty gritty details?? I am not a lawyer / solicitor and the bank has internal and external lawyer / solicitor to review each document.

When I was working in Carlton (that’s when I was really busy, got lots of stuff to do), I had never got a feedback / complain about not putting enough time to work. All the managers I worked for in Carlton always asked me to leave early, don’t stay too late, or not to come over the weekends. None of them ever requested me to be at work at 8:00 when the meeting starts 8:30. I put extra effort when I think it is needed.

I like being honest, but I think in realty, it might be easier not to tell / show the truth. I don’t want to change myself for my own advantage, but at the same time, I can’t change others’ perceptions. Well, I can’t get everything in life, I am happy to keep my integrity although I might face difficult / challenge situations from time to time.

CBA tournament

2006-08-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

I am so happy about winning CBA tournament over the last weekend. I won my first title in A grade which was something I never dreamed of. I know the standard is not that strong, but I really enjoyed the games.

I had lots of running during the day (probably run as much as I could in a month or two.)

Doubles with Shet Li were great. One of the pairs came from Altona Section 1 and is one of the best pairs there. We had a very close game against them. They were leading 7 to 2 at the beginning of the game, but we managed to get back and won at 21-16. Also had another close game against Tania and her partner. We won at 21-18. Both games were such a close game, I could feel that those games could turn either way. Shet Li played pretty well. Her smashes won so many points for us. I moved around the court quite smoothly (of course, I puffed a lot)

Mixed with Andrew was even better!! Three pairs were in a group. I knew before we started that we could beat the korean pair as the wife was not that strong, although the husband could really cover her. But we did not expect we could win the game so easily. We beat them 21-3. Andrew was so kind not to smash at her and not even to her husband if she did a very bad lift. We so liked that pair.

I watched the other pair in the group warming up prior to the game. The girl looked really strong, she could do better clears and had quite strong smashes. I was quite worried about that pair and kept telling andrew that it would be a hard game. The other pair played against the korean one first. They knew the korean girl was really weak, they served flick serves to her every time with only one exception (yes, I counted!!) I so hated that. I know it was a competition, and you were supposed to explore your opponent’s weaknesses and attack the weaknesses, but taking it to that extreme still made me feel uncomfortable. When they swap sides, Korean pair was 3 or 4 –11 losing. The husband put heaps effort to get closer and closer. Even though the other pair reached 19 first, he managed to get back the serve and finally won the game at 21-19. I was so happy for them.

Then it was us to play against them. Xue kept telling me that we could beat them easily, especially at the net as the girl’s moving was quite slow. We would have more chance at the net. We beat them quite easily at 21-5, although I sort of injured myself at the start of the game. (stretched myself too much without moving my legs, thought I was tall enough to reach there)
Got to the final against Sinyu and Shet Li. Andrew played so good. He reached almost every shots and lots of shots I missed (could I say, it was due to my injury??) He ran almost the full court to cover me. We were lucky enough to win at the end.

It was pretty funny that both pairs in the A mixed finals were entered into B mixed initially. For me, I did not even want to play A doubles initially.

I was so happy at the end. When I got my trophies, I realised that they got a trophy for the overall best female player and I was told I just missed narrowly to a girl who won B singles and B mixed. It was pity that I was so close it, although I never really expected I could win one. Then I got a phone call from Shet Li yesterday. She told me that they made a mistake. I won the trophy and a racquet for the overall best female player. Wooo!! (a new racquet!!) I can’t wait to get it this Thursday.

Thanks very much to Shet Li and Andrew. I had really good games and really enjoyed my day.
Getting to work over the last two days was a nightmare. Got up quite early on Monday morning, got to the train station at 7:20, then suddenly realised that no train were running between Ringwood & Blackburn due to the Eastern freeway extension. Waited ages to get the replacement bus to Blackburn and took the train, I got to work at 9:00 which is half hour late. So I decided to take a bus this morning. I got to the bus stop at 7:05 (the bus was supposed to be there at 7:08), waited 15 – 20 mins and got to city at 8:30. Not sure what happened to the 7:08 bus and the time table at the bus stop differs from the timetable I downloaded online. I was quite exhausted after the long trip. I stupidly chose a seat (at the time I got on the bus, I had the whole bus available for me, I could have chosen any seats I wanted) and realised that the door was not sealed properly. And I only realised that when the bus was full of people with a few people standing.

Winning doubles at wed comp

2006-08-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

I was quite happy yesterday that we won our doubles again. It was a really close game, the score was 15-17, 15-12 & 15-13. We were leading at 10-4 in the first set and 7-2 in the third set. It seems really strange that we can’t hold the leading edge from the middle of the games. The pair we best yesterday was one of the top pairs at wed night. They won all their previous games. I am really proud of ourselves. It was largely because of my partner, Tiffany. She played really well. So far she has the best winning percentage of her games in our team. Most of nights, she won all her games. I am so lucky to be in the same team with her. Overall, I am really happy about our doubles.

Then, it comes to my mixed double. What should I say?? I am just really bad. I should really play for D grade mixed at melb uni tournament (30 ice cream voucher each!!) although Zel made a good point yesterday by saying I did not like ice cream much, it is free. If I have ice cream in front of me, I will eat it. (just like Andrew’s theory – don’t feel like eating particular food, but if the food is just in front of him, he will eat it.) I can’t move, no concentration….. We were quite lucky to win the first mixed double at 21-19. It was all Sam’s effort. Zel said I played really bad. I couldn’t move, and left lots of front shots to Sam to take it. He had to move to the front and went to the back to take the next shot. I felt so sorry about it. (but I guess, he needs some running and exercises.) I lost badly for the second mixed double. We only had 7 points. They were 11:0 leading. Didn’t know what happened. Our team lost by 2 points the whole night!! Only if we could get three more points!!! Felt a bit bad about letting the team down.

Now, it is Thursday comp. I will try to enjoy as much as possible. We are at the bottom of the ladder, it can’t be any worse. I will not be able to play next week as my friend from Malaysia will be here. It will be the first time we catch up again since we last met each other in April 02. He will be here only for a week, I don’t mind spending more time with him. However, I did not know that we would have Andrew to fill in for our team from next week and I would play against someone I really want to beat (but without andrew to fill in, there would be no chance at all). Well, I can’t get everything in life.

It is actually my 100th Blog. It sounds like a milestone.

Had some training today in relation to interest rate risk management. It makes me feel like going back to my uni books to learn it all over again myself as the presenter, in my opinion, was not a good presenter. He could not answer the questions, the presentation was far too technical and he could not explain clearly either. One word he used the most in the presentation was "whatever".

I want to go home now. However, it is only 3:30. At least another two hours to go.

2006-08-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

Got a few things to do today which is not bad. It should only take me another 1 hour or two, but I am going to extrapolate to the entire afternoon (is it how you use extrapolate?).

My friend is coming over from Malaysia and will stay with me for a week. We haven’t been able to catch up since I visited him in April 02. It will be good to catch up again, other than I will probably stay on sofa for the next week. It is still quite cold in Melb, hopefully, he will take enough clothes with him. His sister is coming this time as well, she must have changed a lot. The last time I saw her, she was only 13. Four years can change a girl a lot. Really curious about what she has changed to. (I think I got sufficient insurance to cover my home & contents.) If you think I have enough ‘accidents’, while, compared with her, mine were nothing. At least, I never broke a basin in a bathroom. The damage I have done in all accounts is quite minimal.

I am really bored

2006-08-14T00:45:00.000-07:00

I am bored!! Stopped working ages ago as there was not much for me to do. Left a few message to others (NAB internal department), no one really bothered to answer. Well, there is nothing much I can do if I don’t know what to do and how to do it.

So want to go home now and watch my korean series. I did not have a chance to finish off one of the series I borrowed from Xue’s flatmate, I don’t think I will be able to finish off the rest episodes tonight and return to her tomorrow night.

Zel will probably start working in city in three week time, that means I will need to catch public transportation everyday. It takes about 20 min walk from my house to the station (if I choose to walk every day.) well, I actually do not mind it that much (only if I can still fall asleep in the train.) Another problem is that I can’t catch up with Xue on Tuesday nights any more if I need to take public transport.

It is Monday again!!

2006-08-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

Went to help someone to complete his tax return, but it was a bit frustrating. He did not even down load the software!! He also said initially that he could not find his group certificate / payment summary (well, if he did not have it, there was no way to start the tax return.) He did not have interest information and share trading information and we spent 20 min or so to sort out all his receipts (separating grocery shopping receipts and lots of other non-deductible receipts from deductible receipts.) I reminded him a few times of getting necessary information ready, so I could just start doing his tax return. It should be a very easy job which only takes about 30 mins. But we spent more than 30 mins and did nothing. Well, I did try to help him, and if he did not want to get it done sooner than later, I can’t help on that anymore.

Other than that, my weekend was really good. but weekend is just always too short. I guess when you have a good time, it seems to be fast anyway. My weekend is normally packed with badminton, movies / korean series, catching up with friends which are the things I enjoy.

Did not feel very well on Saturday. Although I tried training, I felt so bad after only an hour and half. We had a few games initially, I played so bad and missed lots of shots, so I stopped training after the games without trying any multi-feed. The dinner at Sofia was good. It was the first time we could finish off all the food we ordered!! (andrew and Alice did a pretty good job).

It was a really sunny day on Sunday. Hopefully, winter is over. Actually, I was from Beijing, and it is much colder in beijing than in Melb, why I am complaining about the cold weather? I forgot to take my mobiles with me yesterday when I was out. It made me worried a bit as I thought I lost my mobiles once again. (well, only lost two mobiles before but not at the same time. If I did lose two mobiles at the same time, I would have set up my personal record in one go. But as to total mobile lost, I would be still far away from my dad’s record of 6 or 7).

All my managers are off for Golf today. I will have another relaxing day. It is actually not bad for a Monday. I can surf online as much as I want once I’ve done all my work (should only take another hour, if I can get an answer in the next 10 mins). I should call my family tonight, did not call them last week which was pretty bad. Mum is probably not happy about it.

I really want to go back to China for a Chinese New Year. I haven’t managed to celebrate chinese new year with my family for a very long time (the last time was 2002). But winter in Beijing is really cold and dry….. well, I think I can manage it. Wish I could go back to China in Jan/Feb 07 (08 year has been reserved for Olympic Games). So if I went back in Jan/Feb 07, I would not take any annual leave in 07. But I only got a bit more than 2 days as annual leave as at now. Hopefully, I will accumulate enough annual leave early next year.

There are lots of things I want to learn. Hopefully, I can actually discipline myself enough this time and achieve something. I reckon if there is some prizes for achieving certain stages (ie, lollies, dinners etc) it will keep going for a while.

yah! it is friday!!

2006-08-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

It is only 9:50 and I run out of work to do. By the way, I got to the office close to 8:30 and spent the next half hour on helping others moving filing cabinet. Only spent the next 40 mins to do work and 10 mins to get two cups of coffee. I am so bored!!!! What am I going to do for the next 7 and half?? But I guess people start leaving at 4, so it will only be 5 hours left, plus we got morning tea and free lunch.

I made another silly mistake yesterday. My big boss asked me to count how many shelfs in the filing cabinet, so he when he purchased the new filing cabinets, he knew how many to order. Somehow, I counted as three shelfs in a cabinet and it turned out to be four!! So embarrassing! He was like ‘kitty, it is one, two, three and four!’ I don’t know what happened.

One of the colleagues complained to me that since I was here, he was never able to be the first person digging into food. What was that? I got nothing to do with it. He is located at the far end of the office, and food past me first!! if i am not going to board room (which is the room when we have our morning teas etc), people always ask me to go first. I am just following others' instruction.

I was having bacon & egg muffin when morning tea provided today. The egg was not fully cooked. When I bite it, the yolk spattered and somehow landed on my face! It was quite embarrassing, but I guess, I am just so used to it. It seems that I have more accidents than others on average (but Alice, I think you are worse than me!! I haven’t tried to collide with a tram and I don’t intend to try anyway!)
Just killed another hour, 4 more hours to go!!

Had a pretty long lunch break, about an hour and half. The social club paid for the lunch, pretty good Indian food. Wish the bank could pay for lunch every Friday.

Finally got something to do which killed the time quickly enough. It is almost five, time to surf online.

i don't like being sick

2006-08-10T00:13:00.000-07:00

Played pretty bad mixed double yesterday. Feel so sorry for my partner about dragging him down. OK, I shouldn’t have watched Korean series too late the night before. I was actually quite happy about my discipline – went to sleep at 2:20. What normally would happen was I set the time, but never stick to it. I could set the time at 2:00 am, but then I would extend it by an hour and by an hour…. So I could finish at 5:00 in the morning!! (it happens before.)

Ok, I know I need to get to training more. I think I had no more than five training sessions for the whole year and never been to gym since I back from holiday last Oct. (I have cancelled the Gym membership)

I have been sick a bit recently. It started with stomachache. So I haven’t been able to eat properly over the last week or two. Then I got a cold. My manager was really sick last Friday, but because he was extremely busy last week, he had to come to work on Friday and last weekend. I felt something was wrong straightaway on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, I got a cold since last Friday and still haven’t fully recovered yet. One thing I hate the most is I can’t sneeze most of the time.

Plan to go to Sofia this weekend. I want to share the food with others as the dishes are huge, can’t even finish an entrée size dish by myself. I’d better recover quicker. I don’t think pass on the germs is a good thing.

I am really bored at work today. Another hour and half, I will be going home. Yah!!

Can’t resist the temptation of coke, but I guess I can be forgiven this time. Apparently, coke was originally a medicine which tried to cure cold. Hehee, I am having coke now because I got cold and I don’t like normal medicines. I drink coke today only because I want to get recovered quicker!

The printer at the office is broken. Nothing to do with me this time!!! I actually tried to fix it, although it was not successful. I only broke the old fax machine which is much cheaper than the printer. Plus the fax machine is not totally broken, we can still receive and send fax. (so technically, I did not break anything.) I haven’t broken anything which can’t be fixed since I moved to the new position.

E-tax

2006-08-08T00:07:00.000-07:00

Submitted my e-tax on 29/07 (which was a Saturday night) and got the refund on 04/08. Really fast process. The whole process only took about half an hour. All I did was filling in the different forms. Very simple and easy to use (well, other than some of the terminology I don’t understand) I tried to submit e-tax last year, but for some reason, it just did not go through. Even after I rang up the ATO support hotline, the operator could not figure out why it did not go through. He suggested me submitted a manual one eventually. By memory, it took close to three weeks to get the refund last year.

Another good thing about e-tax is that you can actually abstract some of the information from previous e-tax returns which save a bit of time there.

Hehee, I got pocket money for holiday this year!! Holiday is just at the corner. Well, at least I bought some stuff my family wants this time. (I was so in a hurry last time, did not get time to go shopping.) But I think I still need to do some shopping for close friends and relatives. Well, I still got plenty of times to do that (although shopping is not something interests me, I will survive.)

I don’t like taking medicines, especially those liquid ones. But if I can have lollies with those liquid medicines, I don’t mind that much.

Haven’t been playing badminton as good as I would like to see recently, Thursday nights comp is really frustrating at the moment. Firstly, I am not a really double player. I don’t really know what to do in a double game. (don’t like moving a lot). My back court shots are just bad. Secondly, I never had experience in playing doubles with a partner weaker than me. All my previous double games, my partners were at least my standard if they were not much better. I was the one being picked all the time. Opponents tended to hit to me most of the time. And now, I found myself in a situation that they avoid hitting to me and I don’t know when I should take a charge / try to take over. Thirdly, my mixed double is just bad! Sam and I could lose our mixed games (Sam is a very strong player), what am I going to do in mixed doubles on Thursdays?? I don’t know whether I should come back and try to play a bit doubles in the game, or I should just stick to my normal mixed double positions. I guess at the end of the day, it does not make much difference anyway given that my mixed is just as bad as my doubles. Fourthly, some of the players in the comp are quite, hmm, interesting. You will see a lady quoting all the IBF rules for her own advantages (when she hit to the net before the shuttle landed – our shot did not go over, she would say it was not a fault, and they won the point!). you will also find two team mates question about each other’s judgement DURING the rally. one would say, it was out, the other would answer it was not when we were still in the rally?! I am not sure whether it was just me picking up on those things. (I might be too picky, but for sure, not as picky as Hendry.)

Talking about Hendry, wondering what he is doing in singapore. Both Zel and Andrew want him back. They just realised that Hendry was their regular double partner in the past. (not too sure how it worked. Both of them claimed that Hendry was their regular partner in the past.) Well, guys, you will have to fight for Hendry.

Wed Comp

2006-07-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

Went to play wed comp yesterday. First time as a regular player playing there. It was pretty good fun. We won our doubles in two sets!! That’s something I did not expect. The standard over there is quite high (especially when you compare it with Springers). It was really good fun to have a few close games, especially in ladies doubles. I never thought I would enjoy that much of doubles games. The first half of the first game was really easy. We were 8 to zero leading. Then we found ourselves really struggling to get a point. Our opponents came back to 12 all. We finally secured 3 points (most of the points came from their unforced error, ie, tried to kill at the net, a relatively high shot, it went to the net.) The second game was completely the opposite. They were leading until 11 to 3 or 4. Then they started making mistakes again, hitting to the net, hit out etc. We finally got back to 14 all and won the game at 17 to 14. One thing I like about the comp there is the standard is quite similar. They have some selectors who arrange teams each year. You won’t be seeing one team beat the other very comfortably. Most likely, both teams will score a few points, and sometimes the winner is decided by the points the team had won the whole night.

I won my first mixed, although I played really bad and not used to Sam to cover me. I don’t know where to stay, when to take the shots. It was really confusing. But I guess as Sam is so obvious better than the other guy, we ended up winning the game at 21 to 10. (but the first half game was so close, we changed sides at 11 to 9.) hopefully, we can get better next time. Well, we got the whole season to practise.

The second man in our team was away. It was a pity that I could not practise with him. We lost at the end at 19 to 21. I should have played better, but for some reason, I was quite struggling to keep my concentration. Haven’t played for a while does not help either. I really need to work on my defence. But unfortunately, there will not be any badminton on Sundays over the next three weeks. Hopefully, my standard will not drop further.

Really enjoyed yesterday.

high heel shoes

2006-07-20T23:52:00.000-07:00

The reasons for not to wear high heel shoes:

Twisted my ankles.
The heel stuck in lifts.
Scratched my car when I tried to park.(not once, but twice)

I think high heel shoes and me do not get on very well. (is it why I lost one shoe? I think I threw out the other.)

Any one know anything about Empire Earth? Is it a turn based game?? My colleague bought the game at 25% discount (only cost him about $38). If it is a turn based game, I might get it as well. So I can play at my laptop (can’t play civ iv at my laptop, unless I upgrade my laptop.)

One of my managers has gone to lunch with a client and still hasn’t come back yet (at 4:46). The other manager has gone to play golf and will go back home from the course. I am so bored once again. Internet is just so slow. I don’t know what I can do.

credit manager

2006-07-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

My body has been very sore for the last two days!! Sigh, I am getting old. I actually really enjoyed training last Sunday, had a few sets of net shots and net kills practices. After five month break from badminton, I am playing a lot now. Wed & Thursday night comp, training on Sundays and social on Saturday nights (occasionally). I am cutting a lot of Civ IV time.

Both my managers are away and I got nothing to do once again. I have to wait for legal advice on a few things before I can do something else. It doesn’t seem to come in the next an hour or two.

I am so scared to talk to my Credit Manager. He is just on and on for ages. If you think you’ve met anybody who is really talkative, stop complaining. He is probably the worst. I wanted to let him know that I couldn’t finish off the things he wanted me to do in two days time last Thursday because two / three reasons. That’s all I wanted to say, and the conversation went on for more than an hour and half (might reach two, I lost count at the end.) I should also mention that it was not really conversation, he did the talk for more than 90% of the time. All my talks were something like, tried to drag him back to the topic, tried to interrupted him a bit (by saying I understand where you come from, or you are right etc.) it was not something in negotiation.

He organised a weekly training on every Weds. I am sooooo scared. Last week’s training went on an hour and half until someone was here to see him. All the materials we went through was just one very small section titled Purpose. Basically, each report we write needs to have a purpose, ie to seek $$ to fund property purchase. There are a few sub-sections we need to include in the Purpose as well, such as a bit background about the client, any outstanding issues etc. For me, it will take max 20 mins, if people got questions, it might go up to 30 mins, but an hour?? (if that person did not come to see him at 10:30, god knows how long he will go on.
From a positive side, although he tends to be lost on the main points, he is quite thorough person and acts diligently to protect the bank.

How many times do I have to trip over for the same pile of the files??? I got five thick folders piled up on the ground next to my drawer. Tripped over two times yesterday (might be more, but I don’t count it properly) and two times today. The problem is I can’t get rid of those files as I am waiting for legal advice. Hope I won’t injury myself because of that.

Quite excited about getting my the hundredth blog in the near future. (including this one, I should have 91).

Breathing space

2006-07-16T23:39:00.000-07:00

Feel really productive today. Get through a few files today and spent the whole afternoon filing which had not been done for the last a month and half. And now I am blogging.
Played badminton yesterday, had pretty good mixed games other than my body is so sore from the hard games (well, although I did not move that much, it was beyond my ability. So they were considered as hard games for me.)

Went to Krispy Kreme on Saturday. The only two things I remembered were: The shopping centre is huge and the queue is way toooooo long. Apparently, even if you get there at 4 or 5 in the morning, the queue is still very long. (has anybody been there at that time?) I don’t normally eat donuts, but I do like some of the donuts from KK, but I am not sure whether it is attractive enough to me for waiting there 50 mins to get the food. (Hungry Jacks is much faster.)

I think I had enough unhealthy food over the weekend, I should balance out the bad effect this week. I will have some celery this week.

Working at Bank of New Zealand Australia which is part of NAB, we got lots of funny enqueries related to Bank of New Zealand (which is a separate entity from us.) This confusion is understandable. And some people thought we related to ANZ. That’s not too bad either. But I got an inquiry about Air NZ. That’s a bit out of square.

It is only 4:30, I need to find something to do before heading off. Not many Civ IV research I can do either. Almost done my tax return, only need to get a figure from last year depreciation schedule which saved in my friend’s computer (if she still keeps e-tax file for me)

2006-07-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

Haven’t blogged for ages due to:

continuous improvement on Civ IV
started watching some of the Korean series I took it back from China 9 months ago.
Started playing badminton again. Two days during the week for different comps and training on Sundays, social on Saturday nights.
Most importantly, I have been really busy with my work. No time to blog at work any more. (although I’ve almost done my 06 tax return at work)

Went to Springers on Thursday and played section one comp over there. They have the exactly same format as CBA other than the standard is even worse. They have 9 teams in total this season. For some reasons, CBA is really struggling to get enough interests although their standard is better than Springers. It is always fun to have more teams in a comp as you can play against different group of people with different skills and styles. I actually enjoy the games over there. It makes me feel like taking training again. The only strange thing is that people do not want to hit to me (very strange feeling).

Came to the office today (when i could get more sleep). I am supposed to do some work. I have only done 10 – 15 mins work since I came to the office two and half hour ago. I have spent the rest of time surfing online. Philips mobile phones are really good with stand by time. Some of the phones have stand by time up to a month!! Well, I guess in reality, it might have stand by time only for a bit more than 2 weeks. But it is a still very impressive figure. Definitely go back to china and have a look.
I have also spent lots of time on Ebay and looked for Korean series. Once again, I have decided to go back to china and buy some myself this time again. (I think I might need to copy all the series onto a portable hard drive. I might just buy a bigger hard drive this time.)

There are so much I want to do in china. Mum has done some shopping for me already as she thinks by the time I got back, Summer clothes will be out of season. So she bought some summer clothes for me (well, as you can imagine, she will only buy skirts / business suites that sort of summer clothes.) but I don’t wear skirts that much. I would prefer t-shirts, shorts, pants etc. well, I can do those shopping myself.

Also had a quick look about using credit cards / debit cards overseas. The best credit card without foreign currency services fee is Wizard credit card. Other credit cards have service fee ranging from 2% to 3% based on the transaction amount (NAB got 1.5% service fee and 0.85% visa card service fee which passes to visa) As to ATM withdrawal from overseas, NAB has $4 transaction fee per withdraw, not sure whether they will also charge foreign currency service fee, have to find out.) But it is very hard to compare which one is better as all the costs can be absorbed in the exchange rate. For example, each credit card issuers can use different exchange rates to convert the foreign currency into aust, there is no way to compare who has cheaper exchange rate. Wizard can use higher exchange rate to absorb nil foreign currency service fee and the fee needs to pass to Visa. Because I can’t get the exchange rate info at the time they convert the foreign currency for different issuers, I can’t tell which package is beneficial overall. I have decided to stick to my NAB cards. Well, if cards issuers will benefit from the transaction, why not let NAB get the benefits??

I think I’d better get back to work.

not really happy

2006-05-30T00:44:00.000-07:00

The Bank has changed internet access policy. Each individual employee will have their own access rather than using a centralised log on / password. Does it mean the Bank can track which websites each individual accessed if they want to? That’s not good. I can’t access Civ fanatic forum anymore!! (but it is good to have most of stuff download previously.) That manes I will have less time spending on surfing internet. What I am going to use my time?
We will have a small group lunch today. The main purpose of the meeting is to bitch about someone else. It will be an interesting topic.

Not sure whether I should play Wed comp next season at kylsith. I have been filling for almost half of the season. (I have agreed to fill in on next Wed night, did not really want to, should have better things to do on that day. But I do feel bad if I said no to her as she had a pretty bad season due to lots of injuries and she felt bad about not being able to do anything for the team) I am pretty bad now, and will not get any better. What is it called? Retiring? (no training, no social badminton, no competition) Well, keep the option open, I might decide to go back to training one day.

Not really happy today at work. One of our clients requested the bank to issue a special letter which is prohibited by the bank since July 2003. Spoke to Legal, they believed that we could potentially get a waiver from a proper authority level (although he did not know who to speak to, and in what situation, it could be waived). Had a discussion with the Manager, suggested that we could get a solution. However, he felt it was too much trouble, he simply asked me to tell the client advising we were not issuing that sort of letter anymore. Then the client rang him. And now he wants me to find out who to speak to and how we can get away with it. He said we had to issue the letter no matter what. It will make me look really bad as I was the one advising them we were not issuing it anymore and after the client talked to him, now we can issue!!! (it is so contradictory!! So going forward, the client would always want to talk to him as he "solved" their problem and I was the one really tough on them!!! In fact, I was the one trying to help them in the first place and tried to get away with it, but it was him who did not want to put any extra effort and only concerned himself and only chose to take easy options.

It is completely different to my previous manager who always back me up and make the clients trust my decisions. It gave the client impression that once the decision was made (no matter from whom), it would not change. For important things like that, I would always check with the manager. He would not change whatever we decided to do if we were right. All the compromises were done before the decision was made.

Anthony (who happened to work in that company) just told me that his firm was really upset about me because I told them we could not do it. really not happy about it. I don’t really care what the consequence might be. but i just felt really bad about what happened. but i guess, it is the reality. got to go now. more Civ IV will take my mind off this.

should be posted on 24th May

2006-05-29T00:35:00.000-07:00

How quick it takes for annual leave change from positive to negative?? – in two seconds.

Just submitted annual leave request, and my annual leave available changed to negative straightaway. It is so hard to accumulate it, but it is so easy to use it. But I guess, it is good that I have 20 days per year annual leave at least. Lots of people in China will not have any annual leave (it makes me worried about going back to China)

Had two days training at Dockland, and just back to the office today. As I expected, so many emails for me to read (most of them are junk, which I don’t really need to read, just delete straightaway.) There is no block spam function with Lotus Notes (or at least, I don’t know how to get / use it.) I also missed some important emails, such as movie this Saturday. Really enjoyed the time at Dockland (they got free biscuits, lots of different types of drinks) They used to have free fruits but I did not see any this time, which is a bit disappointing. Wish I could work there one day. The food is quite expensive around there (probably because not many competition).

Another good thing about training is we tend to finish quite early. Finished at 4:30 on Monday (after we had to wait at the reception for 45 mins before we could get in at 9:30 in the morning. Some one stuffed up the registering system, none of us were registered to enter the building.) We finished at 3:30 on Tuesday. So I decided to go back home early to play civ IV. (was really excited about that as well.)

Got home just before 5:00 and had some junks as dinner (chips, coke etc), started the game. Firstly, I overrode the game record Zel was using. (he was so close to win the game, then it was stuffed up by me!!) then somehow I stuffed up the mouse, and my computer couldn’t detect the mouse. Spent 10 mins to plug and unplug the mouse, did not work. So I had to stop at around 8:00. And when zel came back and tested, it worked!! (it is discrimination!!! Plus, it was my desktop, it was supposed to be nicer to me than to Zel.)

I want to go home and play the game.

can't remember what i wanted to write after this.

I am tired (that was supposed to post on 19th May)

2006-05-29T00:33:00.000-07:00

(I was too busy to finish off the post, ok, busy with civ IV strategy guides)

Had the citizenship interview yesterday. I forgot to bring my passport and the birth certificate (I brought a wrong document.). I guess I am not sure what I am supposed to do. Although I did spend some time the night before to remember 4 responsibilities and 6 rights for an Australian Citizen, deep down, I don’t know whether I should apply for it. That’s probably why I was so careless about the interview. (got the application documents signed on the day prior to go to the interview).

Despite that, it was approved at spot. My feeling is really mixed, I don’t feel happy or unhappy (I might be just lazy to find out what I really want). It is just like another day and another event in my life. But I guess it is too late to change my mind. It has been approved. It will take 3 – 5 months for the ceremony. As I am intending to go back to China for a holiday in Oct, I might not be able to attend the first one.
Should I go back / to other cities or stay?? That’s a big thing in my mind at the moment. I want to stay but sometimes I feel I don’t belong to here. But at the same time, I don’t really belong to China or any other city. On the other hand, if I chose to go back, I really have to deal with selling my house, car and lots of other stuff. It will be a really big project (but at least I can return money to my brother early, owe him heaps and promised to pay back by 2010.)
I think I have had a long break from those issues. Really need to do something about it, either stay or go back and then get on with it.
Went back to Carlton yesterday, caught up with lots of colleagues. Felt like I was back home. I had worked in Carlton for three years, it is really like my second home. Although I had ups and downs, when I am looking back now, I feel so close to those colleagues and the environment. (I did some work for them, because I really got nothing to do)
Time is really slow today. I am sort of looking forward to Gordon’s wedding this weekend (other than the cold weather, hope they have heating inside or we don’t have to stay outside very long)
Can’t find my watch. It was the first time over the last probably 6 months that I remembered to get my watch battery replaced. But I couldn’t find it. The morale of the story is that get the things done ASAP, it would become a bigger problem otherwise.

I love Civ IV

2006-05-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

I played lots of Civ IV recently, played up until 6:30 on Sunday Morning, had 5 hours sleep, and back to it again.

Civ IV is a really good game.

it took my mind off lots of things I don’t want to think about at the moment
it fills up my spare time so easily, makes my mind so occupied with the game
it helps me learn new words (most of the words are war related.)
really felt like I’m back to study, and I enjoyed that.

I’ve read all the strategy guides I printed. I had lots of diagrams, summaries, notes, highlighted paragraphs, cross referencing etc. I enjoyed watching Zel playing while I was "studying". I could always ask questions straightaway.

Just started reading Da Vinci Code, it is a bit frustrating. One paragraph has more than 10 words I don’t know. (I guess it does not affect my understanding much, but it is annoying to get so many new words in a tiny little paragraph.) Words like, curator, depict and many many words, I can’t even remember. Even I had the electronic dictionary next to me, it is so annoying to check every words I don’t know. (Plus there were lots of non-english words!!) Both Alice and
Zel said it was a pretty good book. I will overcome this little problem and get through it.

Although I haven’t really blogged on line, I did write a lot recently. I guess my english is improving by reading strategy guides and writing to myself. I am also hoping I can get some grammar / english lessons from Zel. Alice is kind enough to join which is pretty good.

I am really looking forward to going back to China this year. Catch up with friends, and might go to a wedding (I will try to dress properly this time, so far I got a rate of 50% - attended two weddings. And wore runners and jeans in the first one. So if I dressed properly this time, my odds will improve to 66.67% - but odds does not mean anything. Zel and I suffered a bit from it – civ IV provides an odds when you try to fight against another unit. You can have as high as 85% percent, and still lose the battle.)

Although I’ve played lots of Civ IV recently, my mind is still quite active about other things (just not as active I would have been if I had not played that much the game). Going back will give me a chance to feel whether I will be ok to stay in / go back to china. Had a look about jobs in Singapore and HK, not much response yet. But it will make a difference if I am actually in those countries. Should I just go back anyway? When you don’t give yourself a way to look / go back, you will find a way / solution because the only way to survive is going forward. (so if I put myself in those situations, I think I will be fine.) Life is like that. I really think I am quite flexible, so I should be able to adjust myself quite easily in a new environment.

Thinking about having a break from aust, might be for a year, after I come back from holiday (really depending what I see, how I feel and lots of guidance from friends/ family) If I was ok, I would probably choose to go there (China, HK or Singapore)

Not sure what is my brother doing. I thought he is getting married this year (or at least my family hoped) as he wants to get a baby next year. I still think getting married first before having a baby is a good idea. I don’t mind adopting a child though. (I wanted four kids for myself before, two for badminton, two for tennis, two boys and two girls.) but it is pretty impossible now. So adopting will be a good alternative, plus you can choose what eyes colour / hair colour, the look, the gender etc.

Birthday wish – wish I was in a sims world, more certainties in a Sims world.

PS. I couldn’t believe that I wrote that much. I used to count every words I wrote just to write 800 – 1000 words when I first started uni in Aust (only 100 – 150 words when I was in China). One of my friends who corrected my writing really hated me doing that. Well, he is not here, he should be very happy about my improvement.

Job overseas

2006-04-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

Just when I am thinking about working in another country, I got an email from a recruitment agent advising jobs available in NZ. Is it the hint for me to make a move? But NZ??? I am not really interested. I used to have a friend who studied in NZ and worked there for a very short period of time. But she has gone back to China and for some reason, she did not contact any friends from Uni which is really strange. Not sure whether it was because she wasn’t happy about the life in NZ.

Thinking about working in an Asian country, at least, I will enjoy the food more, plus it is closer to China and ticket will be much cheaper to go back, that means I will have more chances to go back to China for a holiday.

Just realised that one of the colleagues is resigning and will be working in an Asian country because his girlfriend has a project with some sort of Charity Organisation. She will travel around, but will mainly based on one country. They have not finalised which country they will be living. Apparently, he has investigated job opportunities in Singapore. According to him, there are lots of opportunities requiring Mandarin speaking which should not be a problem for me.

Advantage for me going Singapore:

- food is nicer and cheaper
- similar culture
- closer to China, can go back to China more often than now. (only 6 hours flight)
- low personal tax at 15%

Disadvantage:

- missing friends in Aust
- exchange rate risk??
- Need to find a solution for my car / property

What should I do? I should really take a vote for it. Personally, I am more towards going to a new environment.

Had a really good chat with my friend online yesterday. I never knew we were sort of going through the same process.

He is a really independent person. Since he was very young, he lived with his grandparents and had to really take care of himself. He also took lots of social responsibilities during his school life (like school captain / head boy). He was considered as a model brother / student by so many people around him. Just because of that no one needs to concern about / look after him. Sometimes, he felt he wanted to get really sick, so he would get some attentions. That’s what exactly I felt. We all try to be very independent, try not to create any trouble to others. But sometimes, we are just a bit sick of our roles. To the completely opposite, we want to be looked after / cared for a while. But at the end, we will not do it because it does not match the ‘image’. It is probably not about an image, it is more about that we strongly believe that we should do certain things and not to do certain things (probably don’t want to be seen as weak.) We tend to require a lot from ourselves and try to do the ‘right’ things, but it does not work in reality. (I guess, deep down, we also require a lot from others, although we don’t say it, or don’t behave it in an obvious way.) We are probably too idealistic which is the main problem.

He had a very lucky life prior to the incident in which he was put into extensive care coma for few weeks and was believed to be paralysed for the rest of his life. But he recovered. He was the first one walking out of the hospital without any help according to his doctor who had worked there for more than 15 years.

He knew I was lost / confused. He did not want me to make any rush decision. He was very kind to share his personal emails / stories with me. Some of the stuff was really funny. He put a big smile on my face. I am so happy to have a good / close friend like him. I wish I could do something for him.

i am lost

2006-04-23T05:23:00.000-07:00

Trying to talk to my friends, but unfortunately none of them online. Yeh, it is probably dinner time and plus it is Sunday, they might be just out. really miss life in China sometimes. Talking to mum and dad tonight. it is good to know that they are in good health.

it is less and less possibilities to go back to China. mum really thinks i won't be able to survive in china. she really thinks i am too simply / straight forward to work in China. But i guess, when i really need to be, i can make it. Lots of people they known of cannot find a job in Aust or really struggling to stay in aust. they think that i have a very stable job and life in aust, and they are so proud of me of what i have achieved. i don't want to disappoint them. they are more excited about me applying for citizenship than me. if i am successful, that means i will lose my chinese nationality and cannot go back to china permanently. (it doesn't mean i will be successful, i need to attend an interview on 18th May, i don't even know whether i want to be successful or not.), but i spent 24 years in China, i cannot just give up everything in China, especially families, friends. i know i will still have chances to go back, probably on a yearly basis, it will be different. i just don't know where i will belong to.

Actually, i won't mind working in another country, prefer asian countries though. but i don't think National got offices in Singapore or Malaysia. but they do have a branch in HK. they should really go globle. I should put this as a recommendation to the CEO and hopefully, i can be assigned to one of those countries. (do i have to learn Canto? Zel is probably not a good teacher).

slept most of the day and filled in the waken time with my chinese novels. i did not play sims at all, just don't feel like it (haven't got the strategy guide for Open for Business). i am just not sleepy at all. tried to go to sleep at 9, but it did not work. i guess, i never really tried to sleep prior to 11, my body is just not used to it.

one of my friends in online. i finally can talk to someone.

it is so good to talk to your friend when you really need them. he made me feel much better now. but my chinese typing was really bad. it is like broken!! might put more about him if i have time in the next few days.

A joke no one would understand

2006-04-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

When I started the new role, I was warned that my manager had a really strange sense of humour, I was not too sure what that meant. Anyway, he was telling me that I needed to do some overtime work over the next few weeks yesterday. He told me that I needed to sort out the transportation issues as he knew Zel is dropping me off and picking me up. He also asked me
whether I could come in early this morning, say 7:30ish or stay late as the other manager got lots of things to finalise by today.

I have agreed to stay late as I can’t get up in the morning. Came to work, trying pretty hard to tidy up a few things. By lunch time, both managers I am working for had left without giving me anything to do. I only managed to grab a few things from one of them just before he stepped out.

Then I realised that to stay late was a joke. He said the joke in a way I thought he was so serious about it. He did not laugh at all even when I said I was happy to stay late.

I spent most of the afternoon doing one of the on-line training which has a deadline of 30th April.
Then I helped the other office girl to complete hers and now I am blogging. If I really want to do, I could get some work done. But I just can’t be bothered to start something new.

A few funny moments happened this week:

We went to Sofia at Burwood. After ordering food at the counter, I realised that there was a fake snake. I jumped away the counter (did not scream initially!!!) Then the guy saw me like that, he purposely somehow touch it. And it moved just like a real snake. I screamed!! And people in front me was laughing at it after that.

We came back from badminton on Wed, I opened the door leading to the backyard. It must be the wind, I felt like the door was opened from inside. The first thing came into my head was that there was someone behind the door. I almost screamed (ALMOST). I guess I watched too many scary movies.

Sent a message to Zel telling him that I got boiboi to pick me up. For some reason, the message read like that ‘I got boiboi shaking me up’. He laughed of course.

Went to deliver something to a client, missed their building (RACV tower on Bourke Street), went to the building next to it. I suddenly realised that the lifts looked different, they got expressed lifts. Three / four lots of lifts. The first thought was that it wasn’t like that last time I came here, it’s only a week, I must be in a wrong building.

Got to go now.

Easter Break

2006-04-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

Had a really good Easter Break. Nothing tangible, but I really like those relaxing days. Watched lots of DVDs in the last few days and played Sims 2 on my laptop. No pressure to get up early, went to sleep as late as I wanted, watching friends crashing cars (Xbox games) and finally played Pictionary, Sometimes, I just did nothing and really enjoyed it. Lying on the couch and supposed to watch movies, but I actually enjoyed just lying there and doing nothing. (Of course, I did not know what had happened and as usual, I got to ask questions)

Did not go to Comedy Festival as I don’t think I would understand most of the shows. Went to play badminton on Saturday night. Met a friend just came back from Singapore for a holiday. He has been working there for a year and half. He really enjoyed the lifestyle over there. Had a few games with Shet Li and others. As you can guess, I am playing very bad now. (haven’t really played badminton for a month and did not go to training at all!!)

Ice Age 2 was good, especially when I just finished Ice Age 1 in the same afternoon.

Jonathan invited a few people for an Easter Party at his home. I couldn’t bother to go. It turned out to be his surprise birthday party!!! I felt a bit about not turning up. Hope he enjoyed the party and it was so sweet for his wife to organise it for him. It must be really emotional for him. Wish I was there witnessing it.

Pictionary was funny. Zel and I teamed up against Boiboi and Alice. Boiboi and Alice kept rolling the dice for 1 or 2s. I think they might have guessed more right than we did, but they moved really slowly. It was quite funny to see how Zel could guess from my terrible drawings (poor cattle, and ghost) and how I tried to guess it in CHINESS. I had my dictionary next to me and had to check the meaning a few times before I could draw. Sometimes, I can guess it in Chinese but I don’t know it in English. (Zel should start learning Chinese!!!) Zel and Boiboi was so frustrated at the end. We agreed that Pictionary was a very stressful and tiring game (probably it is only true when Alice and I involved.)

Only pity was that I should have borrowed Nightlife on Sunday night before Zel’s sister went to Comedy festival and returned it when they came back. I can’t buy a car or build a garage without the Nightlife expansion pack!!! That’s no good!!!! I want my own car!!!! (or my sims want their own cars!!) Finally, my sims got a baby girl!! (I tried to eat Spaghetti, but did not have twins. The strategy guide does not work properly this time. Talked to Kate, she said it was pretty hard to get a twins. My sims had to eat Spaghetti every night and had to be a particular time!!! They have not had twins for ages!! Well, I guess I will have to keep trying.)
Found a site where I can download lots of things. Now I need to check the id and give to boiboi so he can download all the stuff for me. The only problem is I can’t really do it at work. I will find time to do it.

I am really happy about this Easter!!! Wish I had more holidays (I mean public holidays which does not reduce my annual leave)

Blog once a while

2006-04-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

I actually have tried to type up something, but was always interrupted by work. At the end of day, I saved it as a draft. The only problem is I always saved under the same file, so it overrides the previous unposted blog.

I guess I should just post whatever I finished during the day.

Had a half hour chat with a friend who I haven’t been able to catch up with the other day. It was pretty good to catch up since the last time I met him was five years ago. But I do feel that we are further apart. We not on the same page any more. But I guess we were never on the same page any way. We all changed in one way or the other. Five years is a really long time. We probably don’t even notice those changes, but all the small things add up. He told me that because Aust dollars appreciated the most against their currency, most of students chose to go UK for further study other than come to Aust. But he was really proud of three students who came to aust. One has graduated and two are doing very well. It must be a really good feeling to see your own students achieved something. Just like mum also tells me that what we have achieved is more important than what they have achieved.

I wish I were more supportive, but sometimes there is very fine line in between. When his mother passed away, I did not know whether I should give him a call or not after sending the emails. Sometimes, I felt that too much sympathy was not going to help any way. I would prefer to be left alone and for a period of time, I would be ok again. But I don’t know whether most of people are feeling the same way or not.

No friends for him, only business partners. I did not know what to say about that when I read that. His life is just so different to mine. Using his words, it is about survival. You are either in the business doing well or out of the business. To get what they are now, they have to sacrifice lots of things, their time, personal life etc. But he did say that he did have things others might not have. So it balanced out somehow. I guess it is quite true. You gain from one side and you lose in other areas. Really depending on what you think is important for you and what you really want. At different stages of the life, we want different things, sometimes I am just not appreciative enough for what I have got already and always looking for things I don’t have. (just like I had Sim 2 and Sim University installed, and I haven’t really grasped that, but I am so tempted to get Sim Open for Business.)

Talking about that, I am so addicted to Sim 2 now. Went to sleep at 2:30 am two days in a row, the coffee consumption at the office is just soaring to the roof. I really need some sleep.
Half of the office is empty by now. (4:45pm) Should have taken my laptop today. I actually thought about that this morning. Well, it gives me time to blog. One way or the other, I am not really into work right now. Plus I have done most of stuff, and it doesn’t look like have anything to do next week. So I really need to spread out my light workload a bit.

Catching up with someone tonight. He wants to celebrate moving into his new house. Well, it is not really a new house. He bought it in Sept last year!! But he did put lots of effort to renovate something himself, such as timber floor, new tiling for the bathroom etc. (I did not have a clue what he was on about.) Should I refuse it if I don’t really want to go? Would it be considered as anti-social? It is something he is really excited about. Feel really bad if I just say no.
But I guess it doesn’t really bother me much about having him as a friend.

PS. i wrote the following lines yesterday, the latest unposted blog.

I have organised a badminton competition on 1st May from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm. 11 out of 14 coworkers will be attending which is quite surprising number. The company will pay for everything but I will be providing some racquets. I am quite looking forward to that. That will be a great fun.

It will be great to get away from work for a while and socialising with others. Some of the colleagues are quite competitive, it will be fun to watch them fighting for points. Three of the managers are playing squash on a weekly basis. They are really competitive, always want to beat others. We are also considering to have a small competition.

Stayed up until 5 am.

2006-04-06T22:48:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why I did that, I stayed up to 5 am this morning. Had two hours sleep (plus half hour in the car on the way to work), I am pretty died and slow today. I had three / four (lost count) cups of coffee in an hour and half. The day seems so slow. It does not help by the fact that the time shown on my work phone is still on day light saving. Every time I looked at it, it gave me a fault hope. Then I realised that it is an hour ahead.

I want to go home now!! Well, my manager is not leaving early today. If I could use internet and search for something I am interested, I wouldn’t have felt the time was so slow.

I was trying to bind some thing together, but on the wrong side. Other than turning the pages from the right hand side, I have to turn the pages from the left hand side (which just demonstrated that I need enough sleep to keep myself concentrated).

Easter is coming!!! A few days off!! Can’t wait. There are so many things I want to do (one thing is right on top of the priority list – but not telling now.) What other things are good about Easter? Cholcolate is not really something on top of my list. Ice skating?? (can't find the place in Ringwood. someone needs to do some research.) i am more than happy to WATCH. (i have enough accident when i am just standing on a flat ground with my runners on. ) can't wait to see others falling!!!!! (evil me!!)

i am really tired. that's pretty much from me for today.

Been lazy / being lazy (don’t know which one is correct)

2006-03-26T22:15:00.000-08:00

I finally got something to work on.

I helped another manager in the office and completed the file in a day. My manager looks like going to give me something to do.

At the moment, I only have one thing outstanding which I really don’t want to touch. It is not difficult, but it is just so time consuming. Manually calculating interest charged on each facility every month and reconcile it with the statements. Two different interest rates normally apply for each facility per month, I have to find out how many days exactly for each interest rate. Adjustment also needs to be made if the public holiday involved.

A few colleagues are quite interested in playing badminton. We might have friendly games after 4:00 at MSAC. It will be interesting. But I am not going to lend my racquet to my manager. I was told that he cracked his squash racquet after he lost a game to another colleague. Although I don’t need to use all my racquet (I got about 8 – 10 racquet), I would prefer my racquets in one piece.

Watched movie ‘The Grudge 2’ on Friday night. I screamed a bit. I really like watching horror movies, but I can’t stop myself screaming and I can’t stop thinking about the scary scenes during the night. Apparently, the US version is more scary than Jap version. I should probably watch the US version. But I doubt I would be able to tell the difference (can’t really remember much of the scenes.)

Still got two free movie tickets, hopefully, there will be something interesting to watch.
Altona Graded tournament is on the 9th April (I just realised that I made a mistake that I thought the coming Sunday is 9th April). Anyway, it will the first comp I play in 06. Not too sure what to expect. (wish could have some sort of prize, such as ice cream voucher etc. I will be working harder if there is something interesting. I can’t find the ice cream voucher I won last year at Melb uni open. The ice cream was really good. Had a try with Alice and Boiboi last Friday, we finished $20 worth of ice cream in one go. Pretty filling. I did not have much dinner that night.

Weighted myself on Sunday morning. I realised that I lost one kilo (pretty happy about it). Then I weighted myself this morning, I gained half kilo???!!! I don’t think I even ate half kilo food yesterday. I did not have breakfast or lunch, only had dinner (one dish only) I don’t know how it works. It just does not make any sense. Well, I guess I will have to keep eating healthy.

I am so bored at work!! (which you probably can see from my blogging frequency)

2006-03-09T17:21:00.000-08:00

It is probably the first time I am feeling this way (and hope it will be the last time as well.) There is just nothing for me to do at this stage. My manager has a big settlement which was supposed to happen yesterday. It was delayed for some reason, and we hope it will settle today.

It represents more than 10% growth for this portfolio based on the existing figure or around 20% growth based on the 1st Oct (which is the first day for the Bank’s financial year) figure. Plus the settlement is in WA which is 3 hours behind Melbourne time, even they might get it settled in the afternoon, due to the system limitation (our bill trading system normally shuts around 4:00), we cannot do draw down the loan for them. He is so busy to get it organised this week (does not want it drag to next week, especially, next Monday is a public holiday, if we don’t get it done today by lunch time WA time, we will have to organise it next Tuesday. That means we will lose four days worth of interest, which is in excess of $10K (much more than that.)

There is really nothing I can do to help organising the settlement. I was kind of finding something for myself to do, such as blogging. But I guess it is pretty good considering I had such busy time over the last few weeks. It is nice to have a break and ready for the new role.

Talking about the new role, it is not busy, but everything has to be precise. We have external legal partners to prepare lots of documents, such as title search, perusal of trust deed, organising settlements etc. Every single thing we do for the client, we need to keep a copy, starting from the client instruction, proper forms signed / executed, ending at the system input (even the computer records need to be printed and filed in the clients file.) The clients’ files are really thick. One average client will have at least 4 current folders (lots of information more than, say 2 or 3 years, has been filed away.) some of the clients in this portfolio have more than 10 current folders.

Everything here is really organised. I hope I will improve in that area after working here for a while.

I made another stupid mistake. I was looking for a particular client’s folder. My manager told me that the folder should be blue. I pointed some folders on his desk and asking whether it would be here. He looked at me and said, I know it is close, but that’s green. I think I got the problem distinguishing blue and green in English.

People here are quite interested in sports. We are thinking about organising a badminton social function sometime after commonwealth game. Some of the colleagues attend gym regular in the morning before work. (should have mentioned gym, I know what I will be getting)

Nothing to do

2006-03-07T22:57:00.000-08:00

Had another relative relaxing day. My manager has been out a lot today. We supposed to have a discussion early this morning, but we just did not manage it. I answered a few calls for him. Most of time, I just need to take a message.

Went to Carlton office yesterday after 7:30 to finish off the last outstanding file. It was perfect timing. I completed the file around 10 past ten when Zel was able to pick me up. There were so much to do at my old role, I am not sued to have a very relaxing day. Just hope I will get something to do next week.

I am thinking of getting a Palm Pilot (it can be part of salary package which will save about 30% tax on the purchase). But I am not sure how to choose one, what sort of function I need.
CBA final tomorrow night – will be interesting matches. We only won one doubles against the regular players the whole season (probably because Jennifer just came back from holiday and was not in form at all.) I really want to see we can do better this time. We got one set from them last time which was four weeks ago. The third set was close as well. It would be good if we could actually beat them once. It reminds me the first CBA season I played. We lost ladies doubles to Hawthorn the whole season other than the one in the final. I hope it works that way as well this time.

By the way, we got free drinks and chips at the office. The bank regular fills up the stock. Pretty nice, I love it (although it is not healthy.)

quick notes

2006-03-07T00:52:00.000-08:00

just want to quickly update on what is happening today after work.

Zel rang me to pick me up around 6:00. it took me 15 mins to get into the car. I got lost in the building!! There are two entrances / exits in the building. The front one is located at collins Street which is the one i used in the last two days until tonight. It also has a side entry at Queen St. My seat is closer to the lift heading to Queen street exit. I thought it would be nice to get through from the side entrance. took the lift, got to the ground level, used my keys passed two doors, then there were about 4 or five different doors, two of them had the similar sensors for the keys, but my key did not work on them. the other few doors either locked completely or lead to a very dark place (like the storage underground, i could see nothing.) i was running between floors, trying every single doors, got no where. i was almost to use the lift back to level 6 and take one of the front lift then i found the door with Exit sign on top. i finally got out of the building.

The first day at the new role

2006-03-06T18:51:00.000-08:00

It was really quite at the first day. I guess the new manager did not expect me to do anything tangible So I had a pretty relax day yesterday which I am not used to it. The phone rarely rings, all I did was transferring manual files to Sieble. not very hard, but I do need to be really careful about lots of terms and conditions for each application.

I had pretty healthy lunch today, only had some fruits. I hope I can stay eating healthy from now on. To be more healthy, I thought about using stairs rather than lift after bought those fruits. It is a quite old building with very high ceilings. Our office is at 6th floor, by the time I got to the sixth floor, I was pretty much dead. Then I realised that I couldn’t open the door between the staircase and the main office. I had to go all the way back down and take the lift. Well, that means I will have to use lift. But actually, I haven’t tried the lift at the back. The staircase at the back is just next to the lift. There is no door in between (I think). I might be able to take stairs from there.

Still got one thing outstanding from my old job. I am hoping to get it down tonight. I am not going for badminton tonight. I got to play at Kilsyth this wed and CBA this Thursday, I guess I will have enough exercise.

Working in city means more traffic we have to go through. I was late for about 10 min this morning, not a very good thing when I just started yesterday. Luckily, I finished all the things my manager gave to me yesterday, he was quite happy about that. So he did not say anything about being late. But I guess I normally work until 6:00, even I am late a bit, I always make it up during the day. The only time I can’t be late is Mondays. They have a sales meeting on Monday.

Another thing about working in city is that it is very close to Officeworks. I just can’t resist the temptation!! (bought something from Officeworks today already.)

Toooooo busy

2006-02-26T21:02:00.000-08:00

I have been really busy recently about my work. As I am moving to the new position next Monday, somehow, I am in the position of finalising lots of files over the last week and this week for two managers!! (I guess it is their interest to get the most from me before I move on.) I have been thinking about doing overtime work lately. But I can’t be bothered to come in over the weekend.

I might stay late tomorrow night and do some work as there will be lots of people playing at baddie. The first Tuesday session since uni started. I don’t think I will get more than 2 games the whole night. To release some stress, I really need to do some overtime work and catch up with all outstanding files.

I still have three outstanding training I want to do before I move on. I don’t think I will get a chance to complete them. I will have to arrange the time for it. I don’t want to start it all over again.

One things about moving to the new role in city is that I am not close to uni any more. It has been fun to catch up with friends from uni at lunch time and after work. My office sorts of becomes the place to meet together before we do other stuff. My colleagues now let my friends in automatically!!

Heard about that the all you can eat Ying Cha is really good. However, it is only available for weekdays. I got to take a day off to try it. Easter might be a good time. But I am not too sure whether I can get a day off during the Easter. It really depends on whether my new manager will be away around that time or not. Basically, one of us has to at work. I don’t really think I will take lots of holidays this year. Parents might come over, I probably only need about max two weeks to go NZ (if we can organise the visa) and showing them around Melb. I got 9 annual leave days accumulated!! I really want to take at least 6 weeks off in 2008 to watch the Olympic Games in Beijing.

State Pennate

2006-02-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

Had pretty good weekend. We played the first round and second round State Pennate at Springers. I was really happy about playing four games in a day in which three of them were quite good. The single game, hmmm, no comment. Surprisingly, Shet Li and I played pretty well on the second double against the vic rebel team. They got pretty good movement and pretty good shots. I did not expect to beat them in straight sets. Well, it was pretty good games. Had two mixed games as well. I was not at my best, but luckily, we won. The team won both rounds which is pretty good to see.

We had dinner at Sofia after the long day. If we are talking about quantity, no way near the Sofia at Camberwell. If we are talking about quality, it was pretty bad. But the good thing was most of the team members gathered around and had lots of fun together. That’s something more important than the food itself.

Really enjoyed Saturday, although had headache by the end of the day.

Got to go, might write more about State Pennate if I have time. I have been quite busy today and will be quite busy for the next weeks. Both managers want me to do some urgent things, no one wants to deal with it themselves.

Enterprise Bargain Agreement.

2006-02-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

The Bank is negotiating with FSU (some sort of Union for Finance Industry) to work out a new pay structure (mainly about the salary increase over the next three years), flexible working hours, leaves etc. Every three years, the Bank and FSU will review the agreement and make necessary amendments (or probably come up with a fresh agreement.)

I found the proposed agreement is not transparent. In terms of the pay, for the first year, some levels are guaranteed for 4% increase, 2% in March and 2% in Oct. Some levels are guaranteed for 2.6% increase in March. It is fair enough to have different increase structures. However, from the second year, the increase will be based on the market & performance. No details about how it is going to be measured. So you could work extremely hard and had very good performance over the year, but if someone at the top made mistakes which you had no influence over, you could suffer the result. Alternatively, if the market perform very well, even the individual is not performing, he/she could still receive handy increase. Also, it is more subjective rather than objective. There are lots of personal judgement involved. The boss will be the one ultimately assessing your performance. So if you have pretty good relationship with your boss, then you can expect a pretty good result.

We were told to vote between 20th Feb to 24th Feb. Then if it is in favour of the proposed agreement, the Bank will submit to Industry Relationship Group for formal approval / sign off. Employees then can expect the pay increase in March. Does it mean that if people want to get an increase (it has been delayed from Jan already), they have to vote in favour of the agreement? Otherwise they will have to negotiate again and who knows when the increase can take effect (they started the negotiation in mid last year!) People might be forced to vote in certain way due to the time constraint!

Too much complains about the EBA.

One of the colleagues who went to England for a career break will come back to Aust tomorrow for a holiday. He is the one of the best managers I have ever seen. He is also a very nice person, high work ethic, hard worker, smart, generous, humble…… Don’t know whether he is coming back after the two years break. (it has been one year already.) He will be visiting us tomorrow afternoon and possibly having a few drinks with us. Unfortunately, I have dinner booked in tomorrow night, I will have to give a miss. Well, we can still catch up in two week time as he is going back to his country town for the next week.

Another thing I am looking forward is the Karaoke this Saturday before Sammy (sorry, if I spelled it wrong.) back to the boring place - Canberra. It was so much fun last time. However, Sammy needs to go back home early as he has to drive to Canberra the next day. Hope PJ can make it as well. Need to confirm where and when we are going.

Another day and half, I will be back to my old position. The work has piled up for me to complete in the next three weeks. Well, I only need to stay there for three weeks. The manager wants me to get on top of everything before I move on. (He even wants me to contact his client for things he needs to do because the clients do not want to talk to him.)

Booked six Commonwealth badminton tickets for Mixed Team event, semi final. It looked like we were pretty late. If I wanted the six tickets together, I would have to sit in the last row. (don’t really think it is a good idea.) I had to book two lots of three tickets in order to get a better sitting. The first lot was quite OK. However, the second lot will be the last row again. No one really wants to sit on his/her own. So I had to book three tickets at a higher price at the end. After all the trouble, the tickets have now been finalised. It will be a good night.

Blogged two days in a row. Pretty good effort. And now need to back to work.

another blog after two weeks

2006-02-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

Lots of things happened recently, I just did not have time to blog.

This is the last week for the relieving. I am so happy that it is ending soon. I don’t think I did a good job for the last five weeks as I was requested to complete a few files for the new manager who started in Dec 05. I am feeling a bit guilt about it. I am getting paid for the higher duties, but I did not much management work. There are lots of things I have been slack of.
The file we have been working on for the last week got approved today. Although it was not exactly what the customer wanted, the client is happy to put additional $100K towards the transaction. It has been hard negotiation among different parties. The managers from our office, Credit Manager in town, the client, the introducer etc. I have learned a lot from different conversations.

We had a small celebration lunch today. Free lunch for me!!!

Got my promotion and starting the new role on 6th March. Family are really happy for me. The problem with more than one kid in the family is that they tend to compare the kids. I don’t really like the idea of comparing. But it is the reality, we have to live with it. Requested some documents before starting the new job in March, it is about 150 – 200 pages. I will have lots of reading to do.

Went to the Ferrari dealership at Richmond today to valid the engine number etc. The car cost the client $580K after some additional stuff added. It is a very beautiful red car, but to spend $580K on a car is not something I can understand. Funning thing is the new manager who took three clients from the old business banking centre found out that all of these three clients bought a Ferrari, exactly same module. Two are red and one is yellow. He becomes Ferrari funding specialist!!

I have been on the road for half of the day, I felt a bit sick. (I thought my manager was pretty bad at driving, that’s probably because I did not know someone could be worse.) His client is worse than him. Apparently, his client was caught by driving 190km on 60 km zone. His license was suspended for 6 months. He went to the court and gave some stupid reasons for needing the license to do his business which was accepted by the court. So he was granted the license straight after the suspension period. He can drive his Mercedes to 200 km per hour and he is getting a Ferrari. (it makes worried about how fast he is going to drive.)

The manager got a bottle of wine from his client after finalising the Ferrari deal today after being stressed for the last week. My manager passed the wine to me to thank for all my hard work in the past. Apparently, the wine is worth about $140. (should auction at Ebay). Well, I will take it to Friday’s dinner. The restaurant has been booked. Apparently, it is not a BYO. However, as my colleague’s flatmate working there, he will check it out for me whether I can take the wine with me. (Alice must be smiling when she reads this.)

Twisted ankle, once again.

2006-01-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

My statistic shows that I twisted my ankle badly once a year. Twisted not too badly twice a year on average.

Had a really good day yesterday other than the fact that I twisted my ankle. We played cricket, threw water bombs to each other. Everyone was so wet at the end. Alice was sooooooo gone. It was part of my fault as well. I don’t really know how to make a water bomb. It took me a while to figure out how to do it properly and I could only do it at a very slow pace. So, she was basically the only one to fight against Boiboi, Zel and shehan (sometimes). But she had lots of fun. (so did the other guys.) The best part was one of the ladies offered to help. She took a water bomb and walked straight to Boiboi who had no idea what would happen. She pretended talking to him and within a meter, she threw it right on Boiboi’s head. Bang!!! It was so great to watch it!! That was the best!!!

I am a bit worried about my ankle. I don’t want to miss State Pennant, but I don’t know how long it will take me to recover. (I am not asking for a 100% recovery, as long as I can play / move, I am happy.) I can’t really walk at the moment, hopping my way through is quicker (people laughed at me at the office!! Bad people who just don’t have any sympathy!!) I have the ankle wrapped pretty tightly, one of my colleagues found something for me to put my foot on, so I can feel better.

Well, if I don’t play badminton this weekend, I will have more time to study / clean the house / grocery shopping etc. I can also read the book I just bought, it called Mind Gym. There are so many things I want to do, hopefully, I can catch up a few things. My game is still half way through, I need to finish off that one as well.

Went to Chadstone yesterday, saw the cover of Top Spin 2. They got lots of big names in Top Spin 2, but it looks like they also got rid of a few very good players which I like, such as Sampras, Hinges, Agassi etc.

My resolution was to start the Gym in Feb, well, it doesn’t look promising. It is not my fault. I have the intention to put effort, but the reality just don’t allow me to do!

Where is my the other shoe???

2006-01-16T22:53:00.000-08:00

Came into my car this morning and realised that only one shoe was in the car. I used to have a pair of high heel shoes in the car so I only needed to wear it when I had a customer visit. There was only one shoe in the car and I couldn’t find the other. I might have accidentally kicked it out of my car without noticing. Well, I still have heaps of shoes I can wear (although they were my favourite, really comfortable). There is no point to keep just one shoe.

Had to buy a swimming suit at city today. So I borrowed my colleague’s transport ticket. I went to city around 12:30 and realised that I forgot to take my wallet. Walked back to the office (as the ticket was in my wallet, I didn’t want to be caught.) The whole process took me about 1 hour and half. I ended up with having Coke as my lunch.

Had a relatively busy day today. But I really enjoy the way to (forgot what I meant to say here. I am now just picking up the blog I left yesterday without publishing it.)

Submitted an application for a job I am interested. Hope I can get it. The only problem is the location. It will be in city (good food, especially, Asian food), but the transportation will be a problem. I am now so used to drive to city (well, zel drives me to city everyday). My point is – it will be inconvenient to work in city. Where can we park? I think I am thinking too much. Applying the job does not guarantee me get the job.

By the way, my new mobile phone is pretty cool. I am still trying to figure out all the functions (Big2 especially.) I stayed up until 1 am this morning, and accidentally deleted a few contacts (well, still have a copy at my laptop.)
Got to go now.

A new mobile phone

2006-01-10T22:58:00.000-08:00

Swapped the mobile with Zel as his phone got some functions which mine doesn’t have. Everybody loves the ring tone! So far, two of the colleagues have infrared the ring tone to their phones. Others also wanted but I don’t think it can be infrared to phone other than Sony Ericsson.

Received a phone call from the Teltra dealer from which I got my last free phone (lost somewhere anyway). She told me as my contract expires in two months time, I can pick up a free phone from the shop without a penalty. She can also change the plan for me. I don’t use my phone much, plus I got free time. I tend to make calls when it is free. That means I will have a new phone. (pretty good) I will go to Box Hill shopping centre this Sunday morning to pick up a new phone. Just hope I won’t blow my budget again (if I have one.) I really like the Sony Ericsson Z520i. Hopefully, it does not cost too much. I still like Nokia more (but I need to find the game I want).

GM just visited us today. Don’t really like him. He is the sort of people looking for short term result rather than building up a long term strength. (probably because I can’t understand him. He has strong (god knows what) accents. Sigh, my english needs to improve. One good thing he said about our centre was it was really clean and organised. Well, we spent the whole day cleaned it up last Friday with some people came in on Saturday assisted the cleaning co moved all the rubbish. I am just wondering whether he would think – our desks were clean because we were not busy???!! (our centre is at the bottom of the lists in terms of the performance.)

Really struggled to find time to do more than one job. I am supposed to relieve a manager. However, I still need to spend at least 50% of my time to help the new manager who started three weeks ago and another manager who had little idea about what he is doing. The good thing is the new manager takes me out visiting clients a lot which I am really enjoying.

Clean up day

2006-01-05T22:03:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, we have a big clean up day. Our General Manager is visiting us next Wed, we need to clean up the office today. (a big task, at least for me.) I spent 4 hours to hide all my stuff. I think in about two weeks time, they will re-appear on my desk somehow.

Rubbish is piling up. All the bins have been fully used and there are more to come. The big rubbish bins have not been emptied since Dec. We have lodged a complaint about the office not being cleaned properly. It took them two days to get someone came here and had a look and the actually clean up will be tomorrow.

We beat South Africa in the Third Test at SCG. I am a bit disappointed at the result. It took a lot courage for SA declared the game in the first session and tried to win the test. They could just take the soft / easy option of playing for a draw. But they decided to have a go. It is a bit unlucky given that they had performed so well in the third test and due to rains, they were not only competing against Aust but also against the weather. Well, it is still good to see Aust came back in a very difficult situation and worked closely as a team.

I am glad today is over. As long as I can keep my desk clean for at least two days until the General Manager coming in Wed, I should be fine.

random thoughts

2006-01-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

Had really weird dream with two teeth fell off when I was brushing my teeth. Not sure what does it mean.

We are required to clean up our desks this Friday and need to maintain it tidy going forward. (most importantly, until next Wed what’s when the General Manager visits us.) I am so in trouble.

I am thinking of moving to a new position, but I won’t be able to move until March as I will be relieving a manager until 13th Feb from next Monday. Another thing hold me back is that Joe just started two weeks ago, he is still trying to fit in the role. Just had a phone call from one of the clients who would like to meet us and he said he did not mind meeting Joe only if I was coming as well. (I felt so surprised as I didn’t think I was that important to them. Most of the time, clients just want to meet / talk to the business banking managers as they are the one making the ultimate decisions. ) Joe feels so happy about it because he thinks I have been delivering excellent services to his clients and it makes much easier for him to build up relationship with them. Other people keep telling me that I need to look after my own interest first. If I am not pushing for myself, on one will be helping me.

Going to beach this weekend. Was really excited about it when there were only four people going. And now I am worried. I CAN’T swim. Going to beach with all the evil people doesn’t seem to be a good idea. How can I get away with it???? I don’t really think I can learn how to swim in two days (plus I don’t even have a swimming suit) (is that why I had the weird dream, the Dream Dictionary did mention something about being worried / stressed etc.)

Haven’t blogged for a while

2006-01-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

Holiday is just too fast. It seems to be just yesterday when I was really hoping to get good rest over the xmas and now I am back to work.

Had a reasonable good holiday season, been to a few parties. I am so used to the late nights, going to sleep around 3 or 4 in the morning. The bad consequence was that I couldn’t fall asleep until 2:30 this morning. (was a bit lazy to get a cup and drink some red wine, or probably just need to save all the room for the road trip.) Originally, I thought we would have an alcohol free trip, then I realised that both Boiboi and Alice can drink a lot. Might change the plan.

I think I have put on some weight recently. Not much badminton and too much food. Hopefully, I can play a lot baddie tonight. (got to play doubles or singles – I have given up the idea of running around in mixed.)

Cooked yesterday night. I used up all the stuff in the fridge, that means I have nothing left in the fridge other than cokes (which Zel bought some yesterday.) I took a lunch box today, but for some reason, I really want to try KFC ‘lunch break’ pack. Should I go for unhealthy (my own lunch box) or unhealthier (KFC)? Or both (don’t really think I can finish off both).

For some reason, I forgot to make any new year resolutions. (well, it doesn’t mean my NY resolutions work. But at least, I tried to come up with something I would like to do / improve in the past. And now I am just being so lazy to even think about it.) ok, my NY resolutions are:

- cooking more and cooking better (got a cook book, a blender, a steamer and the stuff for making sushi as xmas gifts. That probably means people would like to see me cooking a bit more / better. ) Commitment – learn one dish per month.
- Books reading – one book per quarter (haven’t read anything recently, spent too much time on the computer games.)
- Going to Gym once a week (from Feb, don’t think I am really in the exercise mood in Jan)
- Complete one more CPA subject, back to study, a big sigh!!!

Stupid computer programs

2005-12-14T14:17:00.000-08:00

Got problem with the game itself, the program does not pass the initial conversation among characters in stage 24. No matter what I do, it just comes out the program. It is the first time I passed the stage 23 and my team is quite strong. Only 6 more stages to go to see the end (including three secret stages). I will bring my laptop tonight so Shet Li can have a look and she might be able to fix it for me (I hope). She can read chinese!! (bonus)

I have submitted a higher duties payment request. For some reason, I suddenly have management function which means I will need to approve my own request. The funny thing is I can’t find the option to approve it. I can see there is a request for me to approve (which is my own request) and there is no button to press to actually approve it. Another funny thing is the sick leave I submitted on the same day does not appear on my approval list. Don’t know who got my request. SAP is just so confusing. We have tried so many times to sort out a few issues before, but it never fixed. David is leaving this Friday, he won’t really care anyway. But if I want to get paid on next Friday (pay date has been brought forward due to Xmas), the request has to be approved by Wed next week.

I have also requested to do an advanced credit training which was approved yesterday. For some reason, the system generated a letter to me for approval before I can start the training. Why it has to be approved twice?? Taking about the training program, I spent two hours (a bit less than that) to figure out what training programs I need to do. For some reason, they changed my role / title, I suddenly have heaps training to do. At the same time, the bank is in the process to update our training records. We are required to mark off the training which have been completed in the past (Statutory Declaration required?!) Because I have some training listed which does not relate to my current role, my list was really messy at the end. Crossed out the training I have completed prior the system introduced mid this year (not hard), highlighted in pink for the training does not relate to my role (took a while), highlighted in orange for the training I need to do in future, highlighted in yellow for the training I completed in the system but for some reason, the expiry date has not extended. Some of the training have expiry date which means we are supposed to renew / re-complete the training before the expiry date. In that case, we only need to do a short version of the assessment (probably 10 – 15 questions). If we do it after the expiry date, a full version of the assessment needs to be completed (about 30 – 50 questions.) I hate doing training. The program is just toooooo slow and it normally stuffs up my computer after doing two or three assessments. I have to shut down the computer from time to time.

Robbie back to Aust yesterday and will be here for only two weeks. Went to Box Hill to meet him yesterday. He looks OK. Other friends told me that he just broke up with his fiance. But at least he looks fine now. It was a rush decision when he proposed to her early this year. It surprised most of people at the time. Well, hope everything will get better for him.

Should have bought my laptop in today!!

2005-12-08T22:19:00.000-08:00

I should have known by now that people tend to finish work around 4:30 on Fridays. I should have taken my laptop into the office today so I can play a hour game before Zel picked me up. It is only five o’clock, I got to find something (other than work) to do. Blogging is one of the options. (I have surfed badminton news already. Another option has gone.) I have also tried to start on-line training at work (work related. We need to complete certain role based training). I have done most role based training. However, due to a system upgrade mid this year, all the historical data has lost in the transition which means I have to do it again.

It is not much problem to do it again other than the computer is really really slow!!! I have about 60 – 70 modules to go through. Every module takes about 3 – 5 minutes to get to the main page. Not to mention the actual time needed to access the reading materials and the assessments. To make it worse, once I have accessed more than two modules, my computer becomes really slow (eg, takes about 3 mins to create a blank word document.) The easy solution is to close all the program and re-start the computer which I did three times in the last hour.

I really don’t mind training / self-learning as long as it is easy access and user friendly. I probably forgot to mention that to get into each training program, I had to go through at least 5 different steps. Plus, most of the training require 100% to pass?!

Green curry chicken with coconut juice

2005-12-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

I meant to buy coconut milk to cook Thai curry chicken. Unfortunately, for some reason, I bought coconut juice!! Thought about putting some milk (so at least, I got milk with coconut flavour – means coconut milk) However, I only had soy milk in the fridge. To make the thing worse, I had the soy milk for a while (probably a bit more than one and half month). To be cautious, I gave up the idea of making our own coconut milk.

Didn’t buy other stuff for dinner. So we had to stick to Thai curry chicken (just change it to coconut juice curry chicken) The juice was a bit too sweet. The whole dish tasted a bit strange. (so I let Zel had most of it. And he is still surviving.)

We played CBA at girls grammar school yesterday. As we got two courts to play at the same time, we finished the games before 9:30. Got home around 10:00, the earliest ever, I decided to play my game. I complained to Zel about I couldn’t put the secret code to get into the special shop as some of the codes were required small number keyboard and my laptop does not have one. Then Zel pointed out that I actually can use my laptop to key in those number code!! But I have passed the stages already (unless I start it all over again which I will probably be doing around Xmas). Anyway, I was so into the game, kept playing until two o’clock this morning. I thought about getting a sick leave today so I could finish off the game (for the first time, then come back again whenever I want to). But the bad experience about being away from the office and spending the next two days fixing up mistakes / getting extra stress stopped me. I eventually put my work ahead of my computer games. (high work ethic.)

Share price dropped again. We allocated $500 worth of shares in late Nov at $33.23, and now, the price dropped to $31.4. nearly two dollars per share (how much lollies i can buy?!)

Flame Dragon Plus

2005-12-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

Mum and Dad are considering to come over early next year for a while. To invite them come over, I need to provide an invitation letter. As they don’t really speak and read English, I drafted the letter in Chinese. It was surprising to see how long it took me to complete the letter. I am quite used to English writing style, it is quite hard to adjust it back. I wanted to say – I would be free from Feb (but in Chinese, I would have to say – from feb, I would be free). I found that I sometimes translated from English to Chinese. The letter was quite messy, with lots of words crossed out and put back into different places in a sentence. My writing is so bad now. I can’t even write a few common characters. (I read lots of Chinese novels, download heaps to my laptop when I was in China, I can’t believe my Chinese is so bad now.) The worst thing is my English is not better than before. BTW, badminton skills are the same. What did I spend my time for?????

Got internet set up yesterday, finally!! Actually, I am not a heavy user. (probably don’t have much time to use it anyway.)

Internet is slow again. I’m playing the game named Flame Dragon Plus. Googled tips/ hints etc, but there is no strategy guide which is quite disappointed. I am also up to the state where I should be able to take a secret challenge and got a special weapon if I beat all the enemies within 25 turns which I did (finished in about 17 turns.) however, the secret challenge did not come up. (I can’t get the special weapon!! So disappointed as well. There are some secret codes to go to special shops which is selling very good stuff. However, some of the special codes can only be entered via the small numbers keyboard. My laptop does not have it. What a waste. I eventually got some tips, but I can’t use it!!

Another week and one and half days, the new manager will start. I can’t wait. (although I will get pretty good pay for the period being a reliever.) I think I had enough for a while. I got another two relieving opportunities lined up in late Dec to Jan. I am not really looking forward for the first one (late Dec to early Jan, nearly two weeks including public holiday.) That manager is terrible. He doesn’t really know what he is doing (but he always says he’d been with the bank for 37 years, being in this position for 15 years …….) I can image myself fixing up all the craps he left. Headache. I don’t have much thought on the opportunity in Jan. I had limited exposure for her portfolio. I don’t know most of her clients. It will be really hard. Just hope we can get someone sitting in the chair quickly enough (hopefully, no annual leave will be taken out straight after the appointment!)

PS. Anyone has english Version of the game ‘Flame Dragon Plus – Marks of the wind?’ or Flame Dragon Plus – the Golden Castle?

Surprise, surprise

2005-11-28T19:43:00.000-08:00

Had a few surprises today.

We had a meeting early this morning with the big boss announcing his resignation! Initially, I thought he was about to announce that his new baby was just born (who was due a week and half ago). I was so in shock. Apparently, he was sort of forced to leave current role because our performance was not as good as others. (we had a target of 12% lending growth last year. Half way through the year, the target was lift up to 20%. We have achieved 14.5% for the whole year). It wasn’t all his fault. We had a few staff issues (getting people not performing who were highly recommended by other business units?! Getting people from outside the bank who was a "star performer" previously?! Involuntarily promote someone who was just transferred from SA to Vic and his role became redundant 2 months after his appointment?! Quality people leaving the bank for other reasons, such as staying with his girlfriend in Thailand, or working in UK for two years, setting up business in China with his father, all the female managers get pregnant. Nothing he could do about that!!)

Historically, we never had a growth like that previously. We outperformed ourselves under those difficulties, but we still not good enough compared with our peers.

Just feeling really sorry to see him go. (another quality staff has resigned.)

In the meeting, I just realised that another manager who worked in this centre has been redundant due to his role being cut. He is a very nice person, very knowledgable, experienced, very fun to work with. I can’t believe we made him redundant. We are so short of experienced, knowledgeable and quality staff, but to cut our costs, we are getting rid of the people we need!! It is so short-term focused. People are becoming really selfish and short-term sighted. You might see an immediate financial improvement in a year or two (because cost reduction is quite easy to see), but as an organisation, we will suffer in a long run. Cutting our fundamentals to boost short term performance is not the right thing to do. If the bank is so blind at getting sales / short tem goals, we would lose our directions. For me, as long as you are doing the right things, the results will flow to you naturally. Just be patient and lying down good foundations, we will get to the top one day. It is just like - you might get what you want if you are taking advantage of others, but in a long run, you will be the one suffering (does not necessarily mean financially which is the one thing people are always looking at). On the contrary, being a nice person and generously caring / concerning about others will naturally make you rich (socially, emotionally, mentally etc.)

Too much negative for a day from me. Now there is something special / nice surprise for me today as well.

I got an early xmas & new year blessing. The customer sent a Xmas card with $100 gift card in it!! They just want to thank me for all my help in the past. I thought I was just doing my job but they think I am helping them a lot. It might be little things for me, but they were big things for the customer. I am so happy to be acknowledged by the client. They made my day.

PS. Is my English getting better? If not, Zel what have you been doing??

Dyeing clothes

2005-11-27T21:32:00.000-08:00

My clothes were dyed when I washed it with a dark colour shorts the other day, zel sort of laughed at me. Now it is his pay back time!! His clothes were dyed as well. The funny thing was he washed it with old shorts which did not drop colour before. That is probably called justice.

Had hotpot on Saturday. Pretty good. We had enough food (not too much, that means we do not need to eat hotpot for the rest of week!!), played lots of top-spin. I am not the weakest link anymore!! (would prefer to nominate Hendry for this title, but I don’t think he will appreciate that.) Sunday was a pretty relaxing day. Original plan was to go to the office and finish off a few urgent things. As Zel couldn’t play baddie and I did not think drive half hour to the office, doing a hour work and drive half hour back was a good idea. So I decided to stay at home and practised top-spin a bit more. Pretty enjoy a relaxing day like that. It would be better if I did not need to worry about work on Monday.

Driving to city without transit lane – like hell. It took me exact an hour drive from home to the office this morning. I was in the car 7:15 this morning and get to the office 8:15 (a bit more that). No more "sick leave"!!

Had a few busy weeks. But I will feel pretty relaxed after today as I finally got urgent stuff out of my way. (although other urgent stuff have come up, but at least I don’t need to worry about it for this week.) I have been chasing the tails for too long, there should be a better way to organise everything.

Internet is so slow!!

2005-11-23T23:06:00.000-08:00

We must have some networking problem today. The internet is so slow. I am not really in a mood to do anything right now, but internet surfing is a real pain. Only two more urgent things to get through by the end of this week (as i am assuming I come to the office to do some overtime work.)

I did a quite stupid thing on Monday. I was supposed to input my timesheet for Saturday to claim overtime pay. I accidentally chose the wrong day (which was Monday’s date). Well, I ended up working only 2 and half hours on Monday. Not sure whether they will actually deduct money from my pay as I was supposed to work 8 hours on Monday. The funny thing is the manager who approved it (I don’t even know who he is) did not bother to check / look. I will see what happens next Wed (pay day). But then the bonus will be paid on the same day, how could I tell?? A lesson for me. Do the thing right first time. (but I had so many lessons due to my carelessness, I still haven’t learned yet.)

Had lunch with Boiboi (first lunch this week. I was too busy to get lunch over the last three days). Why I always feel the food in other’s plate is always better than my own??
Hotpot this weekend, a good way to force me do some shopping.

Plan A:
Zel shopping, chopping down the grass / mowing the lawn, cleaning the room, preparing the food with little help from me.

Plan B
Zel doing all the above and me eating, sleeping, top-spin, computer games.

Personally, I like the plan B better.

Car sickness

2005-11-21T23:05:00.000-08:00

Being out of the office most of the day which is something I really enjoy now. Talking to the customers, knowing their stories, I always found myself inspired by them from time to time. Also being able to out of office means I will have a small break.

However, being in the same car with the new manager is not really something I enjoy. He drives so fast which made me sick. I thought he was driving 80 km on 60km roads. (at least I felt that way.) He accelerates the car in such a short time. I got a headache now. How am I going to survive? I miss my previous manager, although most people say he got an old lady driving style.
Went to Dandenong and Laverton North. 120km in a day!! (but I drove to Tarragon last time which was about 160km one way, well, I did not drive back, so it does not count. I did not feel anything. I must have much better driving skills than him. By the way, he was almost scratched his car at downstairs car park.)

I am not really in a mood to do any work now given I have a headache now. But there are just too much to do. Documents to be delivered to the clients tomorrow (ih, arranging documents sign up tomorrow (I haven’t got documents yet). Two urgent submissions and documentations by Friday.

Don’t want to think about work too much. Will enjoy badminton tonight.

Workaholic without a choice

2005-11-20T17:09:00.000-08:00

Started working 8:00 on a Sunday night and ended up 2:00 in the following morning with about 1 hour and half rest in between.

I was sort of enjoying my work at the end of yesterday. Wouldn’t mind keeping working on the files other than the fact that I need to come to work early in the morning.

Supposed to have a performance "conversation" today. Well, I was handed an envelop this morning with my appraisal. Not really a conversation. But I did not have spare time for those crap things (I got what I expected, that’s probably why we did not need a conversation.) I am now also enjoying being a relieving manager (if I can get proper support). Visiting clients is really an enjoyable thing to do. However, when you don’t have proper support and trying to do all the stuff yourself, it is not much fun. I am just hoping to get through all the urgent stuff this week and I will have sort of relaxing coming weeks. (at least 5 urgent things on my list and another 5 – 10 things will become urgent by the end of next week). Will survive.

Just tried to inspire myself and said "come on, concentrate", then I bumped my elbow to the edge of the desk. (it hurt!!!) well, it took all my concentration away, at least for a while. Does it imply that I am not supposed to concentrate on my work?

I am supposed to go into a training course whole day today, but I am just too busy to do anything else. Unfortunately, I will have to stay at my desk. (the problem is that free lunch will be provided to the people going to the training.) I am asking to get a copy of the training materials and considering my absence is due to uncontrollable circumstance, I should be allowed to have the free lunch (well, I am going to grab it anyway) Getting away from work is something I really want to do at the moment. I will have two customers visits tomorrow which literally will take the full day (considering the first visit is somewhere in Dandenong.) Just hoping the person who will be driving won’t drive too fast and I won’t get car sick.

No baddie this Saturday. Good and bad. Good thing is I can catch up with lots of things I have been slack of (at least I hope I can catch up) such as mowing the lawn (didn’t I delegated to Zel??), laundry, cleaning the house, play top-spin, fixing the buttons on my clothes (not sure whether I mentioned before, I am getting really fat now. Buttons on three my clothes dropped because it was too tight. Really got to get more exercises, or eat less, such as only one ice cream rather than two at the same time.), beating Hendry and Boiboi in top-spin (needs lots of practices.) Bad thing is I'm going to eat a lot without much exercises.

Had a few games against Boiboi last Friday. Unfortunately, I lost to him. I gave him crap characters, crap console and tried to get him play without his glasses / contact lens (wasn’t successful though). But the good thing is I actually won a few games, but overall, I lost to him 1 to 2. Will get better next time. (intensive training this week – but when I am going to have time to play?? Well, I guess I can arrange some time for important stuff.)

Scratched my car! :(

2005-11-17T22:34:00.000-08:00

Haven’t blogged for a while, it just shows how busy I was. (and probably how busy I will be until the new manager starts on 19th Dec.)

I start enjoying the relieving now. (if I can get rid of the urgent three files this weekend, I will enjoy more next week.) But i guess when i finally get my hands on, i will have to go back to my old position.

I scratched my car yesterday. When I told my colleagues, he was asking me whether it was my fault. I thought about it for a while, then I had to admit that it was my fault as I sort of bumped my car to a poll at the car park downstair. However, there were a few reasons attributed to that:

Firstly, I was wearing high heel shoes. Just back from a customer visit, too lazy to change to runners just for the drive. With high heel shoes on, I can’t control the petal properly, hard to feel it.

Secondly, I got a car spot downstair which was supposed to be empty when I drove in. Someone parked his car there. I was looking at the car (tried to see whose car was). So I wasn’t really paying attention on my car.

Thirdly, I haven’t been driving for a very long time!! i lost my skills (if i did have some)

In summary, another corner of my car was scratched. But overall, I still have 50% of the corners intact in 2 and half years. Based on the stats, the other two corners will be scratched in the next 2 and half year which means after having this car for five years, it is time for a new car. (I won’t put up a poll, yet)

Addicted to Top-spin

2005-11-08T19:20:00.000-08:00

Played top-spin yesterday after getting back home from baddie. Had a shower and I thought I could play Top-spin while my hair was wet. Started playing from 11:00 and finished at 3:30 this morning (only because I knew Zel was going to drive me to work and I could get extra sleep on the way to work.)

I am so addicted to the game. I got five star backhand, four star forehand and one star serve (supposed to improve to at least 3 star, but I just can’t get through the second level. Can’t control the power and the angle at the same time. Well, two options. One is, keep trying. Another is, zel passes it for me. (I might take the soft option.) I am now ranked at no 9. (although I still haven’t figured out how to serve properly and I am still not good at directing shots – sometimes I think I am hitting to the left, but in reality it hits to the right, especially when I am running around / in a hurry, not much time to think about the direction.)

It was so funny yesterday night. I was playing Top-spin in one room and Zel was playing some fighting game in another room. You could hear one room sounded like ‘hee, ha, oop, sh***t’. the other room sounded like "stupid, wrong side, hold the button early, change the direction, sh***t"
Talking about top-spin the whole time over the lunch break. Can’t stop it. I have also been advised another game called "tony Hawk ???", some sort of skate boarding game. I might be able to borrow it if we don’t have it at home. But I guess, top-spin will keep me busy for a while, considering I can start another career if I want (I will have a better looking character and betting outfit or different skill training etc – so excited.)

I really want to go home now. We finish off today around 4:30 / 5:00. Will it take me an hour and half to get home by public transport? But I do have lots of stuff to do.

The internet is really slow. Googled top-spin, trying to find some cheats.

back to work, sigh!!

2005-11-01T18:53:00.000-08:00

No time to blog a lot now. There are so many things I need to do, I am struggling to find time to do all. I might come to the office this weekend after helping Xue moving as there will not be any badminton at uni. Hopefully, I can catch up a few things.

One good thing about having a housemate is I can now fall asleep on the way to work. Always struggle to get up in the morning and have to drive to work when I am still half asleep.
It is so good to have one more day off during the week, it makes the week shorter. Spending too much time watching movies yesterday, my eyes hurt.

I will have to take a file back to home today, the customer is coming in tomorrow morning and I will have to run the meeting. (one of the reasons not to turn up at Gym tonight).

The fourth cup of coffee during the day. Don’t know how many more I need to get through the day. I don’t like the things I am doing now. I don’t want to be a manager like this. One of the benefits to relieve the manager is I can park my car underground which I don’t need it now anyway. Can’t wait for the new manager get appointed. Hopefully, it does not take very long. The big boss tends to take very long to make a decision. (four weeks period is considered normal.)

the day before Mel cup day.

2005-10-30T15:33:00.000-08:00

Got up a bit late, came out at 7:35. but when I drove on Eastern Freeway, in a split second I though today was Sunday (or might be the holiday). Not many cars on the road. It takes only 12 mins to get into city. Then I thought people might have forgotten to adjust the time.

When I parked my car at the office (as I am relieving my manager until someone takes over, one of the benefits is I can park the car downstairs – well, it does not matter any more), there was only two other cars! It makes me feel really awkward. (I turned up on a RDO and only realised after lunch time when my friend called me asking where I was.)

Called home yesterday and told my parents that I might not be able to get home for the Chinese New Year as I might need to relieve another manager who will take maternity leave from Jan (I thought about 2 weeks annual leave from 23rd Jan). Mum was quite OK, but dad was really disappointed. Feel really sorry about that. I shouldn’t have told them I might go back. The more expectation, the more disappointment if I cannot make it.

Can’t wait for people finish their exams. There are so many things we can do when they got time. Would like to organise strawberry / cherry picking around Mornington Peninsular. Cherry and Strawberry are my favourite fruit (well, other favourites are water melon, mango – can’t think of others at the moment, but I guess I eat most of fruits, feel free to try me out.) The best thing about fruit picking is that I can eat heaps in the farm and bring back heaps. I remember I ate 2 kilo strawberry within an hour and half. And I got rashes the next few days, so I had to get a few days off from Uni (which I though was pretty good to get away from study although I had to catch up when I recovered.) My lesson is - I can’t eat that much in such a short period of time. (one kilo should be the maximum.) I haven’t done cherry picking yet. (we organised last year, but a few people pulled out at the end and I didn’t want to go with just one person who I don’t enjoy being with anyway.)

Got the work mobile. It is the very old Nokia phone (could potentially be used as a self-defence weapon). It is surprise to see it is still working. (It just demonstrates that Nokia has very good quality.)

Sorry guys, I have to turn on the word verification. Too many spam.

time to go home

2005-10-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

Being a such nice person, my manager treated me lunch today. Well, he is leaving the NAB this Friday and joins an investment bank and we are going along very well. We have so much fun together. Really sorry to see him go. But it is a very good opportunity. I am so happy for him to do something different and take the challenges. Now I need to find someone else to abuse at the office.

As we need at least 4 weeks to find someone replace him, I will be doing his job. I am feeling really unsettled. Lots of pressure to do his job considering I will have to do all his work without an assistant.

Although he is always trying to be the top one on my personality ladder, (and always ranking behind another colleague who has gone to British for his career.), he is no doubt a very nice person with great potential. We had so many meaningful conversations in the past, even reach our private lives. He also corrected my writing from time to time. I will miss him a lot. (probably miss the lifts he gave me, fresh juice he bought me more than anything else.)

Met his fiancee last time, a very nice girl who looks like the perfect match for him. So glad everything is working well for him. Always believe nice people deserve a good life. (As to what define as ‘good’, it is open to personal interpretation.) I bought a nice gift in China this time for his wedding in May. But as I took so many other things with me, I run out of room for it (it packed in a quite big box.) I thought I might go back to China for the Chinese new year, alternatively, mum and dad might come over before his wedding. I put the gift away. It is always the case. So if you have your chance, take it. Don’t think you can come back later. Who knows what will change the situation. So if you don’t want to be regretting in future, just do what you want to do now (as long as you can bear the consequence). It is better than not doing anything and just dreaming / wondering about it.

The system just crashed. Got to restart the program again. Doesn’t look promising. I might have to leave it for tomorrow.

i am back

2005-10-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

Back from holiday, the first thing I was doing at work was reading all my emails, hundreds of emails to read. It was terrible. I deleted some of the emails without reading the details. More than half of the day has gone.

We realised that we might have some technical problem. When people sent an email to me when I was on leave, the system supposed to generate a note saying I am on leave, and emails need to be forwarded to another person. However, it does not work properly. It works sometimes but it missed a few times. The problem is we don’t know who were missed. We will have to spend sometime tomorrow to sort it out.

I can’t remember my password to log into the system. We have so many user ids and passwords which change every month (should be four weeks exactly.) I had to ring technology support centre to re-set my password. Don’t understand why we need different user names and passwords for different programs. It is just so confusing.

Air con is not working properly. I felt so hot here which made me really sleepy. Checked my annual leave, I was so surprised to know that I got 4 days accumulated, almost three days more than the time I went on leave. Don’t know how it works. (does it mean the more I take as annual leave, the more annual leave I will have????) I might have made mistake here. I am thinking about taking another two weeks off over the chinese new year.

for Alice

2005-10-04T03:21:00.000-07:00

Alice,
i don't have your email address with me. don't worry about dong's contact as i am leaving this weekend, probably saturday. i don't think i will have time to meet him. don't worry, will try next time.

my personal email address is shijing.xu@gmail.com you can send me an email. could you also please ask Andrew to send me an email? i might need him to pick me up when i come back on 17th oct, depending on whether xue is able to pick me up or not. (i also got the mtv for the song he wants to learn - fairytale. if i can have his email address, i might be able to send it to him via email.)

heard about your good AUG result. well done. keep the good work. and enjoy yourself. (catch up when i come back.)

i can't blog!!

2005-09-27T04:25:00.000-07:00

it sucks. I can't view any blog sites when i am in china, other than write a few lines myself (but i still can't view it after adding anything.) Apparently, the chinese government blocked a few sites and blog is one of them.

I wrote something last time, and for some reason, the computer restarted itself. i've lost everything. i don't know whether the computer becomes normal or not. it is just so inconvenient.

a friend is fixing my laptop tomorrow and his solution is to reformat my c drive. hopefully, it will fix all the problems. i still haven't figure out how to back up a few things i want in my laptop just in case he formats everything.

a few dinners have been scheduled. i need to control myself a little bit. i can't fit in my old cloth at home, and i am buying size medium in china (with most of girls at my height buying small. ) The shop assistants always try to put it in a nice way - the manufacturers tend to produce the size slightly smaller than normal.

before the computer shuts down itself, i'd better save this.

singapore airport

2005-09-23T16:57:00.000-07:00

I'm at singapore airport, using their free internet services. The only problem is the free service is limited by 15 mins per session. whatever i want to say, have to finish in time. it is probably a typing test for me.

Didn't eat anything on the plane which decieve the purpose of taking singapore airline given the reason of choosing it was for food. before taking the next plane, i got about a hour and half free time. Went to a cafe suggested by my colleague. it is so cheap. the laska is only $2.42 aust dollars. although they don't take anything under $1, $3 for a meal at an airport is really cheap. i remember it costs about $10 for a cup of coffee at beijing international airport, huge profit.

quite excited about the seeing family again. hope dad has organised a badminton game for me already. don't mind having some exercises. Alice, are you able to pass me the contact details for DongJiong? really want to go there have a look. hopefully, i can get some free badminton coaching as well. (particularly on how to hit other people. been hit too many times, wish i had my chance to revenge.)

Although i haven't met my family yet, i started missing lots of things about melb. Basket ball today (why your guys organised a basketball today, the day i just left melb?), playing xbox (although i am not a good player), cards, badminton (with zel covering me all the time), hitting people and hotpot...... there are so much i enjoyed a lot (other than hitting people, which is my self defense.)

only three mins left, can't risk not being able to save it. might write more the next session.

PS. there must be lots of errors (either spelling or grammar), don't have time to read it and reword it given the limited time.

holiday is around the corner

2005-09-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

I am really excited about my holiday ahead. Hopefully, I won’t have that many accidents as last time.

I have a list of "things to do" in China, including lots of shopping (mainly for badminton) I can imagine my luggage will be overweight again. I might try to ship lots of stuff back to Aust. Will blog a bit more when I am there (if my laptop is fixed or the desktop at home is fixed. I will have to go to internet café to blog otherwise.)

For some reason, Internet café is quite common in China. Most of people are using it to play online computer games (which is not type of the games I enjoy given that I can only beat stupid computer and always lose when my opponent is a real person.) Another thing I don’t like about the Internet café is that most of people smoke in the room which is very squeeze already. Can’t stand for smoking.

Talking about smoking, apparently, there is a new product in China. People can use the product as a substitute for cigarettes. It looks like cigarettes. You "light it up" with an electronic ignition, smoke as normal. The product "tastes" like a real cigarette as well. When you have enough, you can just turn off the button (some sort of button). You can use it the next time. One artificial cigarette can sustain for more than 5 days. My dad smokes 1 pack in two days. He only needs maximum two artificial cigarettes in a week. Pretty cool.

environment protection

2005-09-20T01:14:00.000-07:00

Why should we keep all the paper work and make customer files? I was putting a customer file on top of the file compartment. I have to admit that it is a bit high for me. I was stretching to reach it without getting a stroll. However, I did not expect all the paper work fell out of the customer file and landed on my head!! It was painful (after being hit on my head twice yesterday.) I strongly recommend paperless environment. It protects environment, uses less resources (such as less toner, less time in printing etc.) It also reduces occupation health and safety issues.

I can’t find the itinerary. I chose to have an e-ticket (which save about $30), but if I can’t locate itinerary, how can I find out when I’m departing from china? (some time on 17th Oct).

On Diet

2005-09-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

I was sort of on diet today. I had to pick up a watch and buy some cable / adaptor to connect my old monitor and the new comp box over the lunch break. It took longer time than I expected. By the time I got back to the office, we were about to leave for a customer visit. I just did not have time for lunch. It was almost 4:30 when we came back. I am really starving. I feel a bit better after a coke considering I only had two pieces of cake this morning (as today is someone’s birthday). I guess it probably is a very good way to be on a diet if I can make myself really busy.
By the way, I don’t think I had dinner yesterday other than a muesli bar before I started playing badminton. That’s probably two days’ dieting.

The cooking books I bought online (quite big discount) was delivered yesterday. One book titled ‘main meals in 30 mins’ (something along the line). One of the meals is actually instant noodles. I don’t think I need a cooking book for that. That’s the food I cook most of the time!! Other books look good (at least the pictures look good.) I actually got a soft copy of Jamie Oliver. But I don’t think my level has advanced to that stage yet. (I am currently at the stage of recognising all the cooking materials. Made some notes which transferred English to Chinese (Although it does not help me to understand at all, reading Chinese makes me feel better than reading English.)

a new computer

2005-09-12T03:30:00.000-07:00

Quite excited about getting a new desktop tomorrow. The two things I remember are a 400G hard drive and a DVD burner. How many movies / Korean series I can put on my hard drive?? I can start collecting some movies now. (and put in a nice way for the purpose of improving my English.) Now i need to get it connected with my scanner, printer and most importantly the monitor. i should be right (i think at least.)

Had enough for today, I’m going home now. The cleaner is here, should I still turn on the alarm as normal, or should I just leave without doing anything? Never happened before. Anyway, if the alarm went off, it would be his problem, not mine. (I have got enough accidents with my name probably on a blacklist. It is a good time to share the bad reputation.)

holiday planning

2005-09-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

I called a friend yesterday to fix a time to meet up when I am in China. We haven’t spoken to each other for a very long time (probably 3 years.) It is really good to catch up again. We kept talking until his battery died. Caught up with another friend, he offered free drinks, but the problem is I don’t drink (or at least not drink as much as I eat. I only had a lunch with him at KFC last time. He thought I ate a lot. But he does not realise how small the serve is in China!!! ). Hoping to get to attend a few weddings (with lots of free foods), but I’ve only got one confirmed wedding so far. Looks like I am going to have a very good holiday. (Just hoping I won’t put that much weights on as I did last time. Or should I be on diet so I can have some room when I am in China?)

Called mum yesterday talking about my plan over the holiday. Mum was asking about how much I wanted to spend. I gave her my typical answer – just the air ticket. One good thing about being overseas is that I will be the most wanted person in my family, among my friends and everybody is buying me something. (and they know what to buy most of the time.)

Things I want to do in China

Shopping (mainly for badminton although I got 7 or 8 racquets already.)
Buying dvds (I love Korean series, will buy heaps when I come back. Alice, don’t worry, I will buy the ones with happy endings.)
Fix my stupid laptop
Eat a lot
Catch up with friends.
Buy a portable hard drive (so I can copy the movies/series on it.)
Play lots of badminton

I might need to buy a dress. I don’t want to turn up at friend’s wedding with jeans again. (well, I turned up at my graduation ceremony with jeans and runners. But if I’m wearing a dress, then I have to wear those high heel shoes which means I have more chances of twisting my ankles (I twisted my ankles many times when I was wearing runners.)

I want my holiday now!

2005-09-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

Flat out recently, I feel I am overdrawing my energies at the moment. I’m going back in two week time and having good time over there (considering I don’t need to pay anything other than the air tickets). Does it mean I need to suffer a bit before I can enjoy myself?

Just received a report on the English program. It summarised the findings and improvements over the term and also provides some recommendation for further improvement. I had a brief discussion with my boss. We have also discussed briefly about my next move over the conversation. He is going to ring the Head of MCG (Major Client Group, not Melbourne Cricket Ground) next week and recommending me for an H level position (the entry level as a manager). I did not expect anything like that. I was quite happy if he could promise to release me when an opportunity comes up. Recommending me and making personal phone call is something beyond normal. (Did I do something wrong which led him wanting to get rid of me ASAP? I don’t think I broke anything recently, other than the alarm twice. I had a few his fresh fruits as well. Surely, those things do not count.)

Although I am quite excited about it, it will have some negative impact on our team. One of the managers is pregnant who is going to take annual leave and maternity leave late Dec or early Jan next year. The other team member was recently appointed to the role (in late April), his learning curve is a bit slow. He still needs to learn lots of technical and analytical stuff. Another manager in the team is an old style banker, knows little about operational aspects and little about technology / system. If I am leaving, the team will be really struggling. It will be really bad from the customers’ point of view.

In addition, the whole BBC is trying to recruit some staff for people who is either pregnant or moved / moving on. Three female managers are pregnant, two male managers’ wives are pregnant (so they will take parental leave for at least 2 weeks each. That means we need someone relieve them for at least 2 weeks). Two of the positions are still open for application. One is quite urgent given that she is leaving in two week time. It normally takes about 4 – 6 weeks to get someone sitting in the chair. Three people have moved on (not to include expected moving on). We have got all the position replaced. However, it will take a few weeks for all of them actually start. One people resigned, leaving in two week time as well, another one might move to another centre. I don’t want to create more problems when the whole centre is struggling to get staff. It seems pretty hard to find quality candidates these days. One of the managers complaint to me that the bank is paying $50K for a Financial Analyst who don’t even know how to read financials.

The good thing is we will have a few farewell lunches. (It would be better if the company pays for it.)

Summary for how to get a promotion:
Get all your female colleagues pregnant (comes from an evil person. Feel free to guess who said that)
Stuff up big times, the only way to get rid of you is to provide a promotion (due to strong Union power, it is just too much trouble to sack someone who is working in a bank / big corporation.)

PS. It is the first time I wrote something more than 600 words (601 words excluding the PS.)

A relaxing day

2005-09-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

We are required to complete certain things today as the whole district. As a compromise, the banking centre provided free lunch, free drink, a table tennis competition with a prize to be announced (we haven’t started the comp yet. It is scheduled at 4:00pm.) So today is quite relaxing day for us which is exactly what I need after doing overtime work two days in a row.

Talking about food, my stock level is running low. It is only about half of the draw left. Need to buy some fresh fruits, fruit & nuts bars, got to buy yogurt & soy milk, breakfast cereals as well next week.

Stupid Me

2005-09-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

Went home yesterday and started working from 11:00pm after having dinner and calling back home. It took me about two hours to complete one report and I decided to start the second one as the two reports relate to each other. Worked until 2:30 in the morning, I could not stay any longer. Saved the file into the disc and hoped to complete the second report today as it is quite urgent. However, I saved wrong file into the disc for the second report!! Lost a hour and half work, got to start it again. What a pain!!

Taking about dinner yesterday, I’ve decided to cook at least twice a week. My first attempt wasn’t that successful. I poured hot water to my fingers which hurts a bit, burnt the cloth when I tried to clean up the mess for the spoilt soup with the stove still on. The pasta sauce was a bit dry. I’m going to buy some cooking books (but honestly, I don’t think I have any potential.) It is such an easy thing to mess up. (I had a situation where I set up a fire in a chemistry lab – don’t understand how.) Heard about a theory that if your parents are good at cooking, you don’t normally know how to cook. But if your parents are pretty bad at cooking, generally the kids are pretty good. Why the situation is completely different in my case? My grandparents were not good at it at all, mum is even worse and myself (hm… no comments, but I might be able to improve after a few self injury.)

Accident Register

2005-09-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

I started an accident register last year just want to see how frequently accidents happens around me. Original thought was at the end of one year, i could do some statistics to show which month i have higher frequence. therefore, i could be more careful during that particular month. However, the register only last for a month or two. It was quite interesting to look it back (as i haven't really read it for a very long time, forgot all about it.). Most of stuff was like bumping my head / arms/ legs etc to walls, car windows .... or my racquet hit myself, or lost keys etc. nothing significant. should i keep it running?

What life would be without electricity?

2005-08-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

Due to the storm, the electricity was cut off around my home area. The whole street was dark. I decided to clean the home yesterday rather than go to gym instead. Just about to change the bed sheet etc, the electricity was cut off. I could only use my phone to light it up. Without electricity, I didn’t know what I could do. Found my laptop in the dark after bumping myself to the bed and walls a few times, I managed to step on my laptop (hopefully, I am not that heavy for my fragile computer. I don’t like my mobile, the light is not bright enough and it goes off after a min also, not long enough.)

When I turned on my laptop, it only has 20 also mins left (most of time, I have the laptop recharged fully. And it is the only few times I’ve got it fully recharged.) After 20 mins, laptop was gone. Had to relied on my mobile light. I knew I had some candles, but I just couldn’t remember where did I put it. I don’t think it was a good idea to look through in dark considering my clumsiness. Another unfortunate thing was that my car was locked inside the garage, without electricity, I can’t use the remote control to get my car out which stopped me buying a candle from a supermarket. (I was a bit worried about not being able to get my car out this morning. Absolute no idea on how to get to work without driving.) Had to continue rely on the tiny mobile until it about to die. Eventually, I managed to get the candle from bathroom (which I forgot all about it.) The next problem was to find a match. (my stove does not need matches to turn it on.) it took me a few minutes to get the matches.

The good thing was my DV was fully charged. I watched a few games we recorded over the weekend. That kept me accompanied. Half hour later (might be longer than that), I though I needed to take the charger upstairs, guess what, when I went to downstairs, the light was on. (don’t know when the electricity was back.)

Without electricity, what we can do? No t/v, radio, computer, dv, mobile, fridge etc. It must be very hard for blind people to cope with it, especially for people who could see those things and for some reason became blind at a later stage. I feel so lucky that I am really healthy and can enjoy lots of things.

My eating reputation

2005-08-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

Arranged a customer visit, together with lunch, with a customer. My manager is going to take me with him. On the email he sent to the client which also forwarded to me, he wrote the following line:

"I will be bringing Kitty with me on Friday as well. I'm happy to have NAB pay for lunch given Kitty eats heaps!"

Absolutely no idea on how he get that impression!! It just demonstrates that bad news travels widely. My spoiled reputation!! My resolution – not to eat too much.

No CBA this week. I don’t know what I am going to do, probably try to make copy of those DVs we took over the tournament.

Felt really tired

2005-08-23T17:30:00.000-07:00

I am going to have an extreme busy month before I am going on holiday. A new structure has been put in place to enable the other team member learn at a comfortable pace. The end result is I’m taking two thirds of the overall workload (or might be more). I feel the pressure immediately.

A friend has come to Australia. I will have dinner with her on Friday and take her to my home. As the Melb Uni open is on this weekend, I probably can’t spend too much time with her. But I’m going back to attend her wedding in a month time. It is a bonus to meet her now. She sounds very happy over the phone. Can’t wait to meet her.

That’s probably the reason for not blogging for a while (or not writing much.)

Farewell party

2005-08-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

A colleague has been promoted and today is his last day. A farewell function will be held at the office with some free drinks and snacks provided. On top of the farewell presentation, we had a big team lunch with the person, challenging my eating habits. Sigh.

With all the managers at a long lunch, we started throwing balls around the office. I almost hit the ‘Exit’ sign. I also need to make sure no one is breaking the sign. It would become my fault otherwise as I have the record of breaking two (or might be three) Exit signs over the last two years. It is just so unfair that people always think about me when there is something broken. (I only broke two draws, two / three exit signs, one chair and one computer and it was not my fault when the alarm system went off last time.)

Ooch, I hurt my wrist by hitting someone. I thought I was practising body combat technics, but apparently, it is not working properly.

Things to do this weekend:
tax return
clean up rooms
laundry
english study
books reading (library books due in a week time.)
gym appointment on Sunday morning and going to gym on Sat & Sun
grocery shopping (only vege and fruits, or might be fish)
teaching Chinese

Things I would like to do:
play lots of badminton
watch DVDs / badminton games (wish could down load the world championship from the web)
eating junk foods (chips, KFCs.)
playing computer games

What a difference between things I need to do and things I would like to do! It is called reality check. I will end up somewhere in between.

Time for farewell party, although the person is still at "lunch". Hasn’t come back from 12:00 lunch (must be very drunk.)

no title - run out of topics

2005-08-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

I had a dream about playing badminton. The funny thing is when I got up, I felt my body is a bit sore, especially my back and abdomen.

The challenge of going to gym is not to eat McDonald on the way back. Two days in a row!! (but I chose the least fat food – Fillet O Fish meal. And only had one meal, no ice cream or chicken nuggets.)

Went to a long meeting in city and fell asleep during the meeting a few times (lucky, it was in a hotel conference room with more than 100 people there.) I thought I did a pretty good job, pretending taking notes with a pen in my hand. I also thought that although I closed my eyes, I still heard all the information. But when I sort of woke up, the pen wasn’t in my hand any more. The person sitting next to me literally kicked me twice just to wake me up. (a really violent girl!!)

the conference supposed to provide some light lunch. (i was really excited about that. ) however, the meeting went on and on and on, by the time we finished, it gave us only a few mintues to get back to the office as one of the colleagues (who kicked me) had an appointment with her customer. We rushed out. I only managed to grab a few sandwiches (without any drink).

body combat

2005-08-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

I had a body combat class yesterday evening at gym. It was not what I’d expected. I knew we could only punch to air, but I did not expect to keep doing it for 45 minutes with only a few seconds break between music. It is just like you keep punching somebody for 45 minutes, non stop!! I’m so gone at the end of class. It is lot of hard work to punch somebody for that long!!

I got sore arms, legs, back ….. It is not like my body any more. But it was fun, jumping, kicking, punching for that long is quite good exercise.

Did some running as well. Set the speed at 5K per hour (about burning 130 calories per hour). Run for 10 minutes, not really burning any fat. (who said running is better than cycling?)

busy day

2005-08-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

A few people are sick today. One is from our team which means I need to do extra work to cover him when he is away. Another bad news is he will probably not be in tomorrow as well. The funny thing is he sent an email to me this morning and asked me when my holiday will be just to avoid taking annual leave at the same time. (internet surfing when you are sick might be the new medicine.) I feel liking being asked to do so many things at the same time for different people. Looks like most of the stuff can’t be wait as everybody thinks they are more important than others.

Well, I had a pretty relaxing day yesterday, it is probably the pay back time for me.
The general manager is also visiting us this afternoon (I did not bother to read the emails, although a few emails titled as important – must read!) Therefore, his visit is a bit surprise for me. We are supposed to ask a few questions to them. The good thing about the team structure is that someone else can cover you when you forgot something. (some people are really excited about the opportunity to meet the high up. )

Being extremely busy today. Most of my time spent on answering phone calls and customers’ enquiries.

The customer is missing some efpos deposits. Rang up Merchant department, they told the customer the money should be in my suspense account. Checked the account, nothing there. I rang up Merchant department, they asked me to lodge a trace with business enquiry line 13 10 12. Called the number, waited in a queue, talked to the service representative, he transferred me back to Merchant unit. Merchant says they can’t find anything. Business enquiry says they can’t find anything either. What am I going to do? It is so frustrated. If I am feeling so frustrated, it will be even worse for our customers. I can’t believe people can be so irresponsible. If you are missing $1K in your bank account, would you take the same attitude as you treat the customer? Treat people the way you want to be treated. (can’t remember who told me this, no reference quoting here.)

Too much compliant from me today is not good. Be positive - going to gym tonight. They got a body combat class at 7:00. Really excited about it, although I might not be able to do anything or punching something / somebody, it is good to start something I am really interested. (I am sure I will learn at least some technics which can be used on someone else – so people, be nice to me. I promise - you will get more bruises from me than diving on the court. I am open to bribe, free lunch, dinner, even muesli bar, lollies, ice creams will do – not really hard to satisfy.)

Hope mum is not reading this. Switching off my mobile today just in case she calls me. (I think the computer at home I broke down when I went back last year hasn’t been fixed yet. By the way, it was probably the third computer i broke down over a year time. computer virus for two, and phsyical damage for one. She should not have any chance to read this – it just demonstrates that breaking something is not always a bad thing to do. )

short lunch break

2005-08-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

Feeling a bit sick again today (a few people are not feeling well at the office.) I can’t go home today as I got the english study tonight and need to go to somewhere in city to help my colleague’s friend to lean chinese before he goes to overseas (for free! Not even dinner provided.) When I see him putting so much effort into it, I’d like to help him as much as possible. I spent most of my lunch break on blogging rather than eating (it might surprise a few people) as I agreed to help Alice over melb uni open weekend on the condition of free lunch provided. Got to be on a diet now, just to make some room for the lunch.

1:00 pm, back to work.

Half nice dream

2005-08-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

Ever had a situation when you just had a nice dream and then you woke up half way through? I woke up this morning around 5:15 and thought it was a bit early to get up. So I back to sleep again and had a lovely half dream about very nice foods. I was sort of in a restaurant kitchen. Fresh prawn dumplings and other nice dim sim were just ready to serve, I could even smell it. When I was just about to taste it, my alarm went off, it woke me up. I refused to get up and tried to go back to the dream again. It did not work. I layed down for a while and could not fall asleep again.

As I was a bit disappointed, I decided not to go to gym this morning.

Came to the office, the first thing I realised was I got a presentation to do this morning and I forgot all about that. Rushed myself to the desk, log on to my computer and found Alice sent email about helping out at Melb Uni Open with lunch provided. Spent two minutes to reply to secure my place and then got back to preparation of the presentation. It went on OK (considering I did not prepare it at all!!)

I still got four more weeks English private coaching left to complete the program. I am being really slack in terms of study. I gave up CFA early this year (as I forgot to turn up in the exam, although I wouldn't have had a chance to pass it anyway – 30% to 40% pass rate is a bit crazy, not turning up in an exam is something I never done before.) I’m lacking motivation to study at the moment (probably because I’m really excited about getting back to China in a month time.)

The pity thing is I can’t catch up with Steven this time. The last time I met him was three years ago when I came back to Aust and stopped in Malaysia for two weeks. Since then, we kept missing each other. Either he came to Aust when I was in China or he couldn’t make a trip to China this year. With my annual leave just turned to positive, I can’t really afford a trip to Malaysia (not considering the trouble of getting a visa if I’m still holding the Chinese passport.) When will be our next chance to catch up? I don’t think he is going to do his PHD in Aust. Promised to call him, but I don’t know what to say (either in Chinese or in English). We seem to be quite remote and disconnected these days.

happy thoughts

2005-08-12T15:10:00.000-07:00

Feeling really happy today about a few things:

Got a few free cookies from a colleague with a promise being nice to him for the rest of the day (although I’ve broken the promise a few times already)
Got a very good feedback from a customer who is extremely happy with me (I can’t even remember what I did for her.)
Quarterly performance conversation went on very well. (I mean no surprise for me. I know where I am at, and what they want from me.)
Got a friend to take care of my house, my car and my bills when I am away on holiday (no flat battery any more.)

I ordered a vegetarian dish today as lunch. It is too vegetarian, I had to grab some pork from Hendry.

Updated draw for Monash Open just came out today. Not in a very promising group, but it will be good experience and if I’m lucky, Zel will be scored a few times. As I am not skilful enough to score on him myself, sometimes, I need to rely on others. And Monash Open is a good way to let him suffer!! (if I can be quick enough to duck myself first!! But if he hits me at the back, there is no much chance for me to get away from it. I think for my own safety, I’d better be nice to him.)

Need discipline

2005-08-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

As I thought before, I did not turn up in gym yesterday and today’s morning. My gym exercise only lasted for two days!! Got to catch up, it is lots of money to pay for as a member. (should live there as well, just to save rent.)

Now Zel told me I should do running instead of cycling. I wasted two half hours on cycling (which probably the main exercises I did for the first two days) I really hate running. My best record is 4:05 for 800 metres (the maximum time to pass the test was 3 mins and 50 seconds.) I was never able to pass any running test, long distance, short distance, sprints. All my results were just a few seconds outside the pass mark.

Got an appointment with a personal trainer next week (as part of the new membership program), hope it helps me. Checked qualifications of the all personal trainer at Doncaster, none of them specialises in badminton. A bit disappointed with that.

For some reason, I have been eating a lot since I started doing exercise at gym (although only two or three days) With nearly half of the females in the office are pregnant, some people are joking about I am eating more than those people. (that’s only because they did not make much notice when others eating!! )

Big lunch and probably big dinner!

2005-08-09T17:45:00.000-07:00

I was invited to lunch by a customer. We went to a very nice Chinese Restaurant at Glen Waverley. As usual, I ate a lot with ice cream at the end, I could not really move. I suggested to have a look my home in Donvale as it is sort on the way back. When we were almost there, I realised that I forgot my keys. Well, at least I know where my keys were this time.

Back to the office around 4:00 pm, I could easily fall asleep. A team dinner is scheduled tonight in Moonee Ponds. Why it all happens at the same time? Can’t I just save it for another time? How much more hours I need to do to get rid of the excess fat I gain / will gain today? Why it is always temptation when I really want to change my eating habits? It is just so unfair.

Got to do some work before going to dinner.

My first attempt at a gym

2005-08-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

I got up at 5:50 this morning and got to the gym in Doncaster at 6:15. It is surprising to see so many people got up so early and doing all sorts of exercises over there. I did 25 minutes cycling (which burned 165 calories – (I could eat 1000 calories per meal!! Got to eat healthy considering how much hard work I need to do just to satisfy my tongue.) But it will be helpful as it can help me to build up stamina (Although I don’t really have to run in mixed doubles with guys covering me all the time, it would be nice to be able to play hard games without too much difficulty.)
The gym also provides body combat & body attacks. I am really interested in that. The only problem is you can only punch to air rather than really punching somebody or even a punching bag (a bit disappointed.)

Overall, I quite like gyms other than the hard work needs to be done to achieve my goals. I am hoping I can see some improvement after the six weeks program.

Got shot by Zel six times yesterday (he counted as six, I thought it was more than that, but I might miscounted as I got shot by other people a few times as well.) But I returned one of his smashes at the end. I am quite happy about that. I really enjoyed the games yesterday, had plenty of exercises, hit PJ twice (might be more) had lots of fun.

Don’t really understand why people sending me messages at 1:30 am!!! I woke up twice. It took me some time to fall asleep again.

PS. My annual leave back to positive – 0.03 hours!!!

Tax return

2005-08-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

I tried to complete my 05 personal tax return over the last two days. Went to a friend’s home as I don’t have internet access at the moment (my laptop has been affected by computer virus and hasn’t been fixed yet. It shuts down automatically every time it connects to internet. Pretty handy function when I am really, really lazy to close all the programs and to shut down the computer, although I prefer not to have this functionality.) I forgot to bring my NOA on the first night. Went back again yesterday, put the required information in as instructed, did not match ATO’s database. It kept showing an error message as ‘is not a valid date.’ I tried all the dates in that month, did not work either, tried different months, different years, did not work. A friend told me that it might be some bugs in the ATO database which required the data to be input in a certain format. Well, it is a drop-down box, it can’t be in different format (what did he talk about)!! Couldn’t figure out why. He suggested inputting the information again which might fix it. Tried again, did not work. He suggested submitting the paper work.

Back to home, tried to complete the paper work. Guess what, I couldn’t figure out how to calculate the deduction on my laptop which holds me up again. Solution is – going to my friend’s home again tonight and get the figure from the tax file. Meanwhile, I took all my past year NOAs from ATO. Hopefully, one of them will work.

I reckon ATO is trying to stop people claiming refund via E-tax by having those bugs in the database. If people owe money to ATO, it will probably go through straightaway. Another way getting more money for the government.

An interesting weekend

2005-08-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

Starting from Friday, I thought I’d lost my house keys after playing badminton at Donvale around 11:30. I took Shet Li back home and came back to the office with Hendry and Xue. We just couldn’t find the keys anywhere at my desk. (the good thing was I did not set off the alarm this time, everything was working pretty smoothly. It would have been looking like three people trying to rob the bank at 12:30 am!!)

I had to stay with Xue for Friday night. She got a tiny single bed and the unit she lives in next to two main roads in Brunswick. I am not used to sleep in a very noisy environment. I don’t think I had much sleep during the nights considering how many dreams I had over the night. I had a few dreams about calling banks to cancel my bank cards and credit cards. A few minutes later, I realised that I lost my keys, not my wallet!! Similar dreams went on and on. For memory, I had at least three times thinking about calling banks.

Got up at 10:00 in the morning and called a company to unlock my door for me. We booked the time at 5:00pm as he couldn’t do it before 2:00 pm. Then I thought it was a middle of the day, I couldn’t do anything else other than watching him breaking my house. So I turned up to badminton (I got to commit a bit more to badminton considering I am playing pretty bad recently.) Packed up around 4:00. Looked for a NAB ATM to withdraw some money as the locksmith would have cost me $135. Looked around in Melb uni and found a broken one. I didn’t want to be late, so I had to withdraw from a CBA ATM which cost me an extra $1.5.

Drove back to home and thought I’d better wait him inside the backyard. Then I realised that my keys were hanging in the keyhole!! Felt really sorry to call the person to cancel the appointment 15 mins prior. I was so exhausted at the end of the day.

Turned up training on Sunday. The training wasn’t that tiring (well, I didn’t do much anyway.) The games after the training was pretty good. I had two single games and two and half mixed doubles. Other than the fact that some stupid idiot blaming on others all the time, I enjoyed the games a lot.

Had dinner with friends after the badminton. The dinner was really good, large share and quick serving which was exactly what I wanted after badminton. The only drama was someone drove my car without releasing the handbrake completely. Well, I am getting my car serviced in the next month or two, it should be right for another two months.

Drove to my friend’s home to get my tax return done. I forgot to take my private health insurance membership number which hold me up for a few minutes. I can’t remember my user name and password to log onto the website to check the number. Eventually, I figured out the number from another way. Just when I thought I could get it done yesterday, I realised that I forgot to take last year’s NOA (Notice of Assessment) It means I have either to find the assessment at my house somewhere or ring ATO to get a copy in a week time. So I got back home and spent an hour and half to find out where I put it (thanks for moving house recently.) I got it eventually but then I left a mess to clean up today. (documents, folders every where.)

That’s pretty much about my interesting weekend. The end result is – I am drinking coffee again after the commitment eating healthy three weeks ago.

PS. I played an interesting computer game at my friend’s home. It is called "Neighbour from Hell". The purpose of the game is to annoy your neighbour as much as possible, such as putting a mousetrap in the mailbox, putting an egg in a microwave etc. Really love it. (not good at the moment and it should have the English version, would mind getting it on my computer.)

Not a happy day.

2005-07-18T13:50:00.000-07:00

I am still feeling a bit sick today. Set up the alarm at 6:00am and got up at 6:40. Had a quick breaky and got on the road in a freezing morning (5 degree!!). When I have the heater on, it put me into sleep which is not a safe driving, but when I turned it off, it is just freezing. So I have to constantly switch the heater on and off.

Got to the office, opened my lotus notes. A friend sent an email to me with the subject as his mum’s name and two years in bracket. I had a bad feeling immediately. When I opened the mail, he just briefly told me that her mum just died last Friday after only three weeks of being diagnosed of having a lung cancer. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I met her the first time when she visited him in Aust four years ago. We had dinners, had a good chat. I know she enjoyed nature environment, particularly aust gardens. At the two times I visited him in Malaysia, I lived with his family. She had been so nice to everybody around her. I thought I was going to meet her again this year in Beijing when I go back. I was so looking forward to meeting them. Only three weeks!! I feel so sad about that.

Life is just so vulnerable. I am not really in the mood of writing a lot. But I do want to cherish my life and experience the most. My resolutions:
- Caring more about my family
- Being supportive and understanding to all my friends, help them whenever they need it.
- Enjoy my life, being positive everyday.

Being sick.

2005-07-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

Being really sick today. Would like to get a sick leave, however, can’t really afford it as there are so many things need to be done. Even if I could get a day off, the files would just pile up which added lots of pressure on the following few days.

My hands are so cold, so as my body, but my face is quite hot and I feel my head is quite heavy (probably need to get a hair cut). I don’t even know whether I feel cold or not. I have my jacket on all the time anyway, just in case I catch a cold. (should I a heater under my desk. I will go shopping this weekend to buy one or two small heater. One for the office, the other one for home)

Really addictive to stationery. I have whole stack of unused folders / notepads, pens, highlighters etc. Just wondering, how hard do I need to study in order to use up all the stationery?

I'm going home now. leaving all the things behind me for the moment, worry about it tomorrow.

Grocery shopping

2005-07-11T17:40:00.000-07:00

I did grocery shopping yesterday finally, since I moved to the new place. I have been eating junk food, bread, noodles (sort of junk as well) for a month time. I am so glad that i can eat some vege now.

I ended up buying $80 worth of grocery. Hopefully, it can feed me for more than a week. I bought lots of things for hotpot as i think it might be the easiest way for me to cook for myself, although i don't have a steamboat. The gas stove is good enough for me, pouring the water in and meat balls, veges, beancurd etc in the normal pot, it serves me well.

got to go for the lauguage coaching now.

my english improved?

2005-07-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

Brother believes my English has improved significantly given that he can’t understand what I am writing any more. (Was it a compliment?)

I was sorting out my books yesterday and found some English books I took from China. Some of the books are not relevant any more as they were written specifically for TOFEL exams (an exam for every student to attend in order to study / live in USA.) One book, in particular, provides intensive reading examples from past TOFEL exams. I found myself getting more than 85% questions right within 30 mins (against standard 55 mins). I was quite surprised to see how much I have improved. I still remember that I was so struggling to get more than 60% of the answers right with the full 55 mins timeframe back then (was complaining about the tight timeframe loudly at that time). Probably I should not be too proud of myself given that I guessed a few questions right.

I finally finished the file I had been working on for the last week or so. I am so glad that I can start something else. So many mistakes / errors were found in that file. The worst part is there is no easy solution. I wish I had more information to complete the submission. There should be a better way to help him improve the all process. Well, give me a break, I will try to do something at later stage. I am just so flat out at the moment.

slowly settling down

2005-07-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

Got the fridge replaced. put water in, it changed to ice!!! I was so happy about that.

All the furniture has been assembled and moved into the right place. (still waiting for bedroom suite though, but the good thing is they will assemble it for me. no hassle for me!) started moving my books to upstair. I really love my desk. it is huge! can't wait to clean up all the stuff and start the study at my study room.

Got a day off approved for this Thursday so i can watching friends playing uni games. it is just so great to be a student. nothing to worry about and lots of fun.

trying to get a lift from a colleague and waited 20 mins plus (as i am still here typing this). I would have got my car and driven to home if I hadn't been waiting for him. Hurry up!! i am hungry.

Had lots of resolutions, but I have done none of them. I am not desciplined enough.

I am quite happy with my life at the moment. everything is running really smoothly.

Played Vic Open C grade mixed doubles, we won the game but I did not enjoy the games as C grade is not challenge for me anymore. (i must have improved heaps!! hehee...) i have decided to play at least B grade. Xue and Shetli came as A grade doubles runners up, lost by one point to Eugenia and Shaung. They would have won the game if Shang's mum wasn't cheating on a few line calls. They did have chance as well. they will team up a bit more and play better next time. Xue has also become runners up in A Grade mixed doubles with Marcus. They lost to Boris and Vicki in the final. not a bad result in my opinion.

another 10 mins has gone, i am still here. i will wrap it up until i am going.

today's english coaching talked about money. I used words i learned on Friday, gold digger. i am so glad that i can use it.

wooo, i am leaving!!!!

Set off the alarm again.

2005-07-01T17:10:00.000-07:00

I can’t believe I set off the office alarm twice yesterday!! I thought I finally understood how to operate the alarm. It went off again!! I hate the alarm system. I am not getting one for my own house as I don’t have security help desk number to ring to get help.

I have set off the alarm four times since I come to this office. (but I only run away once, at least I know I can get help form security help desk now. I guess I got my name registered over there!)

The end of financial year.

2005-06-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

It has been an extremely busy day due to the end of financial year. Some of the customers rushed into interest in advance loans which they can claim interest expense in 04-05 tax year.

Most of my day was preparing documents, then signing documents in the afternoon, come back to the office drawing down the loans. The end result is I am still here at 7:00. Some of the colleagues have gone to a pub to celebrate the end of financial year. but it is nothing to celebrate for me.

Tried to buy a laptop from Dell, spent 20 mins online, customerised all the things i wanted on top of the standard configuration, then the order just disappeared. I don't even know whether i ordered it or not. (well, at least i did not provide any card details which add a bit comfort. ) Does it indicate i should not buy another one before i give my existing one to my parents? But it is on sale with $1K off the retail price!! what should I do? probably just stick to the existing one and wait for the next opportunity.

Negative annual leave

2005-06-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

It is so depressing to watch my accumulated annual leave is still in negative. The good thing is the negative figure is slightly approaching to zero, currently at 15.97 hours which is about 2 days.
Roasted day off and sick leave look healthy. But I can’t take too much sick leaves without providing medical certificate. Apparently, we have to provide the certificate if we have taken more than 4 sick days in a 12 months period although we are entitled 12 paid sick days per annum. SAP system is quite complicated to figure out how many sick days we have taken over the last 12 months. (not sure it is good thing or bad thing.)
Learning has become a big thing at NAB. We have just implemented another on-line system which record and update all the training we have done or are doing or plan to do. It is not a user-friendly system. To find something, we have to go through so many different screens and it might end up an error message. It is just so frustrating. With all the compliance training to be completed by 17/07/05, I can see myself coming to the office over the weekend to figure out how to use the bloody system. Another problem with the system at the moment is that some of the training we have done have not been transferred to this new system properly. It means we have to do it again!!! What a stupid system!!
I’d better stop here. I got too much compliant about the system. (but it might be me who do not how to use the system properly which is not something unlikely.)

Golf Trip

2005-06-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

The golf trip last weekend was not as good as I expected. I slept most of the day on Saturday. I only walked half of the 18 holes course, watched others playing for 2 hours and then went back to the room slept from 10:30 until 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I went up late on Sunday. I did some English study when most people was playing 9 hole golf. We headed back around 12:30.

Two good things about the trip.

Firstly, i had enough sleep. I slept most of time on the way to Yarra Wonga and on the way back, which was about 4 hours all up. 8 hours on Friday night and 6 hours during the day on Saturday plus 10 hours on Saturday night.

Secondly, the breakfast was pretty good. Not much variaties, but they provided a lot. (Quantity over quality)

I think i still like badminton more. No more try on golf before i know how to play.

A Faulty Fridge

2005-06-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

Bought a new fridge two weeks ago and just realised that the fridge is not working. Watch put in the freeze is still water after two days, milk has gone off after only three days in the fridge, ice cream has melt in 2-3 hours time.

Rang up the company, the sales person advised me to ring the fridge company etc. If I hadn't paid for the fridge, they would have taken completely different approach. (I paid by Credit Card, and I guess I can ask the money back. that's one of the good thing about working in a banking industry, you learn lots of tricky things. but being a nice person as I am, I will take it as the last resource) I have written an email to the store and hoping to get it resolved shortly. (well, i started the email, and my colleague re-done it except for the top line - Dear Sir / Madam,)

House is still in a mess. I have wasted too much my time on watching Chinese series. Went to bed around 1:00 and got up at 6:30. on the way driving to the office, I was hoping it was the last time I did it (which I know straight away, I will do it again. But at least, I did try to make a change.)