Thursday, June 24, 2010

If only...

I live in my own utopian world. And I always believed that somewhere deep in the heart of purpleness (doesn't make sense, should not make sense too) there is an equilibrium that could be attained.

But I just wish that everyone can put in the effort to make things happen.

This is what I'd like to say to you......

Please do not make another person responsible for your job. Sometimes, it is very obvious that you are shirking your own responsibility. And it is just not right to go off for your personal holiday and leave your colleagues in a lurch, tying up the loose ends of your job.

If only everyone does his/her job, we will not need to bend our asses backwards just to pick your shit up. If you do not like people to give their job to you, you should STOP giving yours to others.

Yes, people may have talked about passing the baton or paying it forward. But there is a clear difference between paying it forward by helping people and passing the baton by passing your job around for others to pick up.

I am sick of helping you to pick your shit that you left behind all the time. I hate feeling guilty because i was new and screwed up and caused you to be scolded. I am sick of feeling responsible for things that are not mine.

I know that I have an inherent defect in life, so stop using it to your advantage. We all have a breaking point...

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Dear whatever...

Dear slab-headed-jackass,

Look, I don't really know who the fuck you are, apart from what little I already know.

But apparently, you're trying to test my patience here, from what I can tell.

Is it so hard for you to admit defeat? Is it so difficult for you to back off and get on?

From what I can tell, you were the one who catalyzed the entire thing, and now you're trying to fuck with me?

I would expect somebody SO FUCKING GROWN UP like you to ACT MORE LIKE AN ADULT and FUCK OFF WHEN YOU'VE ALREADY LOST THE WAR!!

So listen here, you stone-crowned-idiot. You may think I am weak and scared of your towering presence, but know you this. You do not know who the fuck I am. So my advice to you is to just stay away, mother fucker. You don't fucking know what I'm capable of, and you don't fucking know what goes on in my turf. So, if you DON'T FUCKING WANNA GET HURT, then please just GO PLAY SOMEWHERE ELSE.

I've had enough of you, you fuck-faced idiot. But even so, I would really hate to be attending your funeral and admitting to the crowd that I was the one who put the bullet through your brain, so don't FUCKING GIVE ME A REASON TO DO IT!


Yours truly,
The guy with the Silver Colored Waja

Sunday, June 6, 2010

A friend indeed

It was a normal morning... everything was going on fine... we were supposed to take a drive to Jusco Kepong as bebe had her field duties today. With plans in mind for breakfast and a growling stomach looming, we hopped into our car and I turned the ignition switch...

*nothing*

I turned it again...

*nothing, and there was a funny ticking sound coming out of the engine bay*

That was it, Monster Sia finally had some problems with his electrical circuit. Was it the battery? Can't be... I've been maintaining it and refilling it with battery water every now and then.

Called my neighbour (and also former WPC club mate) Saiful a.k.a. "Barium". Down he came, so three of us rolled up our sleeves and pushed Monster to position for a jump start. Took out my jump-cables and connected them. Ironically, Monster did not start. Well, kinda thought that it must be some other problem.

"Is it the fuel pump?" Barium quipped. Then it struck me that Monster's fuel pump is due for replacement as well.

"Here, you can have my car first, but take care of my Wanee, okay?" Barium said, kissing his beloved ride on the rear left pillar. Hehe. So, I drove Wanee, brought my bebe to Jusco Kepong.

After bidding her a fond goodbye, I thought I should get on down to Taman Tan Yew Lai and pay Ah Guan a visit, to purchase a fuel pump. Called Wong Tai Sin (YSW) along the way... after describing to this vehicle expert my problem, he said it wasn't the fuel pump, but likely to be a starter motor or the battery itself, who knows?

Arrived at Ah Guan's place. CLOSED!

AAAHHH!!!! GROAN!!

Drove my ass back to Damansara, filled Wanee up to the brim at Petronas, and went to this friendly mechanic shop just opposite my house called Economechanix. The owner and the foreman were both very nice people. Brought the foreman over to the condo car park. He tried jump starting Monster. Monster came to life...

Now what the hell did Barium and I do wrong with the initial jump start??

Bought a new MF battery, paid RM210, and parked Monster back in place. Gave Wanee's keys back to Barium.

But I'm lucky it wasn't a major problem that involved towing, or I wouldn't know how the hell they'll drag Monster out of the car park on LG2.

THANKS BRO BARIUM!!! You were there when I needed your help, I'm very grateful :)

Saturday, June 5, 2010

An echo to a disasterous incident

As what most of us have read on our Facebook/newspaper, we'd have know about the tragic death of a 27 year old student from Sarawak after a deadly collision with a lorry and a Toyota Vios.

This is my 2 cent's worth about this incident.

I feel that, this story fell into a gray area. No right, no wrong moves. Just based on ethics.

Yes, our hearts bled out and went out in full force to that girl who died in the deadly crash. We all felt the pain and the selfishness of the two petrol station attendants who were unwilling to pass the fire extinguisher to the man who requested for it in order to save a life.

The man who requested for it, he knew what was going on. He saw what happened. He took action.

The two boys (I call them boys because I feel that they are not mature yet to be men) were at a petrol station about 500m away from the site, sitting/cooped up inside a petrol station at an obscene hour. They cannot see the accident. They were oblivious to the fact that an accident occured.

Now here comes the tricky part.

The man who came asked for a fire extinguisher. The man asked, pleaded and slowly lost his temper (understandable, a life is at stake) because he NEEDED the fire extinguisher to save the life of the girl. He started to throw his IC in, saying that the petrol station attendants could keep the IC and if the man ran away with the extinguisher, they could trace it back to him. He even offered to PAY for the fire extinguisher because he knew what it would mean to the girl if he had been able to get it.

The two boys inside the petrol station are just workers.
Premise 1: They are workers at a petrol pump at such an obscene hour.
Premise 2: Nobody will want to work graveyard shift because it is dangerous.
Premise 3: These two boys worked during the graveyard shift despite it being dangerous. They must either be unqualified for other positions or the pay for this job was higher because the risks were higher, or possibly, they had to take a risk because they could not find any other jobs.
Conclusion: These two boys has been handed bad cards. They had not-so-favorable choices to choose. They took the dangerous graveyard shift at the petrol station.

A little bit long winded but hope you got the point.

The boys worked there not because they had no choice. They chose to work there. Reasons unclear. But it is clear that they were just workers. And with every worker who is working for a big organization, they are just like 'little fishes in the big ocean'. Hierarchy in a big corporation would have been too much, nobody knew who they were in the company. Yes, unfortunately, they are like pawns in a game of chess. You sacrifice them first should anything happen.

And for big corporation, even though they are on the chess board, not all organizations want to sacrifice their pawns in a game of chess. Some could checkmate their opponents in just 5 moves (or less if they were crazy), while others will lose a few pawns trying to save the King. But bottomline is, corporations as big as this cannot afford to let their people below (even though they are 'deemed' as pawns) suffer because these are their frontliners.

What would big corporations do in order to keep their people 'safe'? They implement a lot of rules, the Do's and Don'ts of a corporation. Things one can do, one cannot do to ensure that calamity/bad things do not befall. We must be careful with our scissors and not leave them around so that a child will not accidentally pick it up and poke his eye with it. We want to minimize casualty because it will reflect badly upon an organization.

And unfortunately, when this accident occured, it was not at a place the two boys could see. How would they know the relevance of the story? How can they verify? Drive out to check? What if the man pounding at the glass is a robber? What if the boys got robbed and got themselves killed because they believed in this man?

We can safely blame something here though. We can blame it on the mentality of Malaysians in general. We are not a helpful bunch of people. And reason being, we have opportunists amidst us. Like it or not, it happens everywhere, but in Asian countries, situation will always be worse. We Malaysians used to be a bunch of trusting, loving, united bunch of people. Regardless of our race, culture, religion etc. We tolerated each other.

But now, what happened? We sow seeds of discord, hatred and dislike against one another. Regardless of race, culture or religion. People of different race, culture or religion, we get nit-picky over their 'beliefs and traditions'. People of the same kind, we just have to find fault in them. We are against one another. We compete to have better things than another. We want the best and we want to be the best. No such thing as working together.

Things like distrust, dishonesty, robberies, and many other bad qualities started surfacing. We stopped trusting one another because time and again we tried but the other party just tend to break the trust. We gave up trying. We started protecting ourselves by being selfish. We built fortresses and barracks to separate ourselves from the world. We erected walls to divide each other. We worked in our own silo, unwilling to lend a helping hand to another for the fear of being the dumping ground of other people because they will think that you're easy to be bullied. We gave ourselves the opportunity to nurse the grudge, nurse that little bump of trouble, nurse the distrust among others and never allowed ourselves to even approach another person for the fear of being taken advantage of!

We live in a cruel society where the richest man can have the loudest laugh or the last say. We suffer because of bureaucracy and inequality because of status, because of the way we were brought up. Because of who our parents are (or who they are not). We live in a materialistic and realistic world. Nobody cares about the world. Every man for himself; selfishness breed like germs.

As a friend said today, "What an old man dies for, a baby cries for", recognition is all we are looking for. We are looking to be accepted and to be regarded as a 'somebody' at least for once in our lives. Our goals changed from living a life for everyone to living a life to use everyone for personal gain.

This is what I think about the entire situation. Both parties were right. But both parties were not on the same page when the incident happened.

If it was by the order of the management that the boys CAN NOT open the door for whatsoever reason except to escape from the pump if something bad happens, they held up to their side of the bargain. They did right, even though, ethically it costed a life of another human being.

The man who requested for the fire extinguisher made a decision to go to the petrol kiosk because he knew that it would have saved the girl's life. He did the right thing by responding too.

But please do not forget where this incident happened. It was in KL and it was at 3.30am. How obscene could this situation be? It could not have been worse.

What if we took this situation, turned it around and made this good samaritan a bad guy? He decides to take this story and use it over and over again and lie to petrol station attendants and hope that one good hearted guy worked behind that glass door? The good man at the pump might be robbed, killed or God knows what will happen to him if he did open the door. If nothing bad happened to him physically, he'd still have to bear the cost of the damage/losses incurred on the day because he broke the management's orders of NOT OPENING THE DOORS FOR THEIR SAFETY. And if they were killed, there would have been possible if one of the clause in the employment contract that said 'you will be held liable for the losses if you do not adhere to the rules' or 'the company will not be held responsible if a staff's life is jeopardized if he/she does not follow the management's orders'.

We did not sign that contract/agreement. The boys did. Whether it was written or not, we do not know and we are not privileged enough to know intricate details about such things.

At first when I heard about the story, I was really mad at these boys. I was mad because they could have saved the girl's life. But after thinking for so long, I realized the ethical vs. legal predicament these boys faced. That happened after I read my terms of the contract for my new job. It made me realize that we human beings, although we want to do many things in life, more often than not we are restricted from doing something because of the law and the nature of how things are.

We cannot tell who is a good or a bad guy. We cannot tell how a stranger is like, whether he was a good man or a bad man. A fully tattooed man can also be a man with strong integrity and sense of comradeship. A man who looks very prim and proper could also be the owner of a brothel. We have no facts to back things up and only prejudgement, instincts, and that 5 seconds of impression to count on when we make hasty decisions. And when this happens, people will tend not to take risks. They go by the book. They follow that one thing they know is certain.

Life is a game of chances. Life is a gamble. Life is all about how well your fast judgement and luck are. Life in short, excuse my French; is a bitch.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Thankful

I am truly thankful for being who I am. And yes, some friends made a remark, 'finally Michelle, you're realizing things we've known for so long'. And you guys should be wondering what am I thankful for.

I am truly thankful for being who I am. I went to PWTC in search for a job, happened to like a few (like, only 2 companies) and winded up being called by the boss of the company 1 hour after submitting my CV. I was surprised. In my mind, it was like, 'wah... I want to start work in July/August only. And you called me this early?'. And in my mind, I was half rejoicing and half dreading that the employer will ask me to start work in June.

Went for the job fair on Friday. Got a call on Friday. Scheduled for interview on following Thursday (went to Kenyir from Monday - Wednesday). Went in for interview on Thursday mid-morning. Nailed the job on the spot. Was requested to start early and in plain eagerness to join this awesome company, jumped in to agree to start in June.

I cannot say how much I regretted that 'yes, i can start in June' statement I made. I wished I could retract it back. But after 4 days there, I would say that I am thankful that I started in June. At least I am employed, I am keeping myself occupied and I am just plainly gonna absorb myself into the working world! Hooyah! Finally, Michelle is no longer a bum at home, sucking cash from family and bebe Sia Choon Howe ... hehe... I can smell independence (smell my 1st paycheck!)

Anyway, I was surprised that I nailed the job. Probably I was just too eager to start work and I just plainly loved the job. But I keep telling myself, 'no regrets now. Just concentrate on giving your best, your 1000% into everything you do. But do it respectfully. Do it right. Keep your head up high and not hide because of shame or that something wrong you do. Ask if you don't know. Smile and be friends with all. Lend a helping hand to those who needs. Guide those who are lost. Learn fast, learn smart. Blend in with the environment but at the same time learn to adapt to changes quickly'.

I am thankful that this job is something I want. Although I don't know what will happen in the future, but I want to have a fresh start. I want to go through life smoothly. I want to experience a life that I can one day tell my kids 'long long ago, before you were born'.... I really want to make a mark in my life. I want to draw something on my white sheet of paper. I want to experience the struggle and the successes and the depression of fighting for something I really want in life.

I want a career before I decide to one day have a child and devote full-time to bringing him/her up. And as long as that day has not come, I shall pursue in that something else that will bring me personal satisfaction; being independent and being able to afford things by myself.

And because all these were possible and it is growing, I am thankful....