Laingan.com

Year 2009 is coming to an end. For some people, this is a time to do some reviews of the year . For most people, this is also a time to set some New Year resolutions for the forthcoming Year 2010.

I often hear my friends and colleagues said that Year 2009 is really a not-so-good if not a bad year for most people. I’m very sure they were referring to how the bad performance of the global economy has affected the people nationwide as well as worldwide.

Honestly, I agree with them because the global economic downturn has caused many companies to down side their operations and manpower significantly. Most of them were having a short workweek and forcing the employees to clear annual leaves so as to reduce cost. They have also freezed the wage increment and some even exercised a pay cut to their employees’ salaries.

The first half of Year 2009 was indeed a terrible phase of the year for most people. Fortunately, things turn better in the second half of this year. The global economy is technically out of recession and many companies have started to hire people. Gradually, we are seeing a ray of light coming out from the other side of the tunnel. Thank Goodness!

Personally, I find that Year 2009 is generally a good year for me. I build up more confident in myself and stay firm with my belief. I pick up new skills and practise what I learn. I gave training to my co-workers and did presentation to visitors.

I travelled to Thailand for work assignment and to Sabah (Malaysia) for leisure. These places have very nice people, building, food and environment. I’m happy that I got the chance to visit Thailand and Sabah in October and November respectively.

So, on the whole, I find that Year 2009 might not be a good year for most of the people but it’s definitely a fruitful one for me in terms of work and personal matters. Thanks and Good Bye to 2009.

My Favourites :

Today is Friday the 13th. It is also the World Kindness Day which was established on 13 November 1998 in Tokyo.

Back in 1997, there were seven countries, including Singapore, came together to sign a declaration for the WORLD KINDNESS MOVEMENT. Its mission is to inspire individuals towards greater kindness. Its aim is to inpsire spontaneous acts of kindness to make life more pleasant for everybody.

It is important to look beyond the boundaries of gender, race and creed. The one common thing that bonds human beings to live together in peace is KINDNESS. So, please be kind to your family, friends and yourself.

Besides World Kindness Day, today is also a variable bonus payout day for my company. Like I had mentioned in my earlier Blog posts, Friday the 13th is a lucky day in my eyes. Today is a special and good day, let us treasure Friday the 13th and be kind to each other.

My Favourites :

The last time that I was preparing the PowerPoint slides for myself to conduct a training to a group of more than 10 skilled and semi-skilled co-workers at my workplace was somewhere in February this year.

After that, I did not conduct anymore training because we were getting busy in the second half of the year. In other words, it seems like most companies would put the emphasis on getting people to conduct training or sending staff to attend training when there are not much activities going on 🙂

Perhaps, this is the only way to keep everybody busy as well as to upgrade the skill levels during the global economic downturn. I feel that this is beneficial to both the trainers and trainees.

Reason being that the trainees would be ready to apply what they have learnt to use it on their job when the world economy picks up. On the other hand, the trainers would be given an opportunity to conduct the training and pass on the knowledge to the fellow co-workers.

As a trainer, I feel that I have indeed learnt a lot of things through the process of preparing for the training session. Although I did feel pressurised and stressful at times, I find that the feeling was good after the training was conducted.

It gave me a lot of satisfaction and fulfilment for being able to deliver and teach a group of people. It was a good start and I hope to conduct more trainings whenever I’m given the opportunities in the future.

My Favourites :

Today is the last day of September and it marks the ending of the third quarter of this year. In other words, close to 75% of year 2009 has passed. So, is today a good day to end the month of September? Well, the answer is a yes and a no.

I would say 30 September is a good day to me because I have finally shipped out the equipment to the customer and it makes me feel relief. So, I can glue myself to the chair and stay inside the office to do my work quietly.

On the other hand, I would say today is not a good day because the sky was full of haze in the daytime and this makes the last day of the month very gloomy. The scenario is as if telling people that you cannot see your future clearly. Oh no! 🙁

Furthermore, there was a very powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.6 hitting Sumatra, Indonesia, this evening. My colleague could even feel the building was moving before I went back to the office. But I just didn’t feel anything was shaking at all when she was telling me about the tremors.

Anyway, we cannot stop natural disasters from happening and there is no use for worrying too much. Think positively and the situation shall become better. So, personally, I still feel that the last day of September 2009 is generally a good day to me 😛

My Favourites :

A colleague of mine had decided to quit his job two weeks ago and today is his last day of service with the company that he has been working for 9 years.

Besides money, the next utmost reason for him to quit the job was due to the overwhelming workloads that he has had since half a year ago. The work pressure was more than what he could take so probably the only way out is to accept a job that is being offered to him out of nowhere. Furthermore, it is a comparatively good offer.

I think it takes a lot of courage for a person who has been working in a company for a substantially long period of time to make a job change especially if it is your first job. It may not be easy as you have to get out of your comfort zone and start things all over again in a new company.

It may be tough for him to make that kind of decision although he was very excited at first for finding a better job. Then, he was in a dilemma and could not make up his mind to leave the place that was so familiar to him when the last day was drawing near.

I told him that he got to ask himself why he wanted to quit in the first place. If one of his reasons was to get out of where he was and to free himself from certain situations, then he got to follow his heart and move on. Since he has chosen the path, there shall be no regrets and no turning back.

Although the grass might not be greener on the other side of the fence, I believe a determined person could explore further and find ways to make the grass over there even greener and healthier than where he came from.

My Favourites :

This seems to be a very simple question but I bet not many people would know how to make themselves happy. So, how to be happy?

Some people may find that by doing those things that they like to do will make them very happy. If this is the case, their happiness is obviously coming from their interests. Perhaps, this is their source of motivation that keeps them going in a high-spirited mood all day long.

On the other hand, some people may find that it is a big question as to how to make themselves happy. Yet, we never know that happiness can come so easily sometimes. Only if you know how to find happiness…….

How to be happy? To me, this is a simple as well as a tough question. I have had no clues how to be happy in the past. But now I’m glad to say that I’m happier than before.

Perhaps, the secret is to expect less and live simply. And always think positively!

My Favourites :

Babies are lovely and their cute smiles make people happy. To me, little babies are living dolls for the adult to take care and adore.

Ever wonder how would it be like if babies can do stunts or somersault? I know it will be unbelievable or something impossible to happen.

Evian, the mineral water company, has created an advertisement featuring a bunch of cute babies jumping around on rollers. Obviously, this is only made possible with the help of computerised special effects. Although the action-packed ads looks artificial, the idea of using babies to sell mineral water is refreshing and creative.

The jumping-around stunts make the advertisement very entertaining and amusing. All the babies look cute and lovely but somehow look funny though.

I would also like to dedicate this babies-on-rollers video clip to my Seremban friend (DK) who has just given birth to her baby girl as on 23 Jun. I wish both mommy and baby happy and healthy 🙂

My Favourites :

Friday has been my rest day since many months ago due to the global economic slowdown. But I had gone back to work today because I’m getting more and more things to do lately. 

Actually, I find that I really enjoy having a short work week and I’m used to it too. Reason being that I can have more time doing those things that I want to or like to do.  

I can spend quality time going out with friends and family. I can also spend time learning new skills on a week day. In fact, there are many things that I can do or plan to do during my rest day so it is never a boring day to stay at home on a Friday.

Frankly speaking, I have been slackened for having a shorter work week and the working pace is slower than what I used to in the past. But I feel that it is good to slow down your footsteps at times and take stock of what you might have missed out in life.

Although I really miss my rest day, I think it is time to gear up a bit so as to stay on track at work after slowing down for quite some time.

My Favourites :

I have finally finished designing my new website and I’m so excited about it. I bought a domain name from a domain registrar and then let it go live yesterday. It took me close to 6 weeks to complete the website design. I’m proud to tell people that I know how to design website from now onwards 🙂

I have had the concept of building my own website since last year but I only got serious about doing it near the end of March 2009. I first drafted out the plan on a piece of paper and then transformed the ideas into an Excel spreadsheet in April. 

I did my research by leveraging on other people’s websites. I wrote my own content on all of the webpages. I also designed my own web graphics such as logo, header, footer, gallery, divider, bullet points and so on. It gives me a lot of satisfaction and fulfilment for doing all of the designs by myself.

In fact, I had always wanted to design my own website since many years back but I didn’t know how to go about doing it. I also didn’t know what kind of website that I wanted to build back then. So, it was a matter of not knowing the how-to rather than being procrastinating.

Fortunately, there are many great information, such as eBook, video, newsletter and so on, on the internet guiding people on how to build website as well as uploading files to the server. Some of the informations are free and some are paid.  

I use both free and paid informations as I believe that you have to invest in it if you wanted to succeed in mastering certain skills. I’m glad that I have learnt a new skill set and I will explode in other areas to learn more skills so as to add more values to myself.

My Favourites :

I have had a chat with my friend over the phone to catch up how we have been doing lately. I came to realise that we did not communicate with each other for quite a while as we are both busy with our own stuff.

We have had a lot of things to update each other within a few minutes of our conversation. Although we still keep in contact via email, we simply receive and forward emails most of the time. I think this is a way of life for most people.

Some of my friends also tell me that they have to stop somewhere after writing a long email. If not, they are not sure what else to tell me in the next email 🙂

But I think it is easier for them to know more about me and find out how I have been doing by visiting my personal Blog. I might not disclose too much things publicly but they get to know me more if they have the interest to read my Blog posts.

So, this is one of the benefits for having a Blog. But I do think it is also important to catch up with friends by talking to them over the phone or asking them out for a meal. I will definitely find time for that.

My Favourites :