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I attended a personal development training program entitled Personal Effectiveness (Supervisory) yesterday and today. This is a 2 full-day sponsored training program to teach people on how to develope yourself so as to become a better person.

The topics that the Personal Effectiveness (Supervisory) training program covered include how to have a right mindset, how to set goals, how to manage your time, how to manage stress, how to do financial planning and so on.

I think all these informations are valuable things that we can learn to make ourselves more effective in dealing with our daily lives. We are what we think so it is very important to cultivate our mind in such a way that we occupy our mind with positve thinking.

We are what we think

We must learn to discard all the negative thoughts that we might have because these are the things that hinder us from moving forward. Positive thoughts will attract positive things to come to us and make our lives better. 

So, I think this Personal Effectiveness (Supervisory) training program is a good course for anybody who wishes to develope yourself and cultivate your mind with positive thinking.

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A friend of mine has forwarded an email to me pertaining to the local national library is organising a Book Exchange event. The purpose is obviously to encourage people to exchange used book in a way to save our trees on this planet.

The procedure of doing the book exchange is quite straight forward. Just three simple steps to exchange your used books for new reads. All you need to do is to bring your used books to any public library on the specified date, time and place. 

Then, you just need to drop off your used books and get a book exchange coupon indicating one-for-one exchange for the books accepted. After that, bring your coupon to redeem for the used books dropped by other book lovers.

Of course, there are terms and conditions apply that you need to follow before exchanging the used books. Otherwise, you are just wasting yours and other people’s time.

I love to write as well as love to read. I have bought many books since my school days and I’m still keeping them in my bookshelf. Most of the older books have turned yellowish and smelly after all these years. 

Despite this, I still keep the old books with me and will take them out if I wanted to look for some information for my writing. I have the habit of writing down the price, date and place of purchase on the last few pages of the book. 

It helps to bring back the good old memory of the past whenever I take out the book and do a quick flip-through. The books have some sentimental values to me so I don’t think I would want to participate in the book exchange event.

Even if the books are so old, yellowish, smelly and torn, I would rather keep them in my bookshelf than to let them go. I enjoy the process of reading and I will not forget about the books have had brought me joy.

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I read today’s newspapers and found an eye-catching headline that was giving tips to people on how to look out for tell-tale signs of looming retrenchment. 

These tips are given by many Human Resource experts who have been actively giving job-seeking talks and job-saving tips to job-seekers lately at job fairs.

Quoted from what the HR experts have said, people can tell that job-cutting exercise is on the way if they observe the following signs :

• Cost-cutting measures are being implemented throughout the organisation
• Your workload is lighter than usual or projects are being re-assigned to others within your department
• Your work is seasonal in nature and you have significant periods of down time
• Your position or department is not viewed as a revenue generator
• You are no longer including in meetings in which you typically participate
• Your manager is showing increased interest in the status of your projects and the steps to complete them

I think the tips come in handy in view of the global economic downturn is affecting many companies and many people all over the world. People are concerned about how they could save or protect their jobs during the financial crisis.

So, the tips will help workers to be more alert and stay focus on the jobs. Probably one of the best ways to save their job is to continue delivering high quality of work that is above expectations.

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There are a few job fairs held recently at downtown. Its aim is apparently to recruit suitable candidates to fill up the job vacancies. But I was told that most of those jobs are recruitment from the service and non-technical sectors. 

A few of my colleagues were interested to go to the JobDB job fair which is held at Suntec City from 20-22 March. Some of them said that they were planning to go to the job fair in the early morning so as to have a better chance of landing a job 🙂

Well, I think it is no harm going to the job fair and see how bad the global economic downturn is affecting the local people. So, I went there to find it out myself in the late afternoon on Friday.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a big crowd when I reached there although I had expected it to be overwhelmed with job-seekers. The visitors or job-seekers were required to register themselves at the counter before they were allowed to enter the exhibition hall.

I did a quick registration and then showed the entry pass to the security guard before going in to the job fair hall. I was immediately attracted by the voice of a speaker who was giving his presentation on job-seeking techniques.

So, I went to listen to his job-seeking talk teaching job-seekers about the skills that they need to have when writing a resume as well as attending a job interview. Well, I think this talk was useful and informative enough to help job-seekers to do the preparation.

Then, I walked around and browsed through most of the booths after listening to the talk. To my surprise, 30-40% of the booths were not recruitment booths but institutional booths to get people to sign up for their courses.

 The promoters told the job-seekers that this is a good time to upgrade themselves so that they will become more employable when the economy becomes good again.

However, I think the immediate need of job-seekers, especially for those people who have been retrenched recently, is to get a job first rather than to spend money to further their studies. 

If the people don’t even have the salary to bring money back home or pay for the bills, how they will have the money to pay for the course fee then.

In my opinion, job fair might not be a good place to find a job for those people who have been retrenched or for those people who still have a job but wish to change job. 

Therefore, I don’t really recommend my friends to go to job fairs to try their luck.

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Yesterday was the second Friday the 13th (13 March) in year 2009 and the previous one was in February. The next Friday the 13th is in November as there are altogether three Friday the 13ths in year 2009.

Many superstitious people believe that Friday the 13th is a bad luck day. However, it turned out to be a very lucky day to the stock market investors especially in Asia. Reason being that the second Friday the 13th in 2009 had the biggest one-day gain in Asia this year.

Suddenly a ray of hope was shining down on the regional markets and enabling the stock market investors to enjoy the biggest one-day gain. Many traders were rushing back into the stock markets to buy the shares of the battered banks as well as blue chips.

Some people believe that the cause of the abrupt spark in the Asian stock markets is due to the Wall Street’s strong three-day rebound marks which is a key turning point for the global financial markets.

Therefore, you can see that Friday the 13th is not always a bad day and it could turn out to be a very lucky and profitable day instead 🙂

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I found many advertisements promoting economical buffets in today’s newpapers. Obviously, the aim is to attract more people to patronise them during the global economic downturn. 

Most people are cautious about spending especially when the employers cannot guarantee that they won’t retrench their staffs in order to survive in the weakening economy. Workers like us are not very sure we won’t lose our jobs if the economy continues to be bad.

So, it seems to be a luxury to go to restaurants and enjoy good food nowadays. But the fact is that life has to go on and we need to eat food no matter how bad the economy is going to be. We still need to stuff our stomachs with food instead of starving ourselves to death.

If nobody were to spend money, the economy is going to be worst from bad. More jobs will be lost and less jobs created. Therefore, it is very important to stay positive and optimistic. The whole environment will improve if we are not giving up hopes.

So, I still think that we should eat our heart out at buffet since there are plenty of economical buffet promotions out there for us to select from. It’s time to plan for gatherings and keep in touch with friends.

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I received a short notice from my superior who has given me a task to come out with a training session for the skilled workers in February in view of the low activities that we are having at the work place.

In fact, this is a good time for us to conduct trainings for the skilled workers and upgrade their skillset. Besides this, I feel that this is an opportunity for us to do some research on specific topic, polish our presentation and public-speaking skills.

Although today is my rest day, I’m busy working at home to prepare the training material for the coming Monday. In fact, I was staying back late in the office to work on the training material yesterday. Everybody was gone by 7pm and I was the only one left in the office working on the PowerPoint.

Actually, I wanted to leave the office early but I didn’t because I was running short of time to do the preparation for the training. I need to gather all the information so as to help myself to do a good job to deliver the necessary information to my audience.

It was getting late and I was feeling tired so I got no choice but to pack my stuff and bring my work home on Thursday evening.

This is the reason why I’m busy working at home although today is my rest day. What needs to be done has to be done whether or not it is a rest day or a working day.

My goal is to give a good presentation to my audience during the training session on Monday. I have to put in significant effort to achieve my goal. Perhaps I need to sacrifice a bit by working at home on my rest day and weekends 🙂

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My collegaue has the intention to explore business opportunities online as he finds that it is getting insecure to work in a corporation.

One of the reasons is that many companies are down-sizing and retrenching employees nowadays due to the global economic downtown. Nobody can boldly say that he or she is able to keep his/her job for now or a few months down the road.

It is even harder to get a new job outside if you plan to switch job. Furthermore, there are so many people are getting retrenched almost every few weeks if not everyday. A few hundreds of people could be fighting for the same job as you do at job fairs.

So, one of the options to get out of the rat race is to find business opportunities online. This is precisely what my colleague is targeting at right now.

He knows that I have my own Blog and have some internet knowledge so he is thinking maybe I can help him out in this area so as to shorten the learning curve. Well, I will see what I can do to assist him in his online venture.

I think it is always good to think outside the box and envision what we are going to achieve in the near future. The path is lying ahead and we have to make some plans to realise our dreams.

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Friday the 13th is believed to be a bad luck day for the superstitious people. The superstition surrounding Friday the 13th is also believed to be a combination of two separate fears, ie. the fear of the number 13 and the fear of Fridays.

There is a very long and hard to spell or pronounce name given to the fear of Friday the 13th and this name is called paraskevidekatriaphobia. It is pronounced as “pair.uh.skee.vee.dek.uh.tree.uh.foh.bee.uh”.

In fact, paraskevidekatriaphobia is a term based on the Greek words :

Paraskevi — means Friday

Dekatria — means Thirteen

Phobia — indicates Fear

As for Fridays, they have been considered an unlucky day since the medieval times. Superstitious people consider it as bad luck to start anything on a Friday. Things like starting a new job, new journey, giving birth, moving house, marriage, business project and so on.

However, Friday the 13th is considered a lucky day for my family. Reason being that my mom had got a little windfall on Friday the 13th and won $500 SG by betting her luck on the Chap Ji Kee (12-digit lottery) in 1987.

She was so happy and bought us a pet dog from an aquarium shop when the shop owner had decided to sell away his pug dog. In the past, we used to rear fish, tortoise, chicken, guinea pig and rabbit but never had a dog before. You can tell how happy my mom was at that time to have had won the lottery on Friday the 13th.

Thirteen is pronounced as “Surp Sum” in Cantonese and it means “sure alive“. So, 13 is in fact a good and lucky number to our family. Coincidently, our pet dog was born on 13 Jan 1987. This chubby pug dog was so lovely and it brought a lot of happiness, fun and love to our family.

My mom was in deed very lucky to have won the lottery on the Friday the 13th and brought the pug dog home to shover us with lots of love. So, 13 is actually a lucky number.

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After the 10-day break of celebrating Chinese New Year, I got back to work on Monday but with a mind still on holiday 🙂 . Yeah, I have to admit that I’m still in the mood to enjoy the holiday.

But I think this is something quite normal especially after resting for a few days and enjoying the festive holidays with the family. I spent some time cleaning the house, reading books, writing Blog posts, playing Mahjong, surfing the net, watching motivational video clips online and so on.

I was not thinking much about work except for some occasional checking of corporate webmail to make sure that I did not miss out any urgent emails that required my attention especically those emails sent by the customers.

I would say those were the stressless days being spent at home during the Chinese New Year long holidays. I really enjoyed it to feel free from pressure. Fortunately, there are not much activities at work either. So, I think I can remain at the stress-free state for a while 😉

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