The boys took on the organizing committee after been voted out by the gals. They chose bowling and of cause a scrumptious meal. Well one thing they forgot to ask the hotel for a confirmation number, ended up we had to sit at special tables outside.

I haven’t been bowling for ages since I have children. I felt satisfied that I got an average of 90s, although a few shots go into longkang. Our team came in second and got some vouchers for shopping.

After the tiring event, we all had seafood buffet in E&O hotel. The food variety is not bad but the presentation of the food needs to improve. The salmon were not arranged and cut nicely. In Cantonese, it looks like “yat pat yeh”. Well we waited for 30 minutes before they start serving. I guess we went there too early. I didn’t waste time but took shots on all the food. The seafood buffet was RM65++.

Have a guess how many round I went? Oh no, need more running on my treadmill!!

Yeah no more major meetings until next year!! I am also off for the year.

Someone tag me on this but I cannot remember who. Anyway here is my notebook wallpaper. Yes, you guess it. It has pictures of my children when they were younger. With this wallpaper, every time I host a meeting and share my desktop, the US folks will ask me about my children. It is a cool way to share my personal stuff and a great ice-breaker.

Hey I finally arrived in Colorado and the snow welcomes me. YES it is snowing! Wow, I survived 15 hours flight. First stop was Singapore, Changi Airport. I was pretty frus because last 1 hour they change the departure gate. It was from 1 end to the other end. My legs were pretty tired. I found this free foot massage by the departure gate. It was fun and after the massage my legs felt better.

Next stop was LA, I was so tired. If not, I could just pop by Disneyland and get some gift for my children. No I didn’t. I slept in the hotel. No Jet lag for me. I had a morning flight out to Colorado. In the LA airport, things were done efficiently. They have so many rows of DIY check in counter. All you have to do is punch your confirmation flight number and a ticket will be printed out. 1-2 staff will go around, putting tags on your bag and carried it to the conveyer.

My dinner – Baby Back Ribs – Simply Delicious

DIY Checkin Counters:

Snowy Airport:

When I arrived at Colorado Springs, it was snowing. I was worried because I had to drive to my hotel. Yeap, I had to pick up “right hand” right here. It was aright as I arrived to the hotel safely, was about 30 mins away from the airport. I didn’t get lost, shows that the GPS was working.

Wow, I stayed near to the Pikes Peak. The view of the snowy mountains is simply beautiful. I will post more pictures here when I have the chance to take it. Now I wish my family was here. By the way, my husband just returned from US last monday and I had to fly on Tuesday. It was a back to back trip. Next time, we will plan for the entire family to go. May my wish come true.

How many of you who have left school or college or university but still get haunted by exams? I thought I could escape from it but it seems not.

I have lots of nightmares about exams. The dreams were always about the exam time is running out and I have completed all the questions or maybe got stuck in the first few questions. A few times, I dreamt I had missed one box of those objective sheet and all the following answers were out of sync. I even dreamt that I totally forgot to study for the subject and went into the exam hall point blank. These dreams really give me sweaty palms. Anyone can explain or interpret why I am having these dreams?

Come to think of it, I never fail any subject in my University time. However I still do not understand why I have this exam phobia. There is one time when my monthly test was a total disaster. The test was simple, it was mathematics, I had to build up the answers with the formula given. I got nervous and started with the wrong figure, all the figures after that was wrong. Got an egg for that test. Fortunately they took the best 5 out of those monthly tests to add to the finals.

Enough about the nightmares because it will become a reality soon, let’s hope not. I will be getting myself certified with basic ITIL. It is a requirement for me to take it. With this course, I need go for lectures for 3 days, study, burn midnight oil, no shopping and sit for an hour paper at the end. :wall: It will make me very nervous. Jazzmint, who is already basic ITIL certified, send me some mock up exams papers and answers. It helps a lot to bring down my anxiousness.

Yesterday I was back to work. A lot of friends asked me why not take more MCs? If I take more, the load of backlog will probably kill me. Everything seems urgent and needs to be done like yesterday. Fortunately while I was on MC, I cleared some emails. I am a person who doesn’t like my Inbox to fill up. My Inbox must only have 10-15 emails.

I really do not understand why people can have 200-300 emails in the inbox. How do they ever find what they need? One of my colleagues is like that. She will ask you to resend or forward it to her again if she cannot find it. :eh: It will add more garbage to her Inbox. Besides that, you will never get a quick response from her.

Anyway, besides work, friends will come around to kepoh. I didn’t tell many that I had a surgery. Now it is obvious as I was not in the office for 2 weeks and had a scar around my neck. They will curiously come and ask me what’s wrong, what is thyroid and look at me as if I was not normal. I am normal with missing thyroid gland, no big deal. By the way, I had to take long term medication, 1 small pill a day and visit the doc long term, few months once.

A funny thing happened. It started when someone very kind and thoughtful ordered something from the Net, to send me a get well soon gift with flowers. The gift was sent to my house while I was MCing. The flowers & gifts were not very presentable and I suppose the florist was not very professional. Imagine that, the price tag was still on the gift. What would you do if you were me? Tell your friend about it? Keep quiet, after all it is the thought that counts. I tell you all about it in the next post.

A year ago, I changed from reporting to a US boss to a local lady boss. Nothing against lady boss, but this one was my friend who was very much my senior. I respect her for taking up that position without any in depth technical skills. Anyway, I started to feel so confine under her leadership. She likes to breathe down people’s neck too as she likes micro managing. She requested everyone to do status reports that everyone really hate. Anyway, she never read it, just add to her collection of junk mail. At the end of the year, she asked us to write our accomplishments, which is already in the status report. All the paperwork with no productivity. I really drag going to work, every day.

Previously my boss was supportive of me working from home, but she had problem with it. Some times I have telecons with US/EU folks as I am in a global role, at odd hours, sometimes very early in the mornings or very late at nights. I preferred to work at home the next day. She thinks otherwise.

I was given trivial task under her leadership, she even wanted me to do programming, which I got out of many years ago. Hey, think about it, in my line of work, who is the champion in programming? It is the workers from India. If your job is heavily on programming, you will be replaced. Unless she wants me to be replaced… :think: By the way, most of my work is around project management.

One of my other role, which was new, and most of the projects was under the management of my lady boss’ manager. He is more understanding. In fact I like him better. He looks at performance at the end of the day and doesn’t worry about minor issues. I successfully help the company with 20% cost savings. Planned resource capacity to support more front line work. I got a big reward from that which I received today. 😀

The happiest moment came this week, when my lady boss told me I am reporting back to the US boss. Yippy!!!! :dance: :dance: :dance:

No more status reports, no more breathing down my neck and most of all, I can work from home more often.