Dare to Dream

Every year most companies will have their annual dinner. It is the chance for people to get dressed to the nines and have a good time together outside of the office. Some have fancy themes: Bollywood night, Arabian nights, Latin Salsa, Beach Luau... etc. Others are just glamourous red-carpet-esque events.

We do that too...


Da Malaysian Dream Team


My ex-monkey :p


Every man's fantasy... hot nurses! ;-)


Me & my renal gals!!






Da man we will all miss, sobs


Charlie's angels?


Vivian & moi


da man who signs our paycheques... our finance mgr flanked by 2 pretty gals

But... instead of having dress themes, we have inpiration themes. Every year, our director shares stories about inspirational people that motivates him to be the best and in turn cascade down that inspirational feeling down to all of us at the country level as well. Last year's theme was Reaching New Heights. This year's is Dare to Dream.

Rather than setting a ridiculously high target and commanding us to do it... the leaders have put it in such a lovely way... inspiring us to achieve the company's objectives. It's not "we need to make more money to keep shareholders happy" but "we can build outstanding careers, make a meaningful difference to patients' lives & to society by creating more jobs as our business grows." Clever, very clever! Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?

We even had an inspirational guest:


Mark Inglis


Mark flanked by my boss & me

He lost both his legs from the knee down from frostbite, being stranded up an icy cold mountain for 14 days!! Did he wallow in his own self pity party? No! Did he give up his mountaineering dreams??? Absolutely NO!!

Mark conquered Mount Everest without legs!! It was not an easy task at all even for normal able bodied people like us. On the way down... his knee stumps were bleeding buckets due to the pressure of his weight on his prostetic leg sockets! He still climbed up to the summit and made it back down to share his story with his family, with the world! He even used his super inspirational story to help other people who are unfortunate and started Limbs 4 All.

What is our daily struggles compared to that???

I don't think anyone in the room felt stressed by the new sky high targets for the company. Everyone came out inspired to outdo that target set. Myself included. Eventhough I've been in the company for 5 years, I am still impressed. Here's to a great 2010 where dreams become reality!

Useless Maxis vouchers

Just received this from Maxis in the mail several days ago...


pretty wrapping


pretty booklet, printed on expensive-looking paper


quite a lot of pages too

Let's see what are the vouchers inside??? Does it really matter if they were vouchers from shops that you would go to when....


one expires 31st Jan 2010


another one expiring 31st Jan 2010

as I looked on... it gets even better...


31st Dec 2009!!


Another 31st Dec 2009

Then what is the point!!! What a big fat waste of perfectly good trees and more of the earth's resources!!! Don't these people at least think first then do? Having customer retention programs for the sake of having isn't going to help you retain customers. In fact, it makes it worse when they do moronic things like this. So, Maxis flers... if you are reading this, take this as a big fat customer complaint!!!

Judging a book by its cover

"Don't judge a book by its cover"... a common advice people give. But how many are actually practitioners of this phrase? Saying and practising are 2 completely different things. In corporate lingo: a plan is only as good as the implementation. They tell us not to take things at face value, must always uncover the whole situation, must analyse... blah blah blah.

But when it comes to their image in the corporate world, they still judge people very much by the packaging.

What sparked this topic? Well, recently there has been a terrible crisis at my workplace that has gotten my entire team pretty emotional, myself included. While my team & I were doing our job, extremely well I would say, given the situation... I still expressed how I felt to the top management of the region on behalf of the team.

What I got wasn't a pat on the back for being so passionate about my job, or being so involved and committed. The only speck they saw was that I was putting emotions into the job, I was not "controlled" and that is interpreted as immature & that if I ever wanted to move any higher up the organisation I must need to learn to act more mature.

Definition of mature: "Of, relating to, or characteristic of full development, either mental or physical"
If you have developed fully, mentally in this case and have very sound and wise judgment... does it ever mention in the definition that;
- you need to be purged of all emotions??
- Or that you need to be less human??
- Or that you must conform to the norm??

My stand on this is that having emotions about your work means that you are not doing it out of routine or force. It means that you genuinely have passion for it. Passion drives excellence in my vocab.

If this line of career means that I have to be less human, less passionate and less me... then I think it will not be the path that I would want go along for long. Item #12 on my wishlist is juz itching moved up a few notches. Luckily, for now I have a very human boss. So, I can still be me for now. Maybe I don't want to go up any further anyway, coz I want to keep my humanity. I want to keep my emotions. I want to keep my passion.

So, lantak la these people!! They're miles away anyway. I'm still going to do my job with passion for now and be darn good at it! I'm still going to carry my pink organiser, bling bling kitty hanging on my phone and dress like a diva to work. I'm still got be transparent with my emotions. I'm still gonna live a public life on FB. I'm still gonna be the one and only ME!!

Too bad if you don't like the cover of this book... coz it's all good stuff on the inside!! :p

Tong Sampah, where art thou?

Went to Chee Cheong Kai wt hubby for d infamously spicy grilled fish & seafood the other day. As always, this place brings back a very nostalgic feel of KL in the past. Still remember the very same shop my family used to go and buy Chinese New Year decorations without fail every year. The shop is still around, I just wonder what they sell the rest of the year????

Anyway, after having a nice cool cup of soy bean milk... I was looking for a place to throw away the empty cup. Mana tong sampah???

As the government tells people to take care of the city's cleanliness and not litter, they forgot that in order for people to comply to that, they would first need to provide more trash cans around the city.

As we looked through every corner and every street... all we saw was:



DIY tong sampah a.k.a. lantai??


Bukit sampah?


Trolley sampah?

Oi!!! Tong Sampah!! Where art thou?

Alas, upon walking out of the Kiew Brothers yoke gon shop... we saw it, standing mightily at the corner. You can almost hear the heavenly hosts sing and an aura of light surrounding it.


The one and only Tong Sampah in Petaling Street!!!

p.s.: DBKL flers, if you are reading this, please please, invest on some tong sampahs around the city ok?