Ellipsis [...]

Another buddy at work leaves the company today, to return to his home country possibly for good. Just over a year ago I was having a hard time understanding his heavily accented English, but after sharing a cramped cubicle for months, we became fast friends, sharing many a good laugh. I remember introducing mee bakso to him at the foodcourt we frequented for lunch, and he liked it so much he ate it for two days in a row. Even after I moved back to the company office, we still had to work with each other closely. Come to think of it, he’s the co-worker I’ve spent the most time speaking to on the phone – ever! Haha. And still we would chatter away whenever we met up at the occassional company function or at team get-togethers.

So many memories.

You will be missed, buddy.

Lately, I’ve been feeling increasingly dissatisfied with work. I believe it’s the result of the cumulation of many (seemingly) little events occurring recently, which is severely affecting my normally positive outlook on things. Right now, I’m just sick & tired of the way things work in the company. I’ve always held out hope that it will get better, but it’s been more than 3 years since I started out here & nothing much has changed except the staff. And that hope is fading.
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Finally, Contract & Agency Law is OVER! Submitted the end-of-course assessment earlier today – via courier as usual, being the lazy arse I am about travelling to school. The second term has rolled around before I know it, and being too caught up in mid-semester deadlines, I haven’t done ANY readings for the upcoming modules. Sigh.

Operations Management is a level 3 module, and it doesn’t look light, if you get what I mean. I printed out the lecture notes today, and the first set has 117 slides. Yes, one hundred & freakin’ seventeen. How the hell to cover that in a 3-hour seminar? I also received two new books for the second part of IT Project Management. The cool thing is, one of them is actually the PMBOK® Guide! This book is like, the bible of the project management world, used by project managers worldwide. This module is really worth the price I paid for it. Not only are the resources provided excellent, I’m learning things I can apply to my job right away.

Speaking of which, I’m not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow after the long break. Never mind that it wasn’t really a break; just a break from work so I could concentrate on school. But still, it helped to change gears for awhile. I’m almost afraid to check my work email after ignoring it for 5 days, so let’s leave that till tomorrow, shall we? Sigh. I wonder how many hundred emails will be waiting for me to sift through. At least it’s only 2 days to the weekend.

Back to readings now. Yeah, I’m severely lacking a life.

Bought the exam voucher for the Sun Certified Web Component Developer for the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 certification (woah, what a mouthful). It’s been almost 4 years since I passed the Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform, Standard Edition 1.4 certification, so I’ll need to spend some real effort getting up to speed for this one. The plan is to start serious studying in the second week of November, then schedule the exam for end of January 2009, before the academic semester begins.

By the way, this is part of the “top secret” short-term career plan I mentioned before.

Hmm, am I putting too much on my plate?

• Just splurged close to US$90 on a couple of DVDs I’ve wanted for months: 즐거운 인생 First Press Limited Edition DVD and 한성별곡 Director’s Cut DVD. Shucks. Where the hell is my self-restraint?! Jannah, you still want that iPhone / iPod Touch, do you?
• Speaking of which, iPhone 3G is landing in exactly 8 days! Oh gosh, if I end up getting one, please let there not be long queues.
• I really need to book a hotel room for the HK trip, soon.
• Why are IM clients on Windows so damn ugly???
• Going Turkish for team dinner tonight & Italian tomorrow with TKGians, woot!
• I swear, replying emails take up more energy than coding. X_x
• StreetDirectory.com has their maps back, yay!

Time to take a look back at what I dreamt up six months ago.

Jannah’s goals for 2008

1. Know 700 Korean words by end 2008. My current Korean vocabulary “word bank” stands at 562 words, and I know there are plenty of words not recorded, likely because I haven’t even realised I know them. 700 is easily reachable within the year. Should I change it to 1000 then? Heh.
2. Read at least one book a month. Shame on me. I haven’t finished a single book this year! I think it has to do with the fact that I read mostly non-fiction, like travel, finance & IT. These books tend to be picked up whenever I feel like reading on the subject, and they’re hardly meant to be read from cover to cover, so I don’t end up “finishing” any single book. Maybe I should just read more fiction.
3. Reach assistant manager position by end 2008. I’m working on getting there. We’ll see.
4. Get my salary increased by 15% by end 2008. DONE!
5. Have at least $5000 in savings by mid 2008 and $7000 by end 2008. DONE! The $5000-by-mid-year goal, I mean. I’m just going to let the money sit in the bank as my emergency fund (a liquid asset, as the finance people call it). Eventual target amount for this fund: at least 6 times my current monthly salary. I think I can easily have $7000 or more by the end of the year, so this one is looking good.
6. Get my GPA up to at least 4.5 by end 2008. Considering last semester’s exam results, this looks pretty bleak unless I drop everything else & just study next semester. Haha. So I’m revising this goal to: Get my GPA up to at least 4.2 by end 2008. Imma work my ass off next semester!

Goal #4: Get my salary increased by 15% by end 2008. Check check CHECK!

My manager gave me the much-awaited letter yesterday. I already knew, as we had our salaries credited with the respective increments included, but was looking forward to the official announcement anyway. The funny thing is, before handing me the letter, my boss was saying that the company didn’t do too well (financially) last year, so the pay adjustment might not be much, maybe less than 10%. I was like, Eh? What is he talking about? And when I opened the letter, it said 15.4% increment. Haha. I guess Finance decided in the end to give that much.

So, I’m very happy. My family is happy for me, which makes me even happier.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe how much I’ve progressed since my career started three years ago. Back then I didn’t have any concrete goals or direction, career-wise. Luckily, somewhere along the way, I found out where I wanted to go, and here I am heading down that road with my heart in the right place.

My job scope will slowly become less & less technical from now on, so I’ll be spending some time formulating my career plan for the next one year or so. Actually, I’ve already started! It’s going to take plenty of time & work. But at least, I know I’ll be happy doing it.

Maybe one day I’ll reveal this top secret (haha, as if!) plan of mine here. Hee.