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It was already eight o’clock by the time I stepped out of the office. For the past two weeks, I had been seeing the moon on my way home. Yes, I had been working for twelve hours a day. I remembered that during my interview, I asked Rose what were the working hours like. She laughed and replied “Eight thirty to five thirty. By right”. It did not take more than a month for me to figure out what the laughter and “by right” were supposed to mean. To leave the office at six was a luxury; to leave at seven was normal.
From Suntec City, I walked through the City Link underground shopping tunnel to Citihall MRT station. It was in utter chaos as usual. The crowd rushing from City Link split into two crowds – one towards the MRT station and the other towards the Raffles City shopping center. The crowd who had just alighted from the train split into another two crowds - one towards City Link and the other towards the Raffles City shopping center. The crowd coming down the escalator from Raffles City shopping center split into yet another two crowds – one towards the MRT station and the other towards City Link. If a coin was dropped onto the ground, it would be kicked and lost in the blink of an eye.
I barged through the chaotic crowd and walked briskly through the MRT station gate. I then took the escalator down to the station platform to join other kindred souls who were rushing home with an empty stomach and an empty brain. A few minutes later, a crowded train arrived to throw out an excited crowd rushing to shops and dinners, so that it could be refilled by an enervated crowd who just wanted to find a seat and sleep all the way home.
I had never considered myself an agile or lucky person, so I was not surprised that I could not find a seat on the train again. Well, the Health Promotion Board recommended that thirty minutes of exercise a day is good for health right? Hopefully the act of balancing in a moving train for thirty minutes could be considered as a good exercise. Just when I was going to plug in the earphones and listen to my MD player, somebody tapped me on my shoulder.
I turned around to see a guy neatly dressed in an ocean blue wrinkle-free long sleeve shirt and a pair of black trousers, and holding a black document bag. His smile was as slick as his greased-back hair and Giorgio Armani spectacles. When such a fresh and energetic guy was found in a train leaving town area on a weekday evening, he was either on the way to propose to his girlfriend, or to sell something.
This guy looked familiar and I guessed we must have known each other at some point in time because he was calling my name.
“Beng! Have you forgotten about me already?” Mr. looks-familiar grinned.
“No, how would I? How’s life? You are looking better than you used to!”
That was a safe line. Everybody believes that at any point in life they are always looking better than how they were previously.
“Yeh, glad I left the company. Too much pressure. How about you? Are you still there?” said Mr. seems-like-an-ex-colleague.
“Yap, nowhere to run.”
“So how’s everybody at the Latin America FX team? Is Simon Hatcher still the head?” asked Mr. so-and-so-from-Latin-America-FX-team.
“Yeh, he’s still there alive and kicking asses. So what have you been doing?”
“Oh, I’m now in Marketing. Here’s my name card!”
The card read “Peter Sim, Marketing Consultant, Livelife Inc.” So he was not on his way to present a marriage proposal.
For the next fifteen minutes, Mr. Sim was very concerned with the water that I entrusted my life to. He was worried that the unclean water that passed through dirty and rusty water pipes before reaching my tap could cost me my kidneys, lungs and livers and put me in a grievous old age. And with the reservoirs opening up to water activities, he could not bring himself to believe the government’s claim that those water activities will not affect our drinking water. He thanked God that it was really my lucky day because I had to meet him on the train. This grave peril of losing my organs because of drinking water could be averted easily by purchasing a water filter that cost merely over a thousand dollars from him. In fact, if I were to join his company as one of the marketing consultants, I could have further discounts that already very reasonably priced water filter.
“Beng, think about it. If you join our company as a freelance marketing consultant, not only can you buy our products at great discounts, you can earn substantial commissions!”
“Err… Peter, you know how busy my work can be right?”
“You don’t have to worry about that at all! As a freelance marketing consultant, you can always work only when you’re free and there’s no pressure in meeting any quota at all!”
“Err… I really don’t think I’ve got the time to do any freelancing.”
“Oh… well, never mind, I tell you what. Since we’re such great pals, I must get you the discount for the water filter. Just between the two of us, I’ll pretend that I’m the one buying the water filter, and you can get the member’s privileged discount for it! How about that, pal?”
I told him that I was very grateful, however very unfortunately, I had already bought a water filter just months ago. Of course I did not tell him that my water filter was a simple one that cost me less than a hundred dollars. Instead, I told him that I paid a few hundred dollars for that new water filter and I could not just throw it away. I did not expect him to get even more concerned and more worked up.
“No, you don’t understand. Those water filters that are selling in the market are dangerous! They can’t do a clean job in removing the debris from the water! And worse, sometimes the chemicals that are used in these filters actually pollute the water further!”
“Erm… but the one that I bought was certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a Microbiological Water Purifier.” I knew I read these terms somewhere in the Forbes magazine.
“But Beng, how can you trust something that is certified by the U.S.? Everybody can be certified by them! As someone working in the water treatment industry, I can tell you the standards set by these U.S. agencies can’t be trusted. That’s why our water filters are more superior. Our company’s water filters are certified by the United Kingdom!”
Before he could continue to brag about how the new desalination plant had initially wanted to use their company’s water filter, but because their filters were so out of stock they had to reject the plant, I told him that I had reached my station and I needed to go.
“Hey Beng, you have forgotten to give me your name card!”
“Oh, I ran out of name cards. But no worries, I’ve got yours.”
“Oh yes, call me okay?” Mr. Sim reminded me before the train door closed.
I waved him goodbye as the train moved away from the station. I looked up at the station sign. Yio Chu Kang. Not so bad, I was only a few stations away from my destination. Patiently, I waited for the next train.
Partially due to the trend of retrenchments a few years back, more people had joined the multi-level marketing workforce. The marketing consultants from these multi-level marketing companies will recruit new people to either buy into the program or to buy products that are totally unheard of but grossly overpriced. The new recruits will then recruit additional people who will also buy into the program or buy the products. The whole process just goes on. That is where the word ‘multi-level’ comes from. As for the word ‘marketing’, they might be using the wrong word.
All marketing consultants are promised that if they could create multiple layers of sellers under them, the amount of accrued commissions could lead them to riches that they could never dream of. But the sad truth is only the big boss who started the program is really making loads of money. All others have spent their commissions buying bulks of those overpriced products themselves.
Finally I reached the station I had intended to alight. As I walked down the escalator, I was approached by a well dressed lady holding a notepad and pen on one hand, and a cup of colored straws on the other.
“Hi, could you spare me a minute?” the lady asked politely.
“No,” I had already spared somebody else my minutes.
“Just a quick one, okay? We’re offering a free lucky draw!”
‘Free’ lucky draw? Since when must we pay for lucky draws?
“What is it about?”
“I’m from ABC Insurance and we are having a road show promotion on our latest insurance products. If you managed to draw the lucky straw among these other straws in the cup, you could win yourself free accident cover for a year!” she said avidly.
“It’s okay. I’m already covered by other insurance policies.”
“But why don’t you give the lucky draw a shoot? Just draw a straw from this cup! It’s free anyway!”
“No, really, it’s okay. Thanks!” With that, I walked away briskly before she could continue.
As I walked past their booth area, I saw a couple of tables and some people really talking to those insurance agents. But who knows? They could be only interested in getting that one year free accident cover. Perhaps I was just been too skeptical, but I could not understand how a tired and hungry person who had just finished work and was on the way home suddenly had an urge to buy insurance from somebody he/she had just met for the first time, on the street.
Then my mobile phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is that Mr. Tan Ah Beng?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, I’m Larry calling from Relax Resorts and I’ve got good news for you! You’ve just won yourself a free trip for two to Phuket from our lucky draw!”
“Another lucky draw?”
“Huh? Sorry?”
“Never mind, so what’s the catch?”
“Oh, there’s no condition attached. You’ll just have to attend a short travel presentation at our office and…”
“I’m not interested,” I cut him off and hung up the phone.
It was one of those timeshare companies again. They will lure you to their holiday resorts presentations that last for hours and pressurize you to sign up a twenty thousand dollars package that allows you to stay in holiday resorts that are usually far away from all amenities and attractions.
After dinner, I switched on my notebook. I was planning to get into eBay. Since everybody seemed to have something to sell, maybe I should try selling some of my old VCDs as well.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Chapter 15: People Who Have Problem Communicating
Maintaining relationships in a company is not an easy task, especially if you have got hundred over colleagues. It is true that not everybody can be the gregarious one who has no difficulty talking to anybody about anything. Not everybody can be the handsome/pretty guy/gal who is admired and liked by most. Not everybody can be the charismatic one who has the power to influences and motivates. However, we should at least try not to be the one that is loathed, avoided, or worse, cursed by all.
In a large company like ours, it is almost unavoidable to have some fellow colleagues who like to do things that allowed them to be loathed, avoided or cursed by others. The slick ones did those things due to office politics, the insensitive ones did those things because they thought that something that works for them will work for others as well, while the blur ones did those things because they just did not know what they were doing.
Organizing meetings and conference calls is one place where these people go wrong. They are usually organizing meetings and conference calls at the wrong time like nine o’clock (which means the participants have to be at the office before their usual time), one o’clock (which means that the participants have to rush through their lunches) and five o’clock (which means that the participants have to go home late). Unfortunately, there were two culprits in our team who were guilty of organizing meetings and conference calls at the wrong time. They were Rose and Dawn. Both loved to organize meetings and conference calls at one o’clock.
One day, I received an email meeting invitation from Dawn for a one o’clock meeting. She followed up with a message on the MSN Messenger, as usual…
“hi, I’m organizing a meeting tomoro for the completion of the online trading project”
“yeh, I saw ur email”
“the meeting’s FYI only, but I think it’s good for u to attend. And anyway, big boss is attending.”
“but why is the meeting scheduled at one?”
“oh, becos big boss has another meeting at two”
“are everybody busy attending some other meetings the day after tomoro?”
“no, everybody seems to be rather free the day after tomoro”
“then why didn’t u arrange the meeting to be on the day after tomoro?”
“oh, becos the project has finally been completed and so I thought it’ll be great to let everybody know more abt it asap”
If Dawn was bad with her time management, Rose was worse. She loved to organize a meeting or conference call that ended at twelve o’clock and another one that started at one o’clock. To make matters worse, most of the time, she would have talked so much that the twelve o’clock meeting or conference call would end at twelve thirty. This meant that we had only got enough time to grab a bun for lunch before the one o’clock one started.
And Rose loved to organize meetings and conference calls. Any product launch, any change management, any other matters warranted a meeting or at least a conference call. To Rose, emails were not the most efficient way to communicate. She believed that meetings and conference calls would have allowed all parties to ask any queries that they might not send via emails.
One day, Ju emailed the team regarding the new branding that the company was incorporating in a few months’ time. As usual, Rose requested her to organize a conference call to explain to everybody about the new branding. So during the conference call…
“Hi, everybody, let’s start a Netmeeting. My IP address is 25.120.140.34,” said Ju.
“Okay, I’ve shared my desktop. Could everybody see my screen?” asked Ju.
“Yes,” replied by some.
“What you see now is the new branding that we’ll be using starting from March. As you can see from the screen, these are the new colors and fonts to be used in your PowerPoint slides. And this is the new font and size to be used in your Words documents. Any questions?”
“What’s the difference between the PowerPoint slide that you show here and the one that has been emailed to us?” asked Choi.
“It’s the same slide,” replied Ju.
“Oh…”
“Any other questions? If no, let’s end the conference call now.”
“No questions?” Ju asked again. “Okay, thanks everyone for attending, bye!”
Attending a meeting or conference call scheduled at the wrong time of the day, or attending one that is not even required, may leave you feeling miffed. However, when some people have problem complying with email etiquettes, it can really make you feel exasperated.
Some people may be highly educated and holding a high post with great responsibility. However, they could be dafter than you can imagine when it comes to using emails. One day, a Capital Markets colleague sent out an email to a distribution list which was believed to comprise of email addresses of all colleagues whose job were related to FX. But apparently, some colleagues were mistakenly included in the list, so these colleagues replied to this Capital Markets colleague that they should not be included in the distribution list. The problem was, these colleagues had chosen to click on “reply to all”…
Colleague A replied all: “Please remove me from the distribution list. I’m not working with FX products and this message does not concern me.”
Colleague B replied all: “Please just reply to the sender instead of clicking on reply to all.”
Sender of the email replied all: “Colleague A, you have been removed from the distribution list.”
Colleague C replied all: “Please remove me from the distribution list. I’m not working with FX products and I don’t need to know about these messages.”
Sender of the email replied all: “Colleague C, you have been removed from the distribution list.”
Colleague D replied all: “Please do not click on reply to all! You people are jamming everybody’s mail!”
Usually, the process would be repeated till everybody in the distribution list had received more than a hundred emails and they will be busy deleting these emails throughout the whole day in order to clear their mailboxes.
There are others who are not jamming mailboxes due to their stupidity. There are the people who do it in the name of office politics. These are the ones who will email to his/her boss, everybody else in his/her department and anyone else who is loosely related to his/her works about every single piece of task they have accomplished. These are also the ones who will email you about an escalation due to your mistakes or your inability to notice the problem, and cc the email to his/her boss, your boss and every other person in your department.
One day, both KZ and I had a meeting and a conference call back to back. By the time our one o’clock meeting finished, we were fifteen minutes late for a two o’clock conference call. And sitting in our mailboxes was an email from the conference call organizer…
“Hey KZ and Beng, where are you? We are waiting for you guys!”
This email was cc’ed to everybody who was attending the conference call, including our boss.
Then there are some people who love to email out queries and tasks five minutes before they log off for the day. I had received emails at six o’clock from people who had queries for the following day’s nine o’clock meeting. Apparently they expected me to stay back to answer their queries so that they could read them in the morning before they attend the meeting. These type of things happened even if the meeting invitation and agenda were sent out a week ago.
There was also this colleague from another department who loved to delegate jobs to her subordinates via email minutes before she left the office. I was skeptical about the kind of work quality produced when her subordinates had to stay back to finish the jobs. Besides the problem of low morale, because she was not there to guide her subordinates when they had doubts while doing the jobs, wrong assumptions might have been taken.
Using MSN Messenger the wrong way could cause a person to be loathed or avoided too. There are some people who acted like mosquitoes. If you ignore their presence even after they have circled and make noise around your ears, they will sting you. These are the ones who are unable to understand that you are too busy to reply to their messages, so they will send you a nudge once in every few minutes. But if you could bear with the shaking screens, these people are only pure annoying.
There are another group of people who acted like houseflies. No matter how hard you try to ignore their presence, they will continue to make noise around your ears, or worse, fly around your nose. These are the ones who are determined to send you a message against all odds. Dawn was one such person.
One day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “busy”. But Dawn still sent me a message: “are u busy?”
Another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “be right back”. Dawn was working from home, but she still sent me a message: “hey, where are you?”
And another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “away”. Dawn was working from home, but she still sent me a message: “hey, are you away?”
Yet on another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “on the phone”. Dawn was in the office and she could see my headset on my head, but she still sent me a message: “hey, are you on conf call?”
Finally, I blocked Dawn from my MSN Messenger. A few minutes later, my phone rang and I picked up. It was Dawn.
“Hey Beng, is there something wrong with your MSN Messenger? How come you’re offline?”
In a large company like ours, it is almost unavoidable to have some fellow colleagues who like to do things that allowed them to be loathed, avoided or cursed by others. The slick ones did those things due to office politics, the insensitive ones did those things because they thought that something that works for them will work for others as well, while the blur ones did those things because they just did not know what they were doing.
Organizing meetings and conference calls is one place where these people go wrong. They are usually organizing meetings and conference calls at the wrong time like nine o’clock (which means the participants have to be at the office before their usual time), one o’clock (which means that the participants have to rush through their lunches) and five o’clock (which means that the participants have to go home late). Unfortunately, there were two culprits in our team who were guilty of organizing meetings and conference calls at the wrong time. They were Rose and Dawn. Both loved to organize meetings and conference calls at one o’clock.
One day, I received an email meeting invitation from Dawn for a one o’clock meeting. She followed up with a message on the MSN Messenger, as usual…
“hi, I’m organizing a meeting tomoro for the completion of the online trading project”
“yeh, I saw ur email”
“the meeting’s FYI only, but I think it’s good for u to attend. And anyway, big boss is attending.”
“but why is the meeting scheduled at one?”
“oh, becos big boss has another meeting at two”
“are everybody busy attending some other meetings the day after tomoro?”
“no, everybody seems to be rather free the day after tomoro”
“then why didn’t u arrange the meeting to be on the day after tomoro?”
“oh, becos the project has finally been completed and so I thought it’ll be great to let everybody know more abt it asap”
If Dawn was bad with her time management, Rose was worse. She loved to organize a meeting or conference call that ended at twelve o’clock and another one that started at one o’clock. To make matters worse, most of the time, she would have talked so much that the twelve o’clock meeting or conference call would end at twelve thirty. This meant that we had only got enough time to grab a bun for lunch before the one o’clock one started.
And Rose loved to organize meetings and conference calls. Any product launch, any change management, any other matters warranted a meeting or at least a conference call. To Rose, emails were not the most efficient way to communicate. She believed that meetings and conference calls would have allowed all parties to ask any queries that they might not send via emails.
One day, Ju emailed the team regarding the new branding that the company was incorporating in a few months’ time. As usual, Rose requested her to organize a conference call to explain to everybody about the new branding. So during the conference call…
“Hi, everybody, let’s start a Netmeeting. My IP address is 25.120.140.34,” said Ju.
“Okay, I’ve shared my desktop. Could everybody see my screen?” asked Ju.
“Yes,” replied by some.
“What you see now is the new branding that we’ll be using starting from March. As you can see from the screen, these are the new colors and fonts to be used in your PowerPoint slides. And this is the new font and size to be used in your Words documents. Any questions?”
“What’s the difference between the PowerPoint slide that you show here and the one that has been emailed to us?” asked Choi.
“It’s the same slide,” replied Ju.
“Oh…”
“Any other questions? If no, let’s end the conference call now.”
“No questions?” Ju asked again. “Okay, thanks everyone for attending, bye!”
Attending a meeting or conference call scheduled at the wrong time of the day, or attending one that is not even required, may leave you feeling miffed. However, when some people have problem complying with email etiquettes, it can really make you feel exasperated.
Some people may be highly educated and holding a high post with great responsibility. However, they could be dafter than you can imagine when it comes to using emails. One day, a Capital Markets colleague sent out an email to a distribution list which was believed to comprise of email addresses of all colleagues whose job were related to FX. But apparently, some colleagues were mistakenly included in the list, so these colleagues replied to this Capital Markets colleague that they should not be included in the distribution list. The problem was, these colleagues had chosen to click on “reply to all”…
Colleague A replied all: “Please remove me from the distribution list. I’m not working with FX products and this message does not concern me.”
Colleague B replied all: “Please just reply to the sender instead of clicking on reply to all.”
Sender of the email replied all: “Colleague A, you have been removed from the distribution list.”
Colleague C replied all: “Please remove me from the distribution list. I’m not working with FX products and I don’t need to know about these messages.”
Sender of the email replied all: “Colleague C, you have been removed from the distribution list.”
Colleague D replied all: “Please do not click on reply to all! You people are jamming everybody’s mail!”
Usually, the process would be repeated till everybody in the distribution list had received more than a hundred emails and they will be busy deleting these emails throughout the whole day in order to clear their mailboxes.
There are others who are not jamming mailboxes due to their stupidity. There are the people who do it in the name of office politics. These are the ones who will email to his/her boss, everybody else in his/her department and anyone else who is loosely related to his/her works about every single piece of task they have accomplished. These are also the ones who will email you about an escalation due to your mistakes or your inability to notice the problem, and cc the email to his/her boss, your boss and every other person in your department.
One day, both KZ and I had a meeting and a conference call back to back. By the time our one o’clock meeting finished, we were fifteen minutes late for a two o’clock conference call. And sitting in our mailboxes was an email from the conference call organizer…
“Hey KZ and Beng, where are you? We are waiting for you guys!”
This email was cc’ed to everybody who was attending the conference call, including our boss.
Then there are some people who love to email out queries and tasks five minutes before they log off for the day. I had received emails at six o’clock from people who had queries for the following day’s nine o’clock meeting. Apparently they expected me to stay back to answer their queries so that they could read them in the morning before they attend the meeting. These type of things happened even if the meeting invitation and agenda were sent out a week ago.
There was also this colleague from another department who loved to delegate jobs to her subordinates via email minutes before she left the office. I was skeptical about the kind of work quality produced when her subordinates had to stay back to finish the jobs. Besides the problem of low morale, because she was not there to guide her subordinates when they had doubts while doing the jobs, wrong assumptions might have been taken.
Using MSN Messenger the wrong way could cause a person to be loathed or avoided too. There are some people who acted like mosquitoes. If you ignore their presence even after they have circled and make noise around your ears, they will sting you. These are the ones who are unable to understand that you are too busy to reply to their messages, so they will send you a nudge once in every few minutes. But if you could bear with the shaking screens, these people are only pure annoying.
There are another group of people who acted like houseflies. No matter how hard you try to ignore their presence, they will continue to make noise around your ears, or worse, fly around your nose. These are the ones who are determined to send you a message against all odds. Dawn was one such person.
One day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “busy”. But Dawn still sent me a message: “are u busy?”
Another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “be right back”. Dawn was working from home, but she still sent me a message: “hey, where are you?”
And another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “away”. Dawn was working from home, but she still sent me a message: “hey, are you away?”
Yet on another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “on the phone”. Dawn was in the office and she could see my headset on my head, but she still sent me a message: “hey, are you on conf call?”
Finally, I blocked Dawn from my MSN Messenger. A few minutes later, my phone rang and I picked up. It was Dawn.
“Hey Beng, is there something wrong with your MSN Messenger? How come you’re offline?”
Monday, January 7, 2008
Chapter 14: Surviving Outsourcing
Our company had decided to outsource the maintenance of one of our B2B transaction platforms to a Chennai vendor. This maintenance was originally contracted out to a vendor located in Kuala Lumpur and they had been doing a good job for three years. However, with a projected saving of almost two hundred percents, the upper management could not find a reason for not transferring the maintenance contract.
Both onshore and offshore outsourcing seems to be a key business strategy in most MNCs. I remembered a few years back, slightly after the Internet Bubble burst, companies were skeptical about outsourcing important functions to others. They were uncertain about the financial payback and the quality of the service providers’ work. Now, quality is no long a big issue, with companies focusing on managing remote resources effectively.
Outsourcing is inevitable in the process of globalization. More manufacturers had moved their labor and land intensive production and processes to neighboring locations such as Indonesia to take advantage of their lower costs there. Singaporean workers are urged to train and retrain in order to move their knowledge up one, or a few, levels. This is to ensure that they could remain in the company as the middle management who will be managing and controlling the job quality of their vendors.
The first function that our company had outsourced to Kuala Lumpur was our IT help desk. Before the outsourcing, whenever my mischievous notebook decided to disable some of its functions for the day, I just had to call up our IT department and within approximately fifteen minutes, somebody would be at my desk to do a health check for my notebook. After the outsourcing, I would call up the IT help desk situated in Kuala Lumpur and note down a given request ticket number. The IT help desk will then put my request ticket on a queue, with the priority depending on the urgency of the request. When it was finally my turn, the Kuala Lumpur IT help desk will call up an IT guy in Singapore, in the IT department five stories above my office, to be precise. This IT guy will then come over to my desk to service my notebook. The whole process would normally take a few hours.
In those few hours that I could not work on my notebook, I would wander off to a nearby café to get a cup of coffee and read some newspapers. Some people viewed this as a total waste of time but I begged to differ. Having a few hours to relax my mind could give me some breathing space and the ability to think more clearly and work more efficiently for the day. There was this inflexibility that I disagreed with though…
“Mr. Tan, your IE problem was due to some spywares residing in your computer. I’ve already cleared it. But there’s another problem…”
“Yes?”
“I found that there’s some problem with your Outlook as well.”
“So could it be solved?”
“Yes, but you’ll need to raise another ticket for it.”
“What?”
“You’ll need to call the help desk and raise another ticket for it, and then either I or another colleague will come over to solve it.”
Our company then carried on to outsource the Finance’s Claiming department to Chennai. As expected, after the claiming function was outsourced, the staffs’ claiming process for transport and travel allowances etc. took longer, but it was still bearable. However, the invoice payment process was also made more complicated, with more forms to fill and longer waiting time. That was unbearable to some.
In the new process due to the outsourcing, after an invoice had been received, a couple of taxation and declaration forms had to be filled. The whole stack of document will then travel around the company to be signed by various authorizing managers. With all signatures gathered, the stack of document had to be photocopied to duplicate one more copy to be tagged together, and another copy to be filed up. The stack of original and duplicated documents will then be sent by courier to Chennai. Chennai’s Claiming department will then put the invoice on a queue to be processed. When the invoice was finally processed successfully, our Singapore office will receive instructions to issue a cheque to the receiving party. The whole process would normally take one to two months.
Most of the time, Ju could bear with the extended waiting time to pay the vendors. However, there were exceptional…
“Rose, I’ll need you to talk to Chennai about the Emirates Towers invoice,” requested Ju.
“Why? Is there a problem with the invoice?” asked Rose.
“The hotel has just called me and the reservations manager was threatening to release our booked rooms if they don’t receive the cheque by tomorrow.”
“The event is supposed to be two weeks later right?”
“Yes, but remember we need to pay a fifty percents down payment two weeks before the actual day, as stated in the reservation contract?”
“Oh… and Chennai is not releasing the cheque?”
“Yes.”
“When was the invoice sent to them?”
“About three weeks ago.”
“Okay, let me give them a call. What’s the number?”
Ju gave Rose the phone number and Rose made a call to Chennai to request them to speed up the payment process for that particular invoice from Emirates Towers. After a much heated conversation, with Rose having to give hundred and one reasons for speeding up the payment, and a faxed request letter signed by her, the Claiming department in Chennai had finally promised to instruct our Singapore office to issue a cheque.
With that promise from Chennai’s Claiming department, Ju had to give our Singapore Finance department a call to request them to escalate the issuing of the cheque and courier it to her within a day. On the same day, Ju would have to courier the cheque out to Dubai. Shifting our Claiming function to Chennai had made Ju’s work very painful indeed, but she was not alone.
Sally had been grumbling about the invoices that she had sent to Chennai but got lost in the Bermudas Triangle on the way. In every few months, a vendor will call her up to ask about a much delayed invoice, which will prompt Sally to call up Chennai’s Claiming department to check the invoice’s status, and the department will usually inform her that the invoice was not received by them, a.k.a. the case of a missing invoice. The infuriated Sally will then have to request for a new invoice from the vendor again.
With the IT help desk and Claiming department outsourcing deemed as successful, our company sent a team to Chennai to explore on the feasibility of outsourcing the maintenance of one of our B2B transaction platforms. After determining that it was an economically right thing to do, the contract was signed. I was then assigned the responsibility for reviewing the business transaction knowledge of the Chennai team.
Before the Chennai team could maintain the B2B transaction platform, it was mandatory for them to have full products knowledge. My job was to make sure that they had the adequate FX products knowledge to serve our clients well. My nightmare started from there...
“Beng, you stated in the product sheet that the global liquidity fund is not offered to British citizens,” asked the FX lead in Chennai team.
“Yes, you’re right.”
“But where did you get this piece of information from?”
“It’s written in the brochure.”
“But I can’t find it. I’ve searched through the whole brochure but I still can’t find it.”
“Did you check page two?”
“Yes, definitely!”
“Did you check the disclaimer?”
“Oh…”
Besides the inability to read disclaimers and foot notes, the Chennai team had another problem. They were unable to understand and apply the same theory from one scenario to another…
“Beng, could you tell me more about the currency swap?” asked the FX lead in Chennai team.
“Okay… a currency swap typically involves an exchange of coupon payments and principal. For example, Singaporean Company S would like to borrow pounds, and British Company B wishes to borrow Singapore dollars. Let’s assume Company S has a lower Singapore dollars borrowing interest rate than Company B, and Company B has a lower pounds borrowing interest rate than Company S. It means that if Company S borrows Singapore dollars in Singapore and Company B borrows pounds in the United Kingdom, but then they swap their obligations, each company can benefit from the other company’s superior borrowing rate in its domestic currency,” I explained. “Do you have any query on this?”
“Erm… so this is what it meant by ‘Sin and Pound’ currency swap?”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“Then can you explain to me, what is the meaning of ‘Yen and Dollar’ currency swap?”
After going through all the questionings in two months, the training for the FX lead and members in the Chennai team was over. I went through the post-training report sent to me from Chennai. There was only one conclusion after reading it. With that B2B transaction platform outsourced to the Chennai team, my job had just become more challenging.
Both onshore and offshore outsourcing seems to be a key business strategy in most MNCs. I remembered a few years back, slightly after the Internet Bubble burst, companies were skeptical about outsourcing important functions to others. They were uncertain about the financial payback and the quality of the service providers’ work. Now, quality is no long a big issue, with companies focusing on managing remote resources effectively.
Outsourcing is inevitable in the process of globalization. More manufacturers had moved their labor and land intensive production and processes to neighboring locations such as Indonesia to take advantage of their lower costs there. Singaporean workers are urged to train and retrain in order to move their knowledge up one, or a few, levels. This is to ensure that they could remain in the company as the middle management who will be managing and controlling the job quality of their vendors.
The first function that our company had outsourced to Kuala Lumpur was our IT help desk. Before the outsourcing, whenever my mischievous notebook decided to disable some of its functions for the day, I just had to call up our IT department and within approximately fifteen minutes, somebody would be at my desk to do a health check for my notebook. After the outsourcing, I would call up the IT help desk situated in Kuala Lumpur and note down a given request ticket number. The IT help desk will then put my request ticket on a queue, with the priority depending on the urgency of the request. When it was finally my turn, the Kuala Lumpur IT help desk will call up an IT guy in Singapore, in the IT department five stories above my office, to be precise. This IT guy will then come over to my desk to service my notebook. The whole process would normally take a few hours.
In those few hours that I could not work on my notebook, I would wander off to a nearby café to get a cup of coffee and read some newspapers. Some people viewed this as a total waste of time but I begged to differ. Having a few hours to relax my mind could give me some breathing space and the ability to think more clearly and work more efficiently for the day. There was this inflexibility that I disagreed with though…
“Mr. Tan, your IE problem was due to some spywares residing in your computer. I’ve already cleared it. But there’s another problem…”
“Yes?”
“I found that there’s some problem with your Outlook as well.”
“So could it be solved?”
“Yes, but you’ll need to raise another ticket for it.”
“What?”
“You’ll need to call the help desk and raise another ticket for it, and then either I or another colleague will come over to solve it.”
Our company then carried on to outsource the Finance’s Claiming department to Chennai. As expected, after the claiming function was outsourced, the staffs’ claiming process for transport and travel allowances etc. took longer, but it was still bearable. However, the invoice payment process was also made more complicated, with more forms to fill and longer waiting time. That was unbearable to some.
In the new process due to the outsourcing, after an invoice had been received, a couple of taxation and declaration forms had to be filled. The whole stack of document will then travel around the company to be signed by various authorizing managers. With all signatures gathered, the stack of document had to be photocopied to duplicate one more copy to be tagged together, and another copy to be filed up. The stack of original and duplicated documents will then be sent by courier to Chennai. Chennai’s Claiming department will then put the invoice on a queue to be processed. When the invoice was finally processed successfully, our Singapore office will receive instructions to issue a cheque to the receiving party. The whole process would normally take one to two months.
Most of the time, Ju could bear with the extended waiting time to pay the vendors. However, there were exceptional…
“Rose, I’ll need you to talk to Chennai about the Emirates Towers invoice,” requested Ju.
“Why? Is there a problem with the invoice?” asked Rose.
“The hotel has just called me and the reservations manager was threatening to release our booked rooms if they don’t receive the cheque by tomorrow.”
“The event is supposed to be two weeks later right?”
“Yes, but remember we need to pay a fifty percents down payment two weeks before the actual day, as stated in the reservation contract?”
“Oh… and Chennai is not releasing the cheque?”
“Yes.”
“When was the invoice sent to them?”
“About three weeks ago.”
“Okay, let me give them a call. What’s the number?”
Ju gave Rose the phone number and Rose made a call to Chennai to request them to speed up the payment process for that particular invoice from Emirates Towers. After a much heated conversation, with Rose having to give hundred and one reasons for speeding up the payment, and a faxed request letter signed by her, the Claiming department in Chennai had finally promised to instruct our Singapore office to issue a cheque.
With that promise from Chennai’s Claiming department, Ju had to give our Singapore Finance department a call to request them to escalate the issuing of the cheque and courier it to her within a day. On the same day, Ju would have to courier the cheque out to Dubai. Shifting our Claiming function to Chennai had made Ju’s work very painful indeed, but she was not alone.
Sally had been grumbling about the invoices that she had sent to Chennai but got lost in the Bermudas Triangle on the way. In every few months, a vendor will call her up to ask about a much delayed invoice, which will prompt Sally to call up Chennai’s Claiming department to check the invoice’s status, and the department will usually inform her that the invoice was not received by them, a.k.a. the case of a missing invoice. The infuriated Sally will then have to request for a new invoice from the vendor again.
With the IT help desk and Claiming department outsourcing deemed as successful, our company sent a team to Chennai to explore on the feasibility of outsourcing the maintenance of one of our B2B transaction platforms. After determining that it was an economically right thing to do, the contract was signed. I was then assigned the responsibility for reviewing the business transaction knowledge of the Chennai team.
Before the Chennai team could maintain the B2B transaction platform, it was mandatory for them to have full products knowledge. My job was to make sure that they had the adequate FX products knowledge to serve our clients well. My nightmare started from there...
“Beng, you stated in the product sheet that the global liquidity fund is not offered to British citizens,” asked the FX lead in Chennai team.
“Yes, you’re right.”
“But where did you get this piece of information from?”
“It’s written in the brochure.”
“But I can’t find it. I’ve searched through the whole brochure but I still can’t find it.”
“Did you check page two?”
“Yes, definitely!”
“Did you check the disclaimer?”
“Oh…”
Besides the inability to read disclaimers and foot notes, the Chennai team had another problem. They were unable to understand and apply the same theory from one scenario to another…
“Beng, could you tell me more about the currency swap?” asked the FX lead in Chennai team.
“Okay… a currency swap typically involves an exchange of coupon payments and principal. For example, Singaporean Company S would like to borrow pounds, and British Company B wishes to borrow Singapore dollars. Let’s assume Company S has a lower Singapore dollars borrowing interest rate than Company B, and Company B has a lower pounds borrowing interest rate than Company S. It means that if Company S borrows Singapore dollars in Singapore and Company B borrows pounds in the United Kingdom, but then they swap their obligations, each company can benefit from the other company’s superior borrowing rate in its domestic currency,” I explained. “Do you have any query on this?”
“Erm… so this is what it meant by ‘Sin and Pound’ currency swap?”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“Then can you explain to me, what is the meaning of ‘Yen and Dollar’ currency swap?”
After going through all the questionings in two months, the training for the FX lead and members in the Chennai team was over. I went through the post-training report sent to me from Chennai. There was only one conclusion after reading it. With that B2B transaction platform outsourced to the Chennai team, my job had just become more challenging.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Chapter 13: A Day without the Network
Disaster always strike you at the back of your head when you least expected it. In this case, it had selected one fine Monday morning. The moment I stepped into the office, I had a feeling that something was amiss. Rose, Ju and Choi were talking loudly on their phones, Nicky was typing furiously on his keyboard, Dawn and Sally were nowhere to be found, and even the usually calm KZ was flipping anxiously through a document file.
Preferred not to intervene into such chaos situation, I sat at my desk and tried to start my day. After my notebook was booted up and Windows had started, I discovered that something was not very right. I could not get myself connected to the network. I looked up and asked Nicky: “Hey Nicky, can you log into…”
“The network’s down!” Nicky shouted at me before I could finish my question.
That gave the reason for the unruly behavior of the team, and the reason for me to start my day with a disagreeable mood.
I had three conference calls scheduled for the day. With the network down, it meant that I could not use the Netmeeting application for my presentations. And that translated to, I need to arrange for proper sit-in meetings to replace those conference calls. I launched my browser only to realize that I could not access the online meeting room booking system when the network was down. Damn. Without losing a second, I walked over to look for Jessie, our department secretary. For the first time in my work life in this company, I saw a queue forming outside her cubicle.
“When is your meeting?” Jessie asked the first guy in the queue, with her eyes fixed on the monitor screen.
“Er… I’ve got two meetings, one from ten to eleven, and another from four to five,” replied a chubby colleague.
“How many people are attending?”
“Six for the first one, four for the second one.”
After a few clicks on the mouse and a few taps on the keyboard, Jessie turned and said to the chubby colleague: “Caesar One from ten to eleven. No more small room for four to five.” The chubby colleague scribbled on a post-it note, mumbled a ‘thanks’ and left hastily.
Three other colleagues later, I had to cancel off the two morning meetings due to the unavailability of meeting rooms. When it was finally my turn, I crossed my fingers behind my back as I said: “One meeting room for ten people, from two to three.”
“Okay, Pompeii Two from two to three,” replied Jessie monotonously.
I rushed back to my desk and launched my Outlook just to be reminded that I could not access the company phone book when the network was down. Damn. I searched through my drawer for the name card holder. Nearly having to overturn the whole drawer, I eventually found it sitting comfortably below a stack of useless papers.
“Hello, Sam? This is Beng. It’s regarding the conference call we are supposed to have this afternoon… Yes… Yes, the network is down… Yes, but don’t worry, I’ve managed to book a meeting room… Yes, it’s still from two to three… Pompeii Two on the fifth floor…Yes, can you do me a favor? Could you tell Soon Teck and James as well? Okay, thanks! See you then!”
I then flipped through my name card holder again to call the others, including one colleague from Hong Kong and another from South Korea, about the postponing of the two conference calls. When everything was settled, it was only ten o’clock. With my morning conference call postponed, I spent the time looking through some presentation slides.
“Yes! Please help me to monitor FTech for the day, my company’s network is down and I can’t access the internet! ... Yeh, I know it has been dropping but I thought I could wait till today after it announced its results… Yes… Yes, let me know if it falls below sixty-five cents! ... No, I’ll need to cut loss! Okay, sure! Thanks pal! Thanks a lot!”
The flustered Nicky put down his phone, stared at the monitor for a while, then typed furiously on his keyboard again. The inability to monitor the stock market had dealt him a blow. I looked over to Sally. She had already arrived at the office and was on the phone as well.
“Yes, we need to send the brochure for printing by today… Yes, you need to send the draft to me by this morning so that I can vet… No! Don’t email me the draft, fax it to me! ... Yes, I know there are thirty over colored pages … No, we don’t have another choice. Just call me before you fax, okay? Thanks!”
Without emails, the vendor would have to fax Sally the brochure pages so that she could vet and scribble her remarks on the faxed pages before re-faxing them back to the vendor. This same process would have to be repeated for an N amount of times before the brochure could finally be sent for print. It was going to be a long day for Sally.
A fazed Ju brisk walked into the office with her notebook. Apparently she was returning from a meeting. She put down her notebook and checked her phone for missed call, and then she picked up the phone.
“Hi Veronica, you were looking for me? … Yes, we’ll need to create three pull-up banners for the coming event… Yes, fourteenth of December … Yes… Yes, give me a minute while I check my computer…Oh my God! Oh no, I’m afraid I can’t give you our hi-res logo. No, it’s stored in the network drive and our network is down today… No, I don’t think so… Okay, I’ll send it to you as soon as the network is up… Okay, thanks! See you!”
Rose seemed to be out for their meetings. Without the capability to do conference calls, she would have to rush to our other office locations for their meetings. However, Choi did not seem to be affected by the inability to launch the Netmeeting application. Against all odds, he was still on a conference call.
“Yes, the graph on the report showed that India had the least amount of loans… Yes, I know, I know you guys can’t see the graph. Why don’t you try to sketch one out as I speak? ... Yes, Australia fifteen, China twelve, India eight, Indonesia sixteen... no, not fifteen, sixteen. One six. Yes… Japan twenty, Singapore twenty-six… no, not twenty-eight, twenty-six. Two six…”
The other survivor from this disaster was KZ. He had dug out some old and dusty document files and was flipping through them while typing on his notebook. Without the access to the databases, these document files were all he could find to do his research report. Fortunately he had insisted on keeping hard copies of those documents.
Dawn seemed to be the least affected of us all. She had been making casual calls on the phone and flipping through the newspaper. When she had enough of those, she walked over to Ju’s desk and took a few cookies, then walked to the pantry for coffee. She even walked over to Sally’s desk and tried to talk to her, but was rejected coldly by Sally who told her that she was rushing her brochure and was too busy to chat. Dawn then made a couple of calls to her friends to arrange for an early lunch appointment. By eleven, she was out of the office for lunch.
I was getting rather bored looking through my presentation slides, so I launched the iTunes application to catch some latest podcasts, only to remember that without the ability to update my iTunes, I could only listen to the old podcasts already saved on my hard disk. Damn. Luckily I brought along my MD player.
Then my mobile phone rang.
“Hello? Oh, hi Babe… yeh, the movie today, of course I remembered… Yeh, I think it’ll be crowded because it’s the first day of screening… No, I’ve not booked yet… yeh, I’ll be booking online… Damn! No, sorry, not damn you… no, my company’s network is down so I won’t be able to book the tickets online… Yeh, sorry Babe. Why don’t you book it then… Yeh, luckily you called… Okay, call me after you’ve booked the tickets… Okay, bye!”
After I had finished the call, I found Nicky standing in front of my desk. I had never seen his hair in such a mess before.
“Beng, let’s go for lunch.”
“Hey, you don’t have to walk all the way here. You could just have messaged me through MSN Messenger… oh… I forgot that’s down.”
“Yeh, everything seems to be down today.”
“Well, looking at the bright side, at least it means we could have a long lunch today,” I jested.
“Can we go to that Internet café a few blocks away after lunch? I’m worried for my FTech shares and I’m thinking of checking out its price and volume.”
“Oh… sure! Let’s walk over to call KZ, Choi and Sally.”
After lunch, the network was back to working order and all of us were as happy as striking a lottery. Through this incident, I came to realize how the Internet, which we had taken for granted, could be so important in our lives.
Preferred not to intervene into such chaos situation, I sat at my desk and tried to start my day. After my notebook was booted up and Windows had started, I discovered that something was not very right. I could not get myself connected to the network. I looked up and asked Nicky: “Hey Nicky, can you log into…”
“The network’s down!” Nicky shouted at me before I could finish my question.
That gave the reason for the unruly behavior of the team, and the reason for me to start my day with a disagreeable mood.
I had three conference calls scheduled for the day. With the network down, it meant that I could not use the Netmeeting application for my presentations. And that translated to, I need to arrange for proper sit-in meetings to replace those conference calls. I launched my browser only to realize that I could not access the online meeting room booking system when the network was down. Damn. Without losing a second, I walked over to look for Jessie, our department secretary. For the first time in my work life in this company, I saw a queue forming outside her cubicle.
“When is your meeting?” Jessie asked the first guy in the queue, with her eyes fixed on the monitor screen.
“Er… I’ve got two meetings, one from ten to eleven, and another from four to five,” replied a chubby colleague.
“How many people are attending?”
“Six for the first one, four for the second one.”
After a few clicks on the mouse and a few taps on the keyboard, Jessie turned and said to the chubby colleague: “Caesar One from ten to eleven. No more small room for four to five.” The chubby colleague scribbled on a post-it note, mumbled a ‘thanks’ and left hastily.
Three other colleagues later, I had to cancel off the two morning meetings due to the unavailability of meeting rooms. When it was finally my turn, I crossed my fingers behind my back as I said: “One meeting room for ten people, from two to three.”
“Okay, Pompeii Two from two to three,” replied Jessie monotonously.
I rushed back to my desk and launched my Outlook just to be reminded that I could not access the company phone book when the network was down. Damn. I searched through my drawer for the name card holder. Nearly having to overturn the whole drawer, I eventually found it sitting comfortably below a stack of useless papers.
“Hello, Sam? This is Beng. It’s regarding the conference call we are supposed to have this afternoon… Yes… Yes, the network is down… Yes, but don’t worry, I’ve managed to book a meeting room… Yes, it’s still from two to three… Pompeii Two on the fifth floor…Yes, can you do me a favor? Could you tell Soon Teck and James as well? Okay, thanks! See you then!”
I then flipped through my name card holder again to call the others, including one colleague from Hong Kong and another from South Korea, about the postponing of the two conference calls. When everything was settled, it was only ten o’clock. With my morning conference call postponed, I spent the time looking through some presentation slides.
“Yes! Please help me to monitor FTech for the day, my company’s network is down and I can’t access the internet! ... Yeh, I know it has been dropping but I thought I could wait till today after it announced its results… Yes… Yes, let me know if it falls below sixty-five cents! ... No, I’ll need to cut loss! Okay, sure! Thanks pal! Thanks a lot!”
The flustered Nicky put down his phone, stared at the monitor for a while, then typed furiously on his keyboard again. The inability to monitor the stock market had dealt him a blow. I looked over to Sally. She had already arrived at the office and was on the phone as well.
“Yes, we need to send the brochure for printing by today… Yes, you need to send the draft to me by this morning so that I can vet… No! Don’t email me the draft, fax it to me! ... Yes, I know there are thirty over colored pages … No, we don’t have another choice. Just call me before you fax, okay? Thanks!”
Without emails, the vendor would have to fax Sally the brochure pages so that she could vet and scribble her remarks on the faxed pages before re-faxing them back to the vendor. This same process would have to be repeated for an N amount of times before the brochure could finally be sent for print. It was going to be a long day for Sally.
A fazed Ju brisk walked into the office with her notebook. Apparently she was returning from a meeting. She put down her notebook and checked her phone for missed call, and then she picked up the phone.
“Hi Veronica, you were looking for me? … Yes, we’ll need to create three pull-up banners for the coming event… Yes, fourteenth of December … Yes… Yes, give me a minute while I check my computer…Oh my God! Oh no, I’m afraid I can’t give you our hi-res logo. No, it’s stored in the network drive and our network is down today… No, I don’t think so… Okay, I’ll send it to you as soon as the network is up… Okay, thanks! See you!”
Rose seemed to be out for their meetings. Without the capability to do conference calls, she would have to rush to our other office locations for their meetings. However, Choi did not seem to be affected by the inability to launch the Netmeeting application. Against all odds, he was still on a conference call.
“Yes, the graph on the report showed that India had the least amount of loans… Yes, I know, I know you guys can’t see the graph. Why don’t you try to sketch one out as I speak? ... Yes, Australia fifteen, China twelve, India eight, Indonesia sixteen... no, not fifteen, sixteen. One six. Yes… Japan twenty, Singapore twenty-six… no, not twenty-eight, twenty-six. Two six…”
The other survivor from this disaster was KZ. He had dug out some old and dusty document files and was flipping through them while typing on his notebook. Without the access to the databases, these document files were all he could find to do his research report. Fortunately he had insisted on keeping hard copies of those documents.
Dawn seemed to be the least affected of us all. She had been making casual calls on the phone and flipping through the newspaper. When she had enough of those, she walked over to Ju’s desk and took a few cookies, then walked to the pantry for coffee. She even walked over to Sally’s desk and tried to talk to her, but was rejected coldly by Sally who told her that she was rushing her brochure and was too busy to chat. Dawn then made a couple of calls to her friends to arrange for an early lunch appointment. By eleven, she was out of the office for lunch.
I was getting rather bored looking through my presentation slides, so I launched the iTunes application to catch some latest podcasts, only to remember that without the ability to update my iTunes, I could only listen to the old podcasts already saved on my hard disk. Damn. Luckily I brought along my MD player.
Then my mobile phone rang.
“Hello? Oh, hi Babe… yeh, the movie today, of course I remembered… Yeh, I think it’ll be crowded because it’s the first day of screening… No, I’ve not booked yet… yeh, I’ll be booking online… Damn! No, sorry, not damn you… no, my company’s network is down so I won’t be able to book the tickets online… Yeh, sorry Babe. Why don’t you book it then… Yeh, luckily you called… Okay, call me after you’ve booked the tickets… Okay, bye!”
After I had finished the call, I found Nicky standing in front of my desk. I had never seen his hair in such a mess before.
“Beng, let’s go for lunch.”
“Hey, you don’t have to walk all the way here. You could just have messaged me through MSN Messenger… oh… I forgot that’s down.”
“Yeh, everything seems to be down today.”
“Well, looking at the bright side, at least it means we could have a long lunch today,” I jested.
“Can we go to that Internet café a few blocks away after lunch? I’m worried for my FTech shares and I’m thinking of checking out its price and volume.”
“Oh… sure! Let’s walk over to call KZ, Choi and Sally.”
After lunch, the network was back to working order and all of us were as happy as striking a lottery. Through this incident, I came to realize how the Internet, which we had taken for granted, could be so important in our lives.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Chapter 12: Some Fishes Called Betta
We had just finished our lunch and were walking past an aquarium shop when Nicky decided to walk in to buy some aquarium plants for his fish tank. Nicky had a three feet fish tank in the “wealth sector” in his house with an auspicious quantity of eight goldfishes. Every few weeks, he had to replace those dying potted aquarium plants in his tank with fresh new ones. I had advised him to lay a layer of gravel on his tank and grow the plants directly in the aquarium instead to save cost, but he said that those hyper active and super curious goldfishes of his would dig the plants out within a few days’ time. Furthermore, he resisted the thought of using gravel because he preferred to use citrine crystal stones which made his fish tank even more auspicious.
While Nicky was choosing his aquarium plants, the rest of us wondered around the shop. This shop at Clementi was a very popular shop among fish hobbyists in Singapore. It looked old and overcrowded, in fact so overcrowded that some of the tanks and equipments had to be stacked outside the shop, however they sold a good variety of fresh water fishes. Whenever I accompanied Nicky to the shop, be it on a weekday afternoon or a weekend evening, it was always crowded with young and old men.
Yes, most of the fish hobbyists in Singapore are men. Maybe it has got something to do with the look and feel of the aquarium shops around here. A typical local aquarium shop is usually small with tanks of fishes stacked on the shelves all around the shop. The names of the fishes with their respective prices are roughly scribbled with marker on the fish tanks. In the left over space of the shop, you can always find aquarium plants, confusing fish medications, fish foods and aquarium equipments like filters and pumps. And on the last piece of space where you thought you can walk on, an empty fish tank with a “Sale: $128” label on it may block your way. Our local aquarium shops are just too “insensitive” for our local ladies.
Perhaps somebody should start an aquarium shop catering to our female population. First of all, it should be air-conditioned. Instead of cement or tiles, the shop should have carpet flooring. Proper labels should be hung from these fish tanks, like the ones used in IKEA. These labels should tell the names of the fishes with their prices, where are they from, what should they be fed with and which are the other species that do not get along with them. The labels should also be color coded to indicate the level of difficulty in handling these fishes. For example, “fishes for beginners” like guppies and goldfishes should be labeled sweet pink; and “fishes for experts” like parrot fishes and discus should be labeled bright red.
The shop should also be staffed with friendly and neatly dressed staffs with their name tags. They will be stationing themselves around the shop to answer any doubts that the customers might have like “will this fish food gives my fish a better color” and “do you think this aquarium plant goes well with my red guppies, or should I take that red plant instead?”. Piped-in music like jazz should be used to cover the monotonous humming of the pumps, and as much as possible, this music should also complement with the bubbling sound from the fish tanks to give a soothing effect. Lastly and most importantly, the shop should offer free delivery with a minimum purchase so that some strong male staffs could help the ladies to delivery their fish tanks to their houses.
I walked around the shop and found Sally staring at some Bettas, a.k.a. fighting fishes.
“Don’t you think they’re beautiful?” she asked, still staring at the miniature tanks of Bettas on the shelves.
“Yeh, I’d always find their bright colors pretty fascinating.”
“Look at the way he spreads his fins! So beautiful!” she was pointing at a blue Betta which was agitated by her finger resting on the tank.
“Don’t tell me…”
“Beng, do you think fighting fishes are easy to rear?”
Okay, she was really thinking of rearing these Bettas. So can I classify this as a case of “love at first sight”?
“They should be right? I heard that you can just use a jam bottle to rear one, and you don’t even need to put in a filter!” Sally insisted.
“Well, yes, it’s true that you don’t need a filter because they could breathe through the air at the top of the water level, but no, you can’t use a jam bottle because it’ll be too small for the fish to maneuver.”
“But these tanks are as small as jam bottles right? And if you look over there, they even have some fighting fishes packed in small plastic bags!”
“Dear Sally, the boss expected you to get a proper tank for these fishes after you’ve bought them, and throw away the jam bottle or plastic bag.”
“Oh…” Sally pondered upon it and then said: “Why don’t you help me to choose a tank then?”
With that, Sally looked around and pulled me to the section where some small tanks were displayed.
“What do you think of this? Cute right? There’s even a mini tank inside this small tank!” she exclaimed avidly.
“Sally, this seems to be a breeding tank for pregnant guppies and that mini tank is used to separate the mother from her young.”
“Why must they be separated?!!” Sally hollered.
“Because if you don’t do so, the female guppy will eat up all her babies!”
“Eee! So cruel!”
“That’s nature’s way of doing things, Sally. Welcome to this cruel world.”
After some more searching, we found a six inches plastic tank that could be used as a new home for her new Betta. Okay, found the house, time to get the owner.
“How many fighting fishes do you think we can fit in this tank?”
“One.”
“One? I think the tank is big enough for at least three!”
“Do you happen to know that fighting fishes actually fight?” I realized that I forgot to tell her this important bit of information.
“Yes I know! That’s why they’re called fighting fishes right?” Sally held her waist and stared at me. “But only two males will fight right? Which means that I can put a male and some females together in the tank right?”
“That’s only if you intend to breed them.”
Sally paused a while, then said: “Hey, breeding fighting fishes could be fun!”
In order to do the Bettas a favor and save some lives, I decided to tell Sally my friend’s experience in breeding Bettas.
“Okay, listen. Breeding Bettas is not as easy as you think it is. First of all, you should only put a male and a female in the tank. Having more than two females will excite your male to death.”
“Well, he can always schedule his females for 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 right? Then he can rest on Sundays,” Sally giggled.
“Uh-ehm…” I ignored her and continued. “You have to feed them regularly so that you don’t starve them, because once they get hungry, they'll start to bite each other. Place some plants in the tank so that your female could seek refuge whenever necessary. If everything goes well, a bubble nest will soon be created by the male. If mating is successful, you’ll see the female releasing some cream-colored eggs. At this time, you’ll need to move the female to another tank otherwise the male will bite her. The male will then dive down and pick up all the eggs with his mouth and spit it into the nest. A couple of days later, the eggs will hatch and you’ll need to remove the male as well. And all these are only the breeding part.”
“And then?”
“Then you’ll need to prepare some baby foods like Liquidfry to feed the fries.”
“And then?”
“Then you’ll just have to pray and wait for the fries to grow up safely.”
“Wow…” Sally mused. “That sounds cool!”
Happily, Sally selected one male Veil Tail Betta and another female Single Tail Betta. Though cheap, the male Veil Tail Betta looked rather pretty with its pinkish body and purple tail and fins. Together with the small plastic tank, she bought a potted sword plant and a bottle of Anti-chlorine solution as well.
Upon reaching the office, I helped the joyous Sally to set up the aquarium. I cleaned the tank, filled it up with tap water, poured in a small amount of Anti-chlorine solution and put the potted sword plant in. Then we got a problem.
“Sally, didn’t you compare the height of the plant to that of the tank before buying the plant?”
“Eh… no. I just chose the one that looks nicest and freshest. Erm… can we place the plant horizontally instead?”
Sally tilted the plant to make it lay horizontally on the floor of the tank.
“Okay what! It still looks nice right? The plant can still grow right?” Sally asked.
“Yeh, I suppose so.”
Sally then took over to perform the most important task – releasing the fishes into the tank. She released the packet of female Betta into the tank followed by the male Betta. For a while, the two fishes swam around to get themselves used to the new environment. Like in a Hindu movie, they swam around the horizontally lying sword plant and played hide-and-seek with each other. When the male Betta finally managed to swam to the front of the female Betta, it pecked the female Betta, who then swam away hastily in shock. The whole process repeated for a couple of times and Sally sat in front of her tank and witnessed every single shocking meeting those two fishes had. Suddenly, she gasped.
“Oh my god!”
“What?” I rushed to her and looked at the tank. The fishes looked fine to me.
“I forgot to buy fish food!”
While Nicky was choosing his aquarium plants, the rest of us wondered around the shop. This shop at Clementi was a very popular shop among fish hobbyists in Singapore. It looked old and overcrowded, in fact so overcrowded that some of the tanks and equipments had to be stacked outside the shop, however they sold a good variety of fresh water fishes. Whenever I accompanied Nicky to the shop, be it on a weekday afternoon or a weekend evening, it was always crowded with young and old men.
Yes, most of the fish hobbyists in Singapore are men. Maybe it has got something to do with the look and feel of the aquarium shops around here. A typical local aquarium shop is usually small with tanks of fishes stacked on the shelves all around the shop. The names of the fishes with their respective prices are roughly scribbled with marker on the fish tanks. In the left over space of the shop, you can always find aquarium plants, confusing fish medications, fish foods and aquarium equipments like filters and pumps. And on the last piece of space where you thought you can walk on, an empty fish tank with a “Sale: $128” label on it may block your way. Our local aquarium shops are just too “insensitive” for our local ladies.
Perhaps somebody should start an aquarium shop catering to our female population. First of all, it should be air-conditioned. Instead of cement or tiles, the shop should have carpet flooring. Proper labels should be hung from these fish tanks, like the ones used in IKEA. These labels should tell the names of the fishes with their prices, where are they from, what should they be fed with and which are the other species that do not get along with them. The labels should also be color coded to indicate the level of difficulty in handling these fishes. For example, “fishes for beginners” like guppies and goldfishes should be labeled sweet pink; and “fishes for experts” like parrot fishes and discus should be labeled bright red.
The shop should also be staffed with friendly and neatly dressed staffs with their name tags. They will be stationing themselves around the shop to answer any doubts that the customers might have like “will this fish food gives my fish a better color” and “do you think this aquarium plant goes well with my red guppies, or should I take that red plant instead?”. Piped-in music like jazz should be used to cover the monotonous humming of the pumps, and as much as possible, this music should also complement with the bubbling sound from the fish tanks to give a soothing effect. Lastly and most importantly, the shop should offer free delivery with a minimum purchase so that some strong male staffs could help the ladies to delivery their fish tanks to their houses.
I walked around the shop and found Sally staring at some Bettas, a.k.a. fighting fishes.
“Don’t you think they’re beautiful?” she asked, still staring at the miniature tanks of Bettas on the shelves.
“Yeh, I’d always find their bright colors pretty fascinating.”
“Look at the way he spreads his fins! So beautiful!” she was pointing at a blue Betta which was agitated by her finger resting on the tank.
“Don’t tell me…”
“Beng, do you think fighting fishes are easy to rear?”
Okay, she was really thinking of rearing these Bettas. So can I classify this as a case of “love at first sight”?
“They should be right? I heard that you can just use a jam bottle to rear one, and you don’t even need to put in a filter!” Sally insisted.
“Well, yes, it’s true that you don’t need a filter because they could breathe through the air at the top of the water level, but no, you can’t use a jam bottle because it’ll be too small for the fish to maneuver.”
“But these tanks are as small as jam bottles right? And if you look over there, they even have some fighting fishes packed in small plastic bags!”
“Dear Sally, the boss expected you to get a proper tank for these fishes after you’ve bought them, and throw away the jam bottle or plastic bag.”
“Oh…” Sally pondered upon it and then said: “Why don’t you help me to choose a tank then?”
With that, Sally looked around and pulled me to the section where some small tanks were displayed.
“What do you think of this? Cute right? There’s even a mini tank inside this small tank!” she exclaimed avidly.
“Sally, this seems to be a breeding tank for pregnant guppies and that mini tank is used to separate the mother from her young.”
“Why must they be separated?!!” Sally hollered.
“Because if you don’t do so, the female guppy will eat up all her babies!”
“Eee! So cruel!”
“That’s nature’s way of doing things, Sally. Welcome to this cruel world.”
After some more searching, we found a six inches plastic tank that could be used as a new home for her new Betta. Okay, found the house, time to get the owner.
“How many fighting fishes do you think we can fit in this tank?”
“One.”
“One? I think the tank is big enough for at least three!”
“Do you happen to know that fighting fishes actually fight?” I realized that I forgot to tell her this important bit of information.
“Yes I know! That’s why they’re called fighting fishes right?” Sally held her waist and stared at me. “But only two males will fight right? Which means that I can put a male and some females together in the tank right?”
“That’s only if you intend to breed them.”
Sally paused a while, then said: “Hey, breeding fighting fishes could be fun!”
In order to do the Bettas a favor and save some lives, I decided to tell Sally my friend’s experience in breeding Bettas.
“Okay, listen. Breeding Bettas is not as easy as you think it is. First of all, you should only put a male and a female in the tank. Having more than two females will excite your male to death.”
“Well, he can always schedule his females for 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 right? Then he can rest on Sundays,” Sally giggled.
“Uh-ehm…” I ignored her and continued. “You have to feed them regularly so that you don’t starve them, because once they get hungry, they'll start to bite each other. Place some plants in the tank so that your female could seek refuge whenever necessary. If everything goes well, a bubble nest will soon be created by the male. If mating is successful, you’ll see the female releasing some cream-colored eggs. At this time, you’ll need to move the female to another tank otherwise the male will bite her. The male will then dive down and pick up all the eggs with his mouth and spit it into the nest. A couple of days later, the eggs will hatch and you’ll need to remove the male as well. And all these are only the breeding part.”
“And then?”
“Then you’ll need to prepare some baby foods like Liquidfry to feed the fries.”
“And then?”
“Then you’ll just have to pray and wait for the fries to grow up safely.”
“Wow…” Sally mused. “That sounds cool!”
Happily, Sally selected one male Veil Tail Betta and another female Single Tail Betta. Though cheap, the male Veil Tail Betta looked rather pretty with its pinkish body and purple tail and fins. Together with the small plastic tank, she bought a potted sword plant and a bottle of Anti-chlorine solution as well.
Upon reaching the office, I helped the joyous Sally to set up the aquarium. I cleaned the tank, filled it up with tap water, poured in a small amount of Anti-chlorine solution and put the potted sword plant in. Then we got a problem.
“Sally, didn’t you compare the height of the plant to that of the tank before buying the plant?”
“Eh… no. I just chose the one that looks nicest and freshest. Erm… can we place the plant horizontally instead?”
Sally tilted the plant to make it lay horizontally on the floor of the tank.
“Okay what! It still looks nice right? The plant can still grow right?” Sally asked.
“Yeh, I suppose so.”
Sally then took over to perform the most important task – releasing the fishes into the tank. She released the packet of female Betta into the tank followed by the male Betta. For a while, the two fishes swam around to get themselves used to the new environment. Like in a Hindu movie, they swam around the horizontally lying sword plant and played hide-and-seek with each other. When the male Betta finally managed to swam to the front of the female Betta, it pecked the female Betta, who then swam away hastily in shock. The whole process repeated for a couple of times and Sally sat in front of her tank and witnessed every single shocking meeting those two fishes had. Suddenly, she gasped.
“Oh my god!”
“What?” I rushed to her and looked at the tank. The fishes looked fine to me.
“I forgot to buy fish food!”
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Chapter 11: Ghosts and Their Fears
I had just finished my conference call when my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Dawn.
“hi, do u find anything wrong wif Sally today?”
Sally was behaving strangely indeed. Usually she would be either talking avidly on the phone or typing stodgily on her notebook with her eyes glued to the screen. But when I turned and looked at her, I found her staring into blank space instead of into the Euromoney magazine that she was holding.
I replied Dawn on the MSN Messenger.
“yeh, she seems strange today. Why dun u ask her whether she’s ok?”
“ok, I’ll msn her”
After I finished writing one slide for my presentation, Dawn sent me a message.
“hi, I think we better go to her desk”
“why?”
“she said she had some spiritual encounter last evening”
Before I could relate “spiritual encounter” to “ghost”, Dawn, Nicky and Ju had already gathered at Sally’s desk. Dawn had once again proven that her mass communication skill was undisputed and uncontested.
“So what exactly happened?” the concerned Ju asked.
Sally clasped her hands together nervously and took a deep breath. With a pair of watery eyes, she stared at Rose and said: “I think there was a ghost here in the office last night.”
This time round, everybody else around Sally took a deep breath.
“Sally, are you sure it was not an illusion?” a wide-eyed Ju asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sally shook her head.
“What did you see?” Nicky asked.
“You know, last night I worked late to prepare for the coming Marketing event right? So after all of you went back, I was all alone in the office at eight plus. Then suddenly I heard some papers flipping sound at the other side of the office behind that partition there. I thought some document files fell so I walked over to take a look. But even after I walked all the way to the furthest end of the office, I could not find any document file or paper on the ground. And I didn’t hear the flipping any more as well.”
“Maybe you were too tired and you imagined that flipping sound,” suggested Ju.
“No, it can’t be! After I walked back to my desk and sat down, that flipping sound started again!” Sally hollered and clasped Ju’s arm.
Everybody stood frozen and stared at Sally.
“So I tried to call my boyfriend on my mobile phone but there was no signal strength.”
”No signal strength? You kidding me? My mobile phone’s reception here is great!” Nicky blurted.
“I’ve never had any reception problem with my mobile phone too, but last night I just couldn’t get any signal strength at all! And you know what? When I tried to use my desk phone to call him, it’s engaged! He has got a waiting line service on his mobile phone but I got an engaged tone!”
By then, Ju’s right hand was clasping Sally’s hands which are on Ju’s left hand, and Dawn was clasping Nicky’s sleeve.
“I was really very scared, so I packed up and ran out of the office as fast as I could! When I was outside the building, I tried to call my boyfriend again, and I was so happy to hear his voice on the other line!”
“And he came over to pick you up?” Ju asked.
“Yeh, and when I asked him why his mobile phone was engaged, he said that he was not using the mobile phone, and it didn’t ring at all!”
A small pearl of tear rolled down Sally’s left cheek. Her right hand struggled out of Ju’s hand to wipe off the tear quickly. Realizing that they were clasping each other too tightly, Sally and Ju let go of each other. These two ladies were really freaked out.
“But I’d ever worked here till nine plus and nothing happened,” said Nicky.
“Nicky, you’re different,” I explained. “You’ve got two dragons, one cock and one weird fish surrounding you. Those ghosts are scared of your pets!”
“Hey, my Feng Shui animals are not that scary okay? And besides, that’s a dragon carp, not a ‘weird fish’.”
“Nicky, do you think the spirits in the office are unhappy because we didn’t have any offerings for them during the seventh month?” Ju asked.
The “seventh month” referred to is the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar. This month-long period is also known as the “hungry ghost festival” and the Chinese believed that this is when all the dead spirits are released from hell back to the mortal world. On top of offering roast piglets, roast ducks, roast pork, fruits and other festive food stuff, the Chinese will also burn paper monies, paper clothes, paper cars, paper mahjong sets, paper cigarettes and other paper gifts to their dead relatives.
The copious paper gifts that are burnt for the dead are really fascinating but confusing. There are paper credit cards. Do these come with free ‘deadtime’ subscription? And if a spirit failed to pay his/her bill, will he/she be declared bankrupt? There are paper DVD players. But where will the DVDs come from? Are we supposed to get some DVDs from HMV and burn them? And here is the best part - paper mobile phones. What if this happens…
“Hello Beng, is that you?”
“Er… yes, may I know who’s that?”
“Beng, it’s me! Your grandfather! How can you forget my voice? I’ve only been dead for five years! You unfilial grandson!”
“Er… oh… hi, grandpa! What’s up? How’s life down there?”
Perhaps we should learn to think twice before burning anything.
“Yeh, you may be right. We didn’t even offer them any joss-sticks,” Nicky mused.
“But why will there be any spirit in the office in the first place?” I questioned. “Before you can have a spirit, somebody must die right? So how will anybody die here?”
“Hey, you never know!” Nicky disagreed. “Maybe somebody did die working here? Like having a heart attack while flipping through a financial report?”
“Or died working too much overtime,” Dawn added.
“Why don’t we get an army badge from the army store at Beach Road?” Choi joined in the conversation.
“An army badge? What for?” asked Dawn.
“Because spirits are scared of it,” Choi explained solemnly. “When I was serving my National Service at Pulau Tekong, my platoon stayed at one of those seven-storey barracks. When we looked out of our room’s windows, there was this unused blank space. Then in the middle of one night, my whole platoon was woken up by the sound of people marching. Initially everybody thought that some unlucky platoon had been punished to march around the block. But when they looked out of the windows, they saw the apparitions of Japanese soldiers marching around that unused blank space and one that looked like the commander even shouted some commands in Japanese!”
At that point, Sally, Ju and Dawn screamed. Ju and Sally clasped each other again.
“But what has that got to do with the army badge?” I asked.
“Oh, before I went to Pulau Tekong for my training, my older friends told me to sleep with my beret beside my pillow, which was why I didn’t wake up to see those Japanese soldiers.”
“Are you sure it’s not because you’re too deeply asleep?”
Choi folded his arms and stared at me.
“Beng, Choi might be right,” Ju sided Choi. “My hubby used to be in the Navy and he swears that the badge worked as well.”
“Your husband’s platoon saw some Japanese divers swimming onto the shore?” Dawn asked.
“No, they didn’t! But something else happened. At that time when they were staying in, three to four of them shared one room…”
“Wow, that’s luxurious! We have more than twelve of us sharing!” Choi protested.
“Erm… Choi, my hubby was an officer.”
“Oh…”
“Anyway, my hubby slept with his officer cap beside his pillow as well and thanks to it, he’s still alive.”
Ju took a deep breath before continuing.
“Together with two other guys, they had their beds against three walls in the room and the remaining wall was the exit to the balcony…”
“What? They even had a balcony?!!” Choi protested again.
Ju ignored Choi and continued: “So one night they were sleeping as usual when suddenly my hubby was waken up by somebody shaking his arm. When he opened his blurry eyes, he saw one of his roommates shaking him with one hand, and another hand holding something that looked like a rope. He was telling my hubby to ‘pass the rope’. Immediately, my hubby closed his eyes, turned away from his roommate and started to say prayers. After some time, he could feel his roommate’s hand moving away from his and he didn’t hear his voice anymore. The next morning, my hubby asked this roommate if he remembered the previous night’s incident, and he said that the only thing he remembered was the other roommate waking him up and asking him to pass a rope.”
“So what’s the thing about this rope that they’re trying to pass?” I was confused.
“My hubby said that one guy actually hung himself to death from the ceiling fan in the middle of that room during training. And tales went around that people sleeping in that room will wake up in the middle of the night to ask his roommate sleeping in the next bed to pass a rope. Once all the guys had passed the rope and the rope made one round in the room, one of them will die. That was how one guy died in that room a few years before my hubby’s platoon stayed there.”
Geez, that was one close shave.
“Okay, then let’s go get some army badges during lunch time!” said the exhilarated Sally.
“Hang on, the army badge might have worked because they were in a military camp,” Nicky analyzed. “But this is an office.”
“Then what shall we use?” asked the distraught Sally.
Everybody tried to think of something that could scare office spirits. Suggestions poured in like making a pile of unfinished documents, the CEO’s name card, and even a calendar marked full of meetings. Then I thought of something that might really work.
“How about a letter that says ‘we regret to inform you that you have been made redundant’?”
“hi, do u find anything wrong wif Sally today?”
Sally was behaving strangely indeed. Usually she would be either talking avidly on the phone or typing stodgily on her notebook with her eyes glued to the screen. But when I turned and looked at her, I found her staring into blank space instead of into the Euromoney magazine that she was holding.
I replied Dawn on the MSN Messenger.
“yeh, she seems strange today. Why dun u ask her whether she’s ok?”
“ok, I’ll msn her”
After I finished writing one slide for my presentation, Dawn sent me a message.
“hi, I think we better go to her desk”
“why?”
“she said she had some spiritual encounter last evening”
Before I could relate “spiritual encounter” to “ghost”, Dawn, Nicky and Ju had already gathered at Sally’s desk. Dawn had once again proven that her mass communication skill was undisputed and uncontested.
“So what exactly happened?” the concerned Ju asked.
Sally clasped her hands together nervously and took a deep breath. With a pair of watery eyes, she stared at Rose and said: “I think there was a ghost here in the office last night.”
This time round, everybody else around Sally took a deep breath.
“Sally, are you sure it was not an illusion?” a wide-eyed Ju asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sally shook her head.
“What did you see?” Nicky asked.
“You know, last night I worked late to prepare for the coming Marketing event right? So after all of you went back, I was all alone in the office at eight plus. Then suddenly I heard some papers flipping sound at the other side of the office behind that partition there. I thought some document files fell so I walked over to take a look. But even after I walked all the way to the furthest end of the office, I could not find any document file or paper on the ground. And I didn’t hear the flipping any more as well.”
“Maybe you were too tired and you imagined that flipping sound,” suggested Ju.
“No, it can’t be! After I walked back to my desk and sat down, that flipping sound started again!” Sally hollered and clasped Ju’s arm.
Everybody stood frozen and stared at Sally.
“So I tried to call my boyfriend on my mobile phone but there was no signal strength.”
”No signal strength? You kidding me? My mobile phone’s reception here is great!” Nicky blurted.
“I’ve never had any reception problem with my mobile phone too, but last night I just couldn’t get any signal strength at all! And you know what? When I tried to use my desk phone to call him, it’s engaged! He has got a waiting line service on his mobile phone but I got an engaged tone!”
By then, Ju’s right hand was clasping Sally’s hands which are on Ju’s left hand, and Dawn was clasping Nicky’s sleeve.
“I was really very scared, so I packed up and ran out of the office as fast as I could! When I was outside the building, I tried to call my boyfriend again, and I was so happy to hear his voice on the other line!”
“And he came over to pick you up?” Ju asked.
“Yeh, and when I asked him why his mobile phone was engaged, he said that he was not using the mobile phone, and it didn’t ring at all!”
A small pearl of tear rolled down Sally’s left cheek. Her right hand struggled out of Ju’s hand to wipe off the tear quickly. Realizing that they were clasping each other too tightly, Sally and Ju let go of each other. These two ladies were really freaked out.
“But I’d ever worked here till nine plus and nothing happened,” said Nicky.
“Nicky, you’re different,” I explained. “You’ve got two dragons, one cock and one weird fish surrounding you. Those ghosts are scared of your pets!”
“Hey, my Feng Shui animals are not that scary okay? And besides, that’s a dragon carp, not a ‘weird fish’.”
“Nicky, do you think the spirits in the office are unhappy because we didn’t have any offerings for them during the seventh month?” Ju asked.
The “seventh month” referred to is the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar. This month-long period is also known as the “hungry ghost festival” and the Chinese believed that this is when all the dead spirits are released from hell back to the mortal world. On top of offering roast piglets, roast ducks, roast pork, fruits and other festive food stuff, the Chinese will also burn paper monies, paper clothes, paper cars, paper mahjong sets, paper cigarettes and other paper gifts to their dead relatives.
The copious paper gifts that are burnt for the dead are really fascinating but confusing. There are paper credit cards. Do these come with free ‘deadtime’ subscription? And if a spirit failed to pay his/her bill, will he/she be declared bankrupt? There are paper DVD players. But where will the DVDs come from? Are we supposed to get some DVDs from HMV and burn them? And here is the best part - paper mobile phones. What if this happens…
“Hello Beng, is that you?”
“Er… yes, may I know who’s that?”
“Beng, it’s me! Your grandfather! How can you forget my voice? I’ve only been dead for five years! You unfilial grandson!”
“Er… oh… hi, grandpa! What’s up? How’s life down there?”
Perhaps we should learn to think twice before burning anything.
“Yeh, you may be right. We didn’t even offer them any joss-sticks,” Nicky mused.
“But why will there be any spirit in the office in the first place?” I questioned. “Before you can have a spirit, somebody must die right? So how will anybody die here?”
“Hey, you never know!” Nicky disagreed. “Maybe somebody did die working here? Like having a heart attack while flipping through a financial report?”
“Or died working too much overtime,” Dawn added.
“Why don’t we get an army badge from the army store at Beach Road?” Choi joined in the conversation.
“An army badge? What for?” asked Dawn.
“Because spirits are scared of it,” Choi explained solemnly. “When I was serving my National Service at Pulau Tekong, my platoon stayed at one of those seven-storey barracks. When we looked out of our room’s windows, there was this unused blank space. Then in the middle of one night, my whole platoon was woken up by the sound of people marching. Initially everybody thought that some unlucky platoon had been punished to march around the block. But when they looked out of the windows, they saw the apparitions of Japanese soldiers marching around that unused blank space and one that looked like the commander even shouted some commands in Japanese!”
At that point, Sally, Ju and Dawn screamed. Ju and Sally clasped each other again.
“But what has that got to do with the army badge?” I asked.
“Oh, before I went to Pulau Tekong for my training, my older friends told me to sleep with my beret beside my pillow, which was why I didn’t wake up to see those Japanese soldiers.”
“Are you sure it’s not because you’re too deeply asleep?”
Choi folded his arms and stared at me.
“Beng, Choi might be right,” Ju sided Choi. “My hubby used to be in the Navy and he swears that the badge worked as well.”
“Your husband’s platoon saw some Japanese divers swimming onto the shore?” Dawn asked.
“No, they didn’t! But something else happened. At that time when they were staying in, three to four of them shared one room…”
“Wow, that’s luxurious! We have more than twelve of us sharing!” Choi protested.
“Erm… Choi, my hubby was an officer.”
“Oh…”
“Anyway, my hubby slept with his officer cap beside his pillow as well and thanks to it, he’s still alive.”
Ju took a deep breath before continuing.
“Together with two other guys, they had their beds against three walls in the room and the remaining wall was the exit to the balcony…”
“What? They even had a balcony?!!” Choi protested again.
Ju ignored Choi and continued: “So one night they were sleeping as usual when suddenly my hubby was waken up by somebody shaking his arm. When he opened his blurry eyes, he saw one of his roommates shaking him with one hand, and another hand holding something that looked like a rope. He was telling my hubby to ‘pass the rope’. Immediately, my hubby closed his eyes, turned away from his roommate and started to say prayers. After some time, he could feel his roommate’s hand moving away from his and he didn’t hear his voice anymore. The next morning, my hubby asked this roommate if he remembered the previous night’s incident, and he said that the only thing he remembered was the other roommate waking him up and asking him to pass a rope.”
“So what’s the thing about this rope that they’re trying to pass?” I was confused.
“My hubby said that one guy actually hung himself to death from the ceiling fan in the middle of that room during training. And tales went around that people sleeping in that room will wake up in the middle of the night to ask his roommate sleeping in the next bed to pass a rope. Once all the guys had passed the rope and the rope made one round in the room, one of them will die. That was how one guy died in that room a few years before my hubby’s platoon stayed there.”
Geez, that was one close shave.
“Okay, then let’s go get some army badges during lunch time!” said the exhilarated Sally.
“Hang on, the army badge might have worked because they were in a military camp,” Nicky analyzed. “But this is an office.”
“Then what shall we use?” asked the distraught Sally.
Everybody tried to think of something that could scare office spirits. Suggestions poured in like making a pile of unfinished documents, the CEO’s name card, and even a calendar marked full of meetings. Then I thought of something that might really work.
“How about a letter that says ‘we regret to inform you that you have been made redundant’?”
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Chapter 10: The Battle between Choi and the Weighing Scale
There was an increase in the number of overweight and obese working adults in Singapore. Worried that this scenario will translate into an increase in the number of diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke patients, the country advised companies to step in to promote a healthy working environment for their employees.
The Health Promotion Board was organizing a programme known as Fitness @ Work in the Financial Business District, which consisted of forty minutes of workout sessions one evening every week, at the Singapore River Promenade. That was one great venue for working out where participants could enjoy the vista of the Singapore River while trying to bend over and reach their toes, and tourists could marvel at the sight of our men and ladies hopping and stretching while they enjoy their coffee by the river.
Our company sent out mass emails to everybody about this healthy programme and urged all to participate. In the email, it had a italic note stating that the generous Health Promotion Board will be rewarding participants with goodies such as sports towels and sports bottles for every four sessions of participation. Oh, limited editions of Fitness @ Work sports bottles! How motivating!
“Hey Beng, do you want to join me to the Fitness @ Work workout session this evening?”
“Yah, okay Choi.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a shout one hour before the event to remind you.”
Five minutes before the workout session, my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Choi.
“hey, can’t go for the workout. Gotta finish a report by today. Sorry”
For the next few weeks, Choi made the effort to invite me for the workout session every week but failed to reserve some effort to actually attend it.
As part of the nationwide Workplace Health Promotion Programme, our company had collaborated with a healthcare group to provide free health screening for all employees. From the conversation among the secretaries that I heard while making coffee in the pantry, it seemed like the participation from our company for that Fitness @ Work workout session was pathetically low. Apparently our company felt that since the limited editions of sports towels and sports bottles could not motivate us, perhaps we needed somebody to tell us straight into our faces how dangerously unhealthy we were so that we could start exercising.
Rose marked a morning on our calendars for the free health screening. Obediently, our whole team, except Dawn who was pregnant, exchanged our breakfasts for the chance to find out how unhealthy we were. When we entered the huge office reserved for this health screening exercise, we saw a couple of tables with white table clothes and each seated with a stern looking lady dressed in white next to a cold looking equipment. It was amazing how this medical group had successfully decorated an empty office and transformed it utterly to look like a hospital.
After a simple registration, and visits to the washrooms to return with our urine samples, we were all set to be examined.
From table to table, I answered some questions, got my finger pricked and achieved a couple of scribbles and ticks on my health report card. Blood glucose level? Okay. Blood pressure? Okay. Cholesterol level? Okay. Then I arrived at the last table. I stood on the scale while the plump lady took down my height and weight readings carefully. We sat back at the table and she did some furious tapings on the calculator, and then looked up at me. Solemnly.
“Mr. Tan, your Body Mass Index is twenty-four, so you’re slightly overweight,” Ms. Plump Lady chided. I wondered how she will look at our Choi and his paunch.
“I suggest that you should exercise more.”
“Er… but I’m already running and doing weights three times a week.”
“Oh… then are you eating a lot of rice and meat?”
“No, not really. I’m a light eater and I take more vegetables than meat.”
“Oh… okay… then could you please proceed to my colleague standing over there so that she can take your body fat percentage measurement?”
Standing at one corner was a slender lady holding on to a black clipper that looked like some kind of torture equipment that will release electric current to burn any fat it detected. She tried her very best to pull as much flesh as she could from my triceps, held on to them using the black clipper and noted down the reading shown on a panel on the black clipper. This painful process was repeated for my back and waist.
“Mr. Tan, your body fat percentage is eighteen,” Ms. Slender Lady smiled.
“So am I good?”
“Yes, you’ve got a healthy body fat percentage for your age.”
When everybody was back at the office, we exchanged and looked at each other’s health report card.
“KZ, you sure are healthy!” exclaimed Nicky.
“Eat vegetables,” replied KZ.
“Hmm… my cholesterol level is slightly high. Maybe I should take more vegetables as well,” mused Rose.
“Wow Nicky, you’re pretty healthy for a sedentary guy,” commented Sally.
“Of course girl, I swim every week!” Nicky grinned.
Then I realized that Choi was looking slightly uncomfortably at his health record card.
“Choi, you okay pal?” I nudged Choi.
“Yeh,” Choi managed a tepid smile. “Just got a slightly high blood pressure.”
“Don’t worry. If it’s not very high, you can still try to bring it back down.”
“And a slightly high Body Mass Index, and a slightly high body fat percentage.”
“Friend, these are the testimonies to your voracious fondness for good food.”
“Haha… right. And my lack of exercise.”
For the next few weeks, Choi tried to include less meat and more vegetables in his diet. He finally made the effort to run once a week too. But only for that few weeks.
Following the free health screening, our company sent an email to every employee regarding a corporate discount programme it had started with the popular CF Gym. The CF Gym was offering each employee a two weeks free pass to its gym near to our office, and an attractive discount for its membership if we decided to sign up. From the conversation among the secretaries that I heard while making coffee in the pantry again, it seemed like the free health screening revealed that majority of the employees were considered overweight. Apparently our company was concerned with the unhealthy image it was portraying to the public.
“Hey Beng, aren’t you a member of CF Gym?” Choi asked avidly.
“Yah.”
“How about I join you to the gym for the next two weeks?”
“Sure, why not?”
On the first evening that we went to the gym, a physical trainer was assigned to take care of Choi. Choi looked slightly discomfited going through the same body fat percentage and blood pressure measurement again and having somebody telling him how unhealthy he was again.
A fitness consultant, a.k.a. sales manager, then joined the physical trainer and tried out his entire repertoire on Choi with all the talks about how risky it was to be overweight and all the talks about how joining the gym will help him to lose weight safely. Eventually, after an hour, Choi was convinced that he needed a new gym membership to start a new healthy life so he signed up a year’s membership.
A couple of free training sessions with that physical trainer were thrown in for Choi, and for about a month, Choi had a chance to reminisce the Basic Military Training during his National Service.
“Okay, let’s add another ten pounds!”
“Mr. Choi, let’s do one more set of squats today!”
“Nine… ten… come on, just five more! You can do it!”
For the first two months, Choi religiously had his workout at the gym a couple of times each week. Then for the next one month, he went for his workout once a week. Then he went for his workout once a month. Then once every few months. Then he stopped.
One day, Choi came over to my desk with a glass of yellowish colored water.
“Dude, try this!”
“I’m not trying anything until you tell me what this is,” I rejected.
“Organic apple cider vinegar.”
“And I’m supposed to become even smarter after drinking this?”
“Yeh right,” Choi raised an eyebrow. “It’s a popular diet drink that’s tried and proven by Hollywood stars.”
“I don’t suppose this piece of information comes from any medical journal?”
“I heard it from the conversation among the secretaries when I was making coffee in the pantry. They said it’s totally natural and there won’t be any side effect, so I guessed why not give it a try?”
For the next few weeks, Choi went on a low fat diet supplemented with that organic apple cider vinegar. For that few weeks at four o’clock everyday, Choi walked around grumbling about his hunger, Dawn tried offering him some biscuits, and he rejected it and insisted on staying on his diet program. Then another few weeks later, Choi stopped walking around and grumble about his hunger. The bottle of organic apple cedar vinegar on his desk disappeared too.
From the Fitness @ Work workout sessions to the organic apple cider vinegar, Choi managed to lose five kilograms and his blood pressure was back to normal. Not a bad achievement after all, I would say.
The Health Promotion Board was organizing a programme known as Fitness @ Work in the Financial Business District, which consisted of forty minutes of workout sessions one evening every week, at the Singapore River Promenade. That was one great venue for working out where participants could enjoy the vista of the Singapore River while trying to bend over and reach their toes, and tourists could marvel at the sight of our men and ladies hopping and stretching while they enjoy their coffee by the river.
Our company sent out mass emails to everybody about this healthy programme and urged all to participate. In the email, it had a italic note stating that the generous Health Promotion Board will be rewarding participants with goodies such as sports towels and sports bottles for every four sessions of participation. Oh, limited editions of Fitness @ Work sports bottles! How motivating!
“Hey Beng, do you want to join me to the Fitness @ Work workout session this evening?”
“Yah, okay Choi.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a shout one hour before the event to remind you.”
Five minutes before the workout session, my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Choi.
“hey, can’t go for the workout. Gotta finish a report by today. Sorry”
For the next few weeks, Choi made the effort to invite me for the workout session every week but failed to reserve some effort to actually attend it.
As part of the nationwide Workplace Health Promotion Programme, our company had collaborated with a healthcare group to provide free health screening for all employees. From the conversation among the secretaries that I heard while making coffee in the pantry, it seemed like the participation from our company for that Fitness @ Work workout session was pathetically low. Apparently our company felt that since the limited editions of sports towels and sports bottles could not motivate us, perhaps we needed somebody to tell us straight into our faces how dangerously unhealthy we were so that we could start exercising.
Rose marked a morning on our calendars for the free health screening. Obediently, our whole team, except Dawn who was pregnant, exchanged our breakfasts for the chance to find out how unhealthy we were. When we entered the huge office reserved for this health screening exercise, we saw a couple of tables with white table clothes and each seated with a stern looking lady dressed in white next to a cold looking equipment. It was amazing how this medical group had successfully decorated an empty office and transformed it utterly to look like a hospital.
After a simple registration, and visits to the washrooms to return with our urine samples, we were all set to be examined.
From table to table, I answered some questions, got my finger pricked and achieved a couple of scribbles and ticks on my health report card. Blood glucose level? Okay. Blood pressure? Okay. Cholesterol level? Okay. Then I arrived at the last table. I stood on the scale while the plump lady took down my height and weight readings carefully. We sat back at the table and she did some furious tapings on the calculator, and then looked up at me. Solemnly.
“Mr. Tan, your Body Mass Index is twenty-four, so you’re slightly overweight,” Ms. Plump Lady chided. I wondered how she will look at our Choi and his paunch.
“I suggest that you should exercise more.”
“Er… but I’m already running and doing weights three times a week.”
“Oh… then are you eating a lot of rice and meat?”
“No, not really. I’m a light eater and I take more vegetables than meat.”
“Oh… okay… then could you please proceed to my colleague standing over there so that she can take your body fat percentage measurement?”
Standing at one corner was a slender lady holding on to a black clipper that looked like some kind of torture equipment that will release electric current to burn any fat it detected. She tried her very best to pull as much flesh as she could from my triceps, held on to them using the black clipper and noted down the reading shown on a panel on the black clipper. This painful process was repeated for my back and waist.
“Mr. Tan, your body fat percentage is eighteen,” Ms. Slender Lady smiled.
“So am I good?”
“Yes, you’ve got a healthy body fat percentage for your age.”
When everybody was back at the office, we exchanged and looked at each other’s health report card.
“KZ, you sure are healthy!” exclaimed Nicky.
“Eat vegetables,” replied KZ.
“Hmm… my cholesterol level is slightly high. Maybe I should take more vegetables as well,” mused Rose.
“Wow Nicky, you’re pretty healthy for a sedentary guy,” commented Sally.
“Of course girl, I swim every week!” Nicky grinned.
Then I realized that Choi was looking slightly uncomfortably at his health record card.
“Choi, you okay pal?” I nudged Choi.
“Yeh,” Choi managed a tepid smile. “Just got a slightly high blood pressure.”
“Don’t worry. If it’s not very high, you can still try to bring it back down.”
“And a slightly high Body Mass Index, and a slightly high body fat percentage.”
“Friend, these are the testimonies to your voracious fondness for good food.”
“Haha… right. And my lack of exercise.”
For the next few weeks, Choi tried to include less meat and more vegetables in his diet. He finally made the effort to run once a week too. But only for that few weeks.
Following the free health screening, our company sent an email to every employee regarding a corporate discount programme it had started with the popular CF Gym. The CF Gym was offering each employee a two weeks free pass to its gym near to our office, and an attractive discount for its membership if we decided to sign up. From the conversation among the secretaries that I heard while making coffee in the pantry again, it seemed like the free health screening revealed that majority of the employees were considered overweight. Apparently our company was concerned with the unhealthy image it was portraying to the public.
“Hey Beng, aren’t you a member of CF Gym?” Choi asked avidly.
“Yah.”
“How about I join you to the gym for the next two weeks?”
“Sure, why not?”
On the first evening that we went to the gym, a physical trainer was assigned to take care of Choi. Choi looked slightly discomfited going through the same body fat percentage and blood pressure measurement again and having somebody telling him how unhealthy he was again.
A fitness consultant, a.k.a. sales manager, then joined the physical trainer and tried out his entire repertoire on Choi with all the talks about how risky it was to be overweight and all the talks about how joining the gym will help him to lose weight safely. Eventually, after an hour, Choi was convinced that he needed a new gym membership to start a new healthy life so he signed up a year’s membership.
A couple of free training sessions with that physical trainer were thrown in for Choi, and for about a month, Choi had a chance to reminisce the Basic Military Training during his National Service.
“Okay, let’s add another ten pounds!”
“Mr. Choi, let’s do one more set of squats today!”
“Nine… ten… come on, just five more! You can do it!”
For the first two months, Choi religiously had his workout at the gym a couple of times each week. Then for the next one month, he went for his workout once a week. Then he went for his workout once a month. Then once every few months. Then he stopped.
One day, Choi came over to my desk with a glass of yellowish colored water.
“Dude, try this!”
“I’m not trying anything until you tell me what this is,” I rejected.
“Organic apple cider vinegar.”
“And I’m supposed to become even smarter after drinking this?”
“Yeh right,” Choi raised an eyebrow. “It’s a popular diet drink that’s tried and proven by Hollywood stars.”
“I don’t suppose this piece of information comes from any medical journal?”
“I heard it from the conversation among the secretaries when I was making coffee in the pantry. They said it’s totally natural and there won’t be any side effect, so I guessed why not give it a try?”
For the next few weeks, Choi went on a low fat diet supplemented with that organic apple cider vinegar. For that few weeks at four o’clock everyday, Choi walked around grumbling about his hunger, Dawn tried offering him some biscuits, and he rejected it and insisted on staying on his diet program. Then another few weeks later, Choi stopped walking around and grumble about his hunger. The bottle of organic apple cedar vinegar on his desk disappeared too.
From the Fitness @ Work workout sessions to the organic apple cider vinegar, Choi managed to lose five kilograms and his blood pressure was back to normal. Not a bad achievement after all, I would say.
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