haha. this period i am more free from work. wonder when will be my next post.

anyway, just thinking about something my coaching manager said yesterday... 'the first and second year associates still ok, will follow up on their work, and do alright on their work. as they move on to become more senior, they just get worse.'

actually... maybe it's because you are more enthusiastic in the first and second yr, you can still accept the long hours of work, the crazy following up on your previous job when you still have your current job... but when you become more senior, you have more responsibilities as an in-charge of all the jobs you are doing, and i guess following up on prior jobs on a timely basis just becomes difficult cos' you can't even finish what you have on your hands now... we only have 24 hours per day after all...

somehow as i moved on to my second year, i find that i probably can't accept 2am everyday and working on weekends as well as i did in my first year... we dun live to work, we work to live. even if we dun really have a life on weekdays, but at least rest and having some fun on weekends is just a necessary part of life. haha, i feel like i am going to become the kind of senior that she is talking about.

it becomes more demoralising to know that the fifth person from my batch is quitting... and rumors about a sixth. though we are already doing quite well, i think other batches have 8 to 12 each already... it's a vicious cycle. more people leave, the remaining work lies onto the people who are left. and the people left feel more pressure to finish more work than they can handle, and they leave, and it goes on.

my manager asked me yesterday, what do you think of your job, do you have plans to stay here for long term? i was like, just told her that, i can't answer this question, cos' you will never know what might happen. and that i dun love the job, nor hate the job.

actually, i do like the job, but i can't tell her that. cos' i think people who will most prob not leave the job will be taken advantage of, people will throw all the things to you and expect you to clear them, cos' they know no matter what you still like this job so you wun suddenly throw your resignation letter and heck care. people who are very outstanding in their work are also taken advantage of, cos' everyone wants them in their job and their job schedule is always full. my friend dun even have time to take leave, and they have to force some manager to take her out for some weeks for her to take a break. so ironic. to survive in this place, you can't be too lan, nor too good. yet you must still do relatively well.

i also can see why people are leaving. not just cos' of the hours, their outside life nor anything else. cos' we can't even choose where we want to take our annual leave easily, dictated by our 1 year in advance job schedules, and when we are sick we dun even dare to take mc cos' we can't finish our work within the tight deadlines, and people even take mc cos' they want to stay at home to finish up all the neverending queries from their prior jobs. during the peak period, we dun even dare to ask our friends out on weekday nights, cos' we dunno if we will work late, we cannot make any promises. some of them even have to work on weekends. is this even a humane way of living? and i guess this is the unhappiness that no amount of money, increment, bonus, extra off days can ever compensate.

haha. sounds like i am the one leaving. but i am not. just pondering about all these things. =/

it's september. next week it would be my 23rd birthday.

i recently watched a great anime which also had a live action drama done up; nodame cantabile.

it's about a guy (shuai guy) who is super musically talented, rich, grew up in a family of musicians, who aspires to be a conductor but stuck in japan because of his fear of aeroplanes. he thought that everyone in his music school plays with a sub standard, and he wants to go to europe but couldn't because of his fear. one day, he met this girl with amazing talent in piano. she can't play very well by reading scores on the first time, but can play the same song if she hears it once... she's messy, poor... and she inspired him through piano that he can achieve his dreams as a conductor still...

all the music in the show is really amazing. made me remember how much i love the symphony, the classical music when i was still in band in primary school. makes me remember how badly i wanted to learn the piano in primary school though my mum refused to let me learn cos' of the high costs.

i wonder really, if i never joined a uniformed group in sec school, and joined the band instead, would i be a different person now? makes me really wanna learn an instrument now...

i rem how i love to play the only instrument i can play - the recorder. it's my relaxation tool when i was down, my favourite thing to play when i was free. been years since i last touched it. would be very weird if i blew it now, my mum would think i am nuts i guess.

music... it would really be a different me if i continued with music in sec school isn't it? haha, i always thot that i wasn't suited to be in a uniformed group, although i have to say i really learnt a lot from there.

it's been a yr.

somehow i thought about blogging today. just a few sentences though.

while trying to snap out of my holiday mood, it is just depressing as always on your first few days back to work. don't i wish the holiday will never end, just like school holidays in the past.

while all my friends tried to ask me out on a weekday night, the most depressing thing about my job is i never know what time i end work. that seems to be one of the bad things about my profession, though it is a really interesting profession.

like my senior said, perhaps if our job ends at a fixed timing everyday, we work 8 to 9 hours really everyday, this job isn't all that bad. really. that's probably why quitting is the most talked about topic in my company, and this is the common topic to laugh about and talk over lunch with every other new team that you work with. haha, what an extraordinary job isn't it...

manz, weekend is just about over now. it's gotta be a busy week ahead, i hope i can keep to all my promises with my friends this coming week. monday, thursday, friday, saturday. plus the late nights that my senior says we will work this week. this is going to be a tough week. good, hope i use this to snap out of my holiday mood, and get down to work.

till the next time i write again... ciao! (obsessed with jap shows now...)