Bits'n'Pieces-La

On Thursday night I met up with Matt, Brett and Alex. Matt and Brett are ex BITs (for the uninitiated: university course I completed). Matt co-ordinated an alumni event in Sydney called Bitsa and Pieces, so we held an impromptu Bits and Pieces night in SG! No, it wasn't a Tuesday and luckily the place we went to was nicer than the Shelbourne - but close enough.
(Alex is Matt's business partner, not quite part of the club, but we generously let him join us)

After a few drinks with those guys I headed out to Pub-of-the-month with my project. Pub-of-the-month is a newly resurrected version of Pub-of-the-week. Pub-of-the-week died off after the only people attending turned out to be the Aussies & Brits. So the thinking was that maybe once a month would get the crowds out instead.

The event was held at The Butter Factory, a newly opened Bar/Club. A little too new, I think, because our crowd was pretty much the only people there. The staff quite enjoyed us filling up the place - when we got on the dance floor they rewarded us with free shots!

The group left at the end (about 1:30 am) was 2 Aussies, 1 Brit and 3 Malaysians. Not too bad a showing.

Breathtaking

Usually when I travel it's the natural wonders that I take photographs of. In the city, there is not so much of that. Nevertheless I think the blog needs more pictures, so here are a few.
(and I have a new mobile number here because I went to the corporate plan. Email if you'd like it.)

Raffles Place, not too far from work.
Where I live
Yum! Hotpot

Now dance!

Friday night saw me attend the annual dinner and dance for the office here. I really didn't know what to expect, but I was certainly surprised. For the mathematically inclined, here a a few surprising statistics.

• 880! There were that many people in attendence. Huge.


• 35! My best guess as to how manny lucky door prizes there were.


• 1500! How much SGD cash was the first prize. No lucky numbers on our table unfortunately.


• 8! The number of courses in our chinese banquet.





• 4! The number of hilarious songs inlcuded in this year's skit. My favourite was about the time reports: I hear that any missing records larger than 3 periods will impact your performance!


• 30! How many seconds my flatmate was asked to dance sexily behind a shadow screen on stage in order to win a prize. I was gobsmacked that this was considered an appropriate game. She was gobsmacked that we all nominated her for it (we didn't know what it involved until she was already on stage)


• 60! This is how many people stayed after the lucky door prizes had all been drawn. We danced away to YMCA and other classics till we were moved on.


• 71! The number of the floor New Asia Bar is located on. Very cool view.


• 280! The price (SGD) of a bottle of spirits at this bar. Lucky one of partners was buying drinks.


• 5! The wee hour of the morning that I got home. A huge achievement for me not to go home at pumpkin hour, let along last till 5am!

Beats the pants off the Sydney Christmas party.

Farewell Navin!

We had a team dinner on Thursday night to farewell a member of our team. He's been a real friend to me in the last three weeks and I am sad to see him go. We're already making plans for me to go and visit his home near Panang in Malaysia.

Dinner was at one of the large hotels on the outskirts of the CBD. It was standard hotel buffet, but we ate a lot of seafood and I particularly enjoyed all the desserts. I must start using that malaysian desserts cookbook I bought in 2004 when I get back. Dinner was followed by drinks at a cute jazz bar. My usual vodka lime and soda had to be substituted by a vodka a tonic - the sacrifices!

I have accepted a challenge to eat some durian while I am here. Now I have something else to look forward to. The restaurant was serving it inside Roti, so unfortunately Thursday was not the night for it (Roti is an indian pancake made with flour, so contains gluten). There were many stories of durian overdoses told - it seems plenty of people on my team love the stuff. I still can't get over the smell.

On Wednesday night I participated in a conspiracy to throw Navin in the apartment complex pool. I am told I was the only person beyond suspiscion that had any chance of getting him up to the pool without him thinking that we were trying to get him thrown in. After the story I had to make up I have a nickname at work of drama queen. Unfortunately no photos of the incident were any good. Must buy that new camera.

Good luck with your new adventures Navin.

Musings on Work Culture

Tuesday was an interesting day for me at work. What follows is a bit of a rant, a lot of me on a soapbox. Ignore this post if you are looking for tales of fun and travelling.

In order to control how many hours I work in a week, I usually set myself a goal for what time I will leave the office. Tuesday I had a team meeting at 6pm, so I figured I would wrap up work for the day and then head off when the meeting was done. Sorted.

However 6pm rolled around, then 6:30pm and the team still hadn't made a move. Was my calendar playing tricks on me? No. People had 'stuff' to get done, so the meeting was delayed. Not until the next day, but until later that evening. OK, roll with the punches, I'll go back and do more work. The meeting finally started at 7:45pm. Pretty late, everyone agreed, so we'd try to keep it short.

We got through most of the agenda items in about 45 minutes, and were wrapping up the last item when we were joined by some other managers who work with our team. They wanted to review all the items on the agenda to make sure we had understood them. If this had taken 5 minutes I could understand, but this 'review' was still going on 45 minutes later - this has my watch showing 9:15pm. By now, my stomach and my attention span are being severely challenged. In a logical point in the meeting, I suggested that it was late and we could stop re-visiting the items on the agenda that we had already covered. This was met with some laughter, but eventually people started leaving.

(I then went onto dinner at an entertaining market-style European restaurant down the road from home and paid $10 for a glass of Oyster Bay Sav Blanc - crazy, but I needed that drink)

At dinner that night I was congratulated for my initiative to end this meeting. Apparently several other people in the team were also thinking it was crazy to drag a meeting out when it is past 9pm and it is not urgent (we're talking a team catch-up here, nothing time critical). So much of the dinner conversation revolved around my amazement at this series of events and bewilderment on the following concept:

Why do the perfectly intelligent, outgoing people I work with do not feel empowered to put limits on the amount of time their jobs take from them?

A few qualifications here:

• Too much and ineffective overtime are a problem with my company in Australia, but the problem is magnified here.


• I did expect hours to be longer here, both due to cultural differences in what is expected as normal and the complexity of the project.


• What I am trying to discover is what is causing people to be at work when they are not being effective? or what is stopping them from really trying to control their work hours?

The group (all Malaysians, Hong Kong-ians and then me) had a few theories develop over dinner last night:

• Asian culture pushes working hard while young to enjoy the spoils when older


• The lack of social security in some Asian cultures means that people have a greater motivation to work hard


• The class limitations of Asian societies gives people more motivation


• Australians value their quality of life more than Asians

One of my personal theories since mulling over this last night:

• The phoney self-esteem culture supported by the US and Australian education systems creates individuals who have an inflated sense of their own worth. This means that when competing in a work environment, they are more secure in their abilities. So when promotion time comes, they believe their brilliance will be evaluated, rather than their not working overtime.

I understand that culture is influenced by many factors, but I am trying to discover the drivers behind this particularly ineffective overtime my colleagues are doing. I think it is likely to be influenced by a combination of motivational factors and differences in personal assertiveness, but I would really like to hear what other people think. So post a comment. Go on.

Gosh I feel better for sharing that rant. Is my future as a social commentator?

Home!

I've just arrived back from my long weekend in Sydney. It was much harder to come back to Singapore after spending some time with family and friends, particularly B.

Explanation for title of post: I found myself using the word 'home' very ambigiously on the weekend. There's the flat in Sydney that B and I live in (home is where your heart is), there's here in SG (home is where your shoe collection is) and there's my parent's house. It's all a little confusing.

I took the weekend easy, just sleeping on Friday and enjoying the cool breeze.

Saturday saw us meet up with the forsyth crew for a hour or so of frisbee and then racing off to Lara's baptism. Sunday was catching up with my family in Stanwell park and dinner to celebrate two years of B and I being together. Monday was brunch with Tim and Ange and then racing off for the afternoon flight to Singapore.

In some ways the weekend went very quickly and there were more people I would have liked to see, but I think I got enough done. Not sure how I will cope when the weekend is only two days long!

Last week in Singapore

Yes, I know this is my first post in a week, so other than the weekend there was also four days in Singapore. Most of it was spent working, with a few highlights.

I enjoyed dinner on Tuesday with a few Australians at one of the partner's houses. It was nice to relax a little, and I left feeling somewhat tipsy and also envious of the nice resort style complex the partner was living in. His maid cooked us dinner and it was my first experience seeing someone who had domestic help. Other than the lovely people who come and clean my apartment, that is.

Wednesday night I met up with Mehreen, a friend of a work friend from Sydney. She's just moved to SG and has a nice house not far from the city. We had a fanastic Japanese meal and a drink at a nice winebar in chinatown. It is great to have a friend outide of work. We plan to start going to Yoga together and a small place near her house - I was sold on the ajoining cafe that had gluten free cake :)

Shopping... windmills... shopping... badminton... shopping

I survived my first weekend in SG. Thanks to Winnie and John for adopting me. Winnie is my manager from my first industrial training in 2001 and is now living in SG with her lovely husband John.

Things I learnt this weekend:

• Film festivals follow me when I travel. Some of you may know I have been to the Berlin Film Festival and the Rotterdam Film Festival and even Cannes, all by accident on my last big adventure. I found out that The Singapore Film Festival has been kind enough to start this week. I caught some free films on Friday night just around the corner from where I live.



• I am rubbish at badminton. I went with a few people living in the same place as I do went to Winnie's for a game of badminton on Saturday. Makes me wish I listened more when Nick (brother) tried to give me tennis lessons! Thanks for your patience guys.



• Singapore has a giant hand. We went to Suntec City for dinner. Suntec is made up of four tall buildings (fingers) one shorter building (thumb) and the worlds biggest fountain (a ring of fortune in the palm of this hand).



• Fungus can be a dessert too! At the chinese restaurant (interestingly called Soup Restaurant) the dessert was white fungus. I have just added something to the 'must show B when he comes to Singapore' list. I know he can't wait.



• SG has double-decker buses! I was quite chuffed with myself for figuring out the #7 bus was the best way to get from home to brunch and more excited than I should have been when it turned out I could sit upstairs and watch the world go by. SG is also very green, so I recommend a ride on a double decker bus to appreciate this garden city.



• The Windmill game can be played in SG. Yes, I found a windmill, and I had no-one to punch! Brunch on Sunday was at Holland Village. The only thing that linked this rather nice collection of shops, restaurants and bars to The Netherlands was this windmill on top of a building. I didn't take a photo as I was trying not
  to look like a tourist, but I will get one when I go back and stop caring whether I look like a tourist or not.



• All outdoor markets sell the same cr@p. I know there will be lots of exceptions to this, but Chinatown in SG certainly supported this arguement on Sunday. It was crazily hot too, so we didn't last long before hunting down some air conditioning.



• My company recruits talented musicians here! Luckily or unluckily it is not the policy in Oz, but at our flat on Sunday night after an impromptu dinner party we enjoyed a sing-along to three lovely guitarists. The sing-along was missing a camp fire and kumbyah, but had the high-tech touch of a laptop display of the lyrics of each song. I tried my best with the songs in Malay, but my pronounciation needs some work.



• The national pastime of Singapore is shopping. Pretty much all the time not accounted for above was spent wandering aorund the infinite number of shopping malls along Orchard Road, Suntec city & Holland Village. Although I found this disturbing at first, I am starting to understand the appeal of free air conditioning in this heat. I also found myself slowing down to the energy efficient pace of the locals.

So that was my weekend. Looking forward to the cooler and dryer weather in Sydneytown this weekend. Also - FuShMuSh has published a smashing review of our party on the 1st of April if you are interested.

Happy Birthday Mum!

It is my Mum's birthday, so I gave her a call tonight. I also decided to try and come home for the Easter long weekend, so I have something to look forward to.

Work

Work is going ok - the project is larger than anything I've ever worked on before - that makes it interesting and very scary. But also incredibly more structured that anything I've experienced. The content area I am working on is Structured Products which is looking to be more complicated than even Trade Finance was. Learning about the products has highlighted to me how similar investing is to gambling in a casino - currency linked investments are like betting on red or black in roullete and equity linked deposits and contracts are more like playing the pokies...
I'll be doing heaps of process design work, and I even get an analyst to boss around soon (not assigned yet - anyone from Oz interested??).

Not Work

I have met a few new people and also caught up with Simon, Pency and Colin from Sydney. Most of the people in the apartment block are on the project it seems, but I have met mostly analysts from KL at this stage. They are nice, but are very committed to their long hours and there hasn't been much in the way of socialising. I'll have to hunt down the party-people in the next week or so.

I've not gotten much of a chance to look around SG. I've done local shopping on Orchard Road and seen whatever is on the bus route to work, but I am itching to go exploring on Saturday. I am also hoping for a pick up game of ultimate on Sunday.

So unless something interesting happens, I'll probably not post again until Sunday. Hopefully I'll have something more useful to say!!

I've arrived

After a hurried Sunday afternoon packing, I left for Singapore this morning. It has all happened so quickly that even after a few tears with B it didn't quite seem real (tears from Clare, not from B!).
The flight was horrible because:

• The flight was during the day, so I couldn't sleep
  


• I am coming down with a cold of some sort
  


• The German girls next to me wouldn't stop talking
  


• Singapore Airlines' version of Gluten free also includes no real milk, not much meat, no cheese, no chocolate! Sinead (vego) used to complain about not getting chocolate, but not until now do I empathise. I did get ice cream though. and a giggle when the flight attendants still added a bread roll to my special meal!
  

But I survived and arrived at the apartment on Orchard Road, SG at about 7pm. It had rained a little, so wasn't so hot. But very muggy.
This was where reality set in, as I tried to call B and say I was safe - what was I doing here again? Oh, that's right, having an adventure. I forgot. Got a little teary again, but felt better after some Pad Thai and grocery shopping.
The grocery shopping is interesting - lots of products we have in Australia and a fair few products I was used to buying in Europe when I travelled there. I am going to have fun trying all the new things I haven't seen before - I bought italian flavoured twisties and a wicked looking chocolate ice cream, along with boring things like rice crackers and bananas. They have a good health food section with lots of Gluten Free goodies, too.

I've met my flatmate, and she is lovely. She's given me tips on how to get to work tommorrow, the long hours to expect and other joys.

I have a SG mobile number (thanks MW!) if you feel the need to text - send me an email and I'll let you know the number.

That's all for me - time to sleep so I find the energy to put in a real SG sized day tommorrow at the project.