Over a glass of beer,

Me: “Man, it seems that 2009 will probably hold the record as the shittiest year ever. Almost all of us in the gang lost our job…”

Charles: “Yeah, and Michael Jackson died too.”

Well, I haven’t really lost my job but, I am about to. I applied for a VSS to leave Company X. To those of you who do not know what’s a ‘VSS’, it’s the abbreviation for ‘Voluntary Separation Scheme’ – it’s a deal where the company would compensate you to get the fuck out of there, on voluntary basis.

So, I volunteered. Still subject to my boss’ approval though, but I think I’m going to get it. If this gets through, it will be a major change for me… as I have been with Company X for more than a decade. To you geeks out there, this change is akin to a direct upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 7 on the same set of hardware. Yes, it is as wretched as that. I’m gonna have to be out there again looking for a job, which I don’t remember how anymore. I dread of the prospect of myself having to elbow a multitude of skinny fresh graduate fucks just to grab a job which those cocksuckers are willing to work for less wage and more hours for. This is definitely going to be tough.

But there’s a good side out of this though – I’m gonna get a large sum of moolah from the VSS. May not be enough for me to buy a bootlegged jet engine but, it’s enough to clear off my mortgage to lighten the load and still have some dough left. I initially thought of using the money to plan for an emigration, but the idea had to be temporarily shelved due to some family complications. So right now, the tentative plan is to do nothing with the money, and only worry about everything when the time comes. (maybe to invest in another property, I don’t know).

On the other side of the development, I’m glad that my precious little daughter has been doing quite well after moving to a new nursery. She’s 3.5 years old now, as hyper as any healthy kid and is now able to speak in some shitty Mandarin (learned at her own accord at the nursery) on top of her English. She’s also picking a little bit of Hokkien and Cantonese here and there… But I think she’ll be well versed in all the dialects and languages in no time. I’m keeping my hopes up.

Then about a couple of months ago, she also started to show the inquisitive side of her, as I have predicted back in April 2006. Her first ‘why’ question was, “Daddy, why is the sky dark at night?”, followed by “Why does it rain?” about 5 minutes later. Like I had vowed previously, I went ahead to answer her honestly with only the truth – about how the planet revolves around the sun and the idea of water evaporating into clouds and condenses into rain drops etc. She quickly lost her interest on the lengthy explanation though… but still, I couldn’t have been any prouder of her.

And that’s basically all about 2009. Bitter and sweet. Bitter story at work, sweet experience at home. I guess that’s how life ought to be. It won’t be that interesting anymore if everything’s fine at work. I won’t have that much stuff to blog about if that were to happen. In fact, after most of my dumbass colleagues left (Elliott, Mojo Jojo, Rod, etc), I lost about 40% of my inspiration to blog. I hate to admit this but, I kinda missed them when life’s too peaceful at work and there wasn’t anyone dumb enough for me to ridicule at. This blog has been and will always be, revolving around the ridiculous stuff that stupid people do and how I react to them. Without stupid people around me making boners, it’ll be like a titty bar without strippers. The substance will be lost and this whole thing will be nothing but an epic failure.

So I’m taking this hurdle as a cue for a change. I’m going to focus on getting a new job next year, whether or not I get the VSS. And if I were to get a job, hopefully it will be one with a good balance of stupid people and hot ass bimbos… I certainly could use some of that. That will be the main challenge for me in 2010. Wish me luck if you have some to spare.

This will be my last post for 2009. Before I fold, I would like to take the opportunity to wish all of you out there a very Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

I had a rather big squid for lunch today, and somehow got reminded of what a friend of mine told me (about squids) many years ago.

That friend’s name is Ah Lung (means ‘dragon’ in Chinese). We were on a vacation together with a few other friends to Phuket. It was one of the most memorable vacations I ever had. Anyway, there was a particular time during the vacation when we were talking about having squids for dinner (or lunch… I forgot), when Ah Lung said something about squids…

Ah Lung : “Whatever you do, guys… don’t order squids. Especially the big ones.”

Then somebody had to ask him why…

Ah Lung : “Fuck me! You guys haven’t heard what they say about squids!? What the fuck??”

A couple of us let out a snigger. But I was one of those who did not get what he was talking about.

Ah Lung : “Alright, let me tell you this. You know, a lot of fishermen nowadays hire stinking Banglas to help out at the sea. And when they go out to the sea, they go for weeks. That’s when these bad things happen.”

I think I was the one who asked ‘What bad things?’.

Ah Lung : “These Banglas, not used to being away from land without sex, would get horny and fuck these giant squids! They’d remove the head out, insert their penis in there and jack off! So if you ever see a squid with only the head part without the body, stay away!”

I didn’t believe him at first.

Me : “Come on, you’ve got to be shitting me! Why can’t they just jack off? Why fuck a squid?”

Ah Lung : “People would fuck anything that resembles a cunt! Think about it. What else could be as soft as a goddamn squid and has a harmless moisty hole for them to fuck?? You can choose not to believe this man, but what if it’s true? Can you imagine that? Maybe those whitish protein laden eggs aren’t really squid eggs…”

He was right. Even if there were to be a fragment of truth in it, we’d be fucked big time. I never looked at squids the same way again from that day on, well… until today… I got careless. I already finished the whole motherfucking squid when Ah Lung’s booming voice reverberated across my hollow mind… *cues in suspenseful violin music* Ptui ptui!

My site recently registered an extra 20% daily visits – thanks to a recent link up to my Rob the Twat post from a Motorola alumni forum (or something like that).

The thread in the forum originally started as a simple post asking if the giant twat picture reminded them of anyone in their management, to which one of the guys replied that it reminded him a lot of his abominable ex-lady boss and lamented something not very nice about her. Then the thread gradually grew into some amusing banter, and one of them stood out with the following comment (check out the bolded sentence) :

[name]TheWeiner. LOL

What a perfect name for a Motorola manager. I can’t remember the last time I met one who wasn’t a dick-head. Hey [name]TheWeiner, you get back to work butt snorkelling BrownEye. Let us know if you find any great ideas up Greg’s ass.

How true. And to top that off – shitty products, lame ass company name, snooty motherfuckers. Hell, you should also check out the Malaysian Motorola uniform. Batik shirt. It’s like they’re desperately trying to remind themselves to be a douche bag everyday at work. And I don’t even want to begin with that Six Sigma crap… If those aren’t convincing enough, let me tell you of an encounter I once had at Motorola some years ago –

I was visiting a Motorola plant with my team members for a very important meeting. Because I had an even more important thing to do before the meeting, I told my team members to go ahead first, and I’d catch up with them later (I knew I was gonna be 10 mins late tops).

When I reached there after completing my stuff, I was required to register myself at the guard house before calling for my Motorola host. At the guardhouse, the security guard in charge wanted me to leave my cellphone with him… an argument ensued.

“Why do I have to leave my cellphone here?”
“It’s our company policy sir. Visitors are not allowed to bring cellphones into the premise.”
“And the reason for that?”
“For security measure sir. Motorola is a cellphone manufacturing company.”
“But mine’s a Nokia cellphone! Not a Motorola!” [hell, I wouldn't want a stupid Motorola cellphone anyway, most of them look like parking meters]
“I’m sorry sir, you must leave your phone here if you want to enter our premise.”

So I had no choice but to comply. After I left my phone there, I got the same guard to contact my host (I had to be brought into the meeting room, as I was not allowed to roam freely in the building) – to which, he did not answer (not surprising at all, because the guy’s in the middle of a meeting). I then had to resort to call my team members in the same meeting, but then I couldn’t – they didn’t have their cellphones with them! Their phones were at the fucking guardhouse, remember? So basically, it was a catch 22 situation for me. I wanted to call someone from the meeting to bring me in there, but I couldn’t do it because their cellphones were on a rack few feet away from where I was standing. And the fucking static ass guard would just shrug me off because he wasn’t paid to worry about anything else other than to register visitors and keep them frustrated.

But I was lucky that day because one of my team members eventually figured out that I was missing, and came to check for me at the guardhouse. I was that close to leaving the fucked up place.

That was just one of the encounters. I have had many encounters before, and all of them making me arriving to the same conclusion couldn’t have been mere coincidences. It’s because their management comprises of a bunch of dick heads. That’s why they never got big in the consumer business. It takes a dick head to appreciate what another dick head does – if you get my drift.

As most of you have known, it has been a customary of me to write a summary of my year as the final post every year. In case you’re wondering if this is coming too soon – yes, I decided to bring this forward to take a short hiatus from blogging till January.

Alright, so how has it been for me (2008)? It was alright I guess. At least nothing bad happened. As I have mentioned in my previous roll up, I wanted to have my job stabilize over, you know, settling down and stuff. And that’s pretty much what has been going on for me. I have not been very productive (though by the common standard, it was still above average) and have not done jack shit. I was just going with the flow. Get the job done and go home. For the first time ever, my only motivation was for that paycheck at the end of the month.

Like 2007, I haven’t had much life outside my family and work. I had very little outings (got drunk only twice), and once a while, only went drinking at a friend’s house on weekends, and that’s about it. At times, I did feel like a zombie programmed to sleep and work, eat and crap, toggle between a husband/dad and engineer mode, and have just the sufficient cognitive ability to not make an ass out of myself. It was as if I am trapped in this stage of life like a nasty fold on a vast piece of carpet… you know, those banal moments in life that are meant to be wasted and not worth remembering? I think I’m going through that right now.

And then there’s the economy downturn which everyone has been getting anal about. Despite it being a blight to everyone, I am fortunate to say that it has little effect on me to date. In fact, it kinda translated to slightly better livelihood for people like me. How? You see, I get my paycheck in a constant manner. If the economic slump has been causing everything to be less expensive, then the advantage is definitely on people like me, you get what I mean? The only worry for me is to lose my fucking job. And I know that’s not likely going to happen anytime soon… (even if that were to happen, I’d take that as a cue for me to move on to a new organization and life… which I have been reluctant on doing all these while. So, it’s still ok for me). So, both my social and work life can be best described as unchanged, mundane, boring and everything else in between.

Anyway, there were still some joyous episodes left for me to salvage amidst the mundanity:
I finally cleared the installment for Lorraine. That spells ‘financial freedom’. But then, it was a short lived liberation, for I used the money to buy a new car to replace my mom’s rickety junk (I guess it was more like HER joyous moment more than mine…). And then of course, the joy of parenting. Seeing my Regine growing into a talkative and an increasingly evil little girl is – sadistically – the most exhilarating experience for Emily and I. Our baby, despite being quite a nuisance, has been making our life nothing short of being ‘livelier’. For every shitty day that we have in office, she would make it up by just being around. She’s like, the absorber for our potholes in life. She makes our problems look trivial with her shenanigans, and therefore, makes everything wretched more bearable. It is a blessing to have her around.

2009, I reckon, will be a bad time to have plans and aspirations. Company X, like many multinational corporations, will definitely be in limbo when the world economic slump goes into full force. It will be more of a question whether I’m able to retain my fucking job, or is there going to be a change of things. It is very hard to be certain. There have been whispers and rumors, that Company X is soon going to be bought over by some Taiwanese firm, and we’re all going to be turned into their sex slaves. So, 2009 for me, will be more about how to sustain the life, to be prudent in all expenditures and hopefully, get over the drought soon. You know, aim low and hit higher.

And that’s about it. Like I said, this will be my last post for 2008, and I will be taking a break from blogging/work for the rest of December. I am not going for a vacation so, I will still be hanging around; probably will use up the time to clear my backlog of movies and TV shows that has been hogging my hard drive…

Merry Christmas people, and have a happy bad economy New Year.