Tonight, I’ll be made to haul my ass up a glittering stage to shake the hand of our Vice President, take a shitty photo with him (which both of us aren’t gonna be too fond of) and get from him my 10th year service award gift.

That’s right, you didn’t read me wrong. 10 frigging years. That is how long I have been with Company X. I was only a callow 20 year old when I joined. But now, I’m a fucking cunning old man in the company (and proud of it).

For that decade long of service, I bet you guys must be thinking that I will be getting a pretty nifty reward for staying so loyal for so long. Like maybe, a holiday to Europe or a nice notebook to complement my cunning old man image, you know. But no. Sad to say, I’ll just be getting a cert (with my name on it, how cool) and an mp3 player of insignificant value (not even an iPod). Fuckety fuck fuck.

But I ain’t complaining. You know why? Because I am grateful - for I have already gotten something even more valuable than that. Life lessons. The plethora of experiences. Fuck ups and mistakes that I made, and what I have learned from them. Those stuff. You don’t get those off the shelves. Those smart management books, seminars and courses? They’re all mostly bullshit - because in my arrogant opinion, nothing beats experiencing everything yourself.

And I got those, and still getting it.

So, what have I learned so far, after surviving for so long in the corporate world? I’m gonna share them in probably a few posts as I think and list them… and in no particular order…
(Count your blessings, folks - for when I was 20, nobody hinted me anything about staying afloat in the corporate world. I learned them all the hard way)

Lesson 01: Never bite the hand that feeds you.
That’s another word of saying, never fuck with your boss. When I first joined Company X, I never deigned to give anyone respect, and that includes my then boss. I got into a yelling competition with my boss on my first review, and was made to pay a dear lesson when words spread far about my attitude. And believe me, I am still paying for that mistake till this day - despite being a totally changed person, I am still being tagged as a mean fuck wherever I go. That attribute got stuck, and that’s just unfortunate.

Always think of it this way, your boss is like your locomotive, and you’re just a rail car being pulled in tandem. Fuck with him small, and you’re fucking yourself big. Many successful people know this secret. Probably some of you extra smart ones does as well. This is also the reason why people sell their soul and self esteem to the devil to suck on their superior’s balls (that’s taking it to the extreme). - they’re insuring their own welfare through good relationship with their boss.

Lesson 2: The only direction left for you to go when you’re at the top, is down.
That’s right. This has got to be one of the most important thing I’ve learned during my tenure in Company X. I understand that the youngs nowadays like to go with the motto of ’showing what you can’ and can’t wait to impress other people with how much you can do for them. (trying to be smart, etc)

Trust me people, that’s not a wise thing to do. It only took me a couple years to learn this, and it has gotten me very far in my working life. If you still cannot grasp what this is all about, imagine your work as your weekly food ration. Now, think about this, would it be wise for you to eat them out of gluttony in one day, and suffer hunger for the rest of the week? Or would it be wiser for you to consume them moderately over the course of the whole week so that you’d get an even filling? See my point?

The key idea is to leave yourself enough work to do everyday. Impressing your boss is important, yes. But it is even more important for you to sustain that good impression on a constant manner, rather than setting your bar too high the first few times and see yourself fail on the subsequent. Spread your achievements thin, you’ll last longer.

*****
I’ll leave this for now… lunch time’s over. Will post more when free.

Imagine you’re in this situation…

Say, you’re driving a runt car. (A Myvi, to be exact). For some inexplicable weird reasons, you think you and your car can set the land speed record on our Malaysian highway and you’re confident that no shit you’re gonna be the first person to be able to do it with a Myvi. With a boosted willpower, toufu shop sticker and plastic spoilers that artificially makes your washing machine shaped car more aerodynamic, you floor the accelerator with a heavy right foot… tearing the highway up like a true race car driver.

90kph… 100kph… 110kph… you break the highway speed limit like a dead twig… how awesome… 120kph… 125kph… you feel like you’re an invincible flying arrow… 130kph… 135kph…

Your brows are sweating. Your heart is palpitating. Your balls are levitating. It is a feeling that no words can describe. For the record of your private self basking later, you whip out your camera cellphone and aim it at the speedometer with the intention to capture the historical moment. But just as you’re doing that, your car suddenly fishtails and the next thing you know, you’re seeing a fast projection of images before you.

lights, sparks, smoke and debris. (crash). The airbag did not fucking deploy.

Miraculously, you survive the accident unscathed. You open the semi-wrecked door (which still works) and walk out. You take a quick survey of the damage, and saw that your car had its hood planted right into the highway divider and is now resembling something like a pig’s snout.

Ok, fact check:
- your car’s totally fucked and immobile.
- it’s now static on the express lane, in the middle of the dark but busy highway

Which of the following do you reckon you should do next? (this is a test of your survival skill - based on a real story, which you wouldn’t know if it’s gonna happen to you)

a) Reflect that you’ve been stupid, thank god and get the fuck out of there before another vehicle plows into your ass.
b) Reflect that your car is a jinx, curse god and get the fuck out of there before another vehicle plows into your ass.
c) Get the fuck out of there to find the nearest toilet bowl, put your head into it, and flush.
d) Coolly walk around to inspect the damage, especially your plastic skirting + spoiler + paintjob, whip out your cellphone and call somebody while you’re doing that.

Or if you have anything else other than these to suggest, be my guest. (who knows? if it’s going to save somebody’s life someday)

*****
I actually almost crashed into a scrawny guy with Jay Chou hairstyle loitering around his wrecked Myvi last week. That guy just had a crash, and he was inspecting his wrecked car while talking on his cellphone on the express lane of a dark but busy highway (it actually happened on the PLUS highway en route to KL from Penang).
I do not know what the fuck was he thinking. He could have got himself fucking killed right on that spot. I myself barely braked in time from my 110kph descent (because his runt car was too small to be noticed at that speed and lighting condition, you see).

When you have an accident on a high speed highway like this, the most important thing is to get your ass safe. Never fucking mind about the car. The sanest thing that stupid ah beng should have done, is to move his car to the emergency lane. If the car’s stalled, he can just switch on the hazard indicator, get the fuck out of there pronto and pray for the best. He then can proceed to do what he wants at the emergency lane. It’s a common sense thing.

No wonder we call such people ’stupid ah bengs’.

(I do not mind mowing down shitbags like him but, it’s the repair bill and repercussion in the form of legal procedures that I have to endure later on that’s bugging me.)

In a vile effort to cloud its employees’ minds that they’re not in anyway being taken advantage of by having less pay and more work, Company X management sent out a campaign memo a few days ago to promote a Japanese production control ideology…

But little did they know, that in Malaysia (and Singapore), the word ‘lean’ can open up to a whole new level of meaning… like this one…

lean
[lee-an]

“That cinema has been flocked with shitloads of stinking ah leans since the premiere of that Para-para Sakura flick yesterday… fucking hell man…”

So, what is Lean actually? It depends on who you’re asking, people. If you ask me, I’d say pay me more and shut the fucking hell up.

My colleague BigSnake is getting hitched. Yes, to his long time girlfriend whom he had bitched to me eons ago. Apparently, the 6 months probation he gave to his lovelife worked well for both of them, good enough to blossom to the next level - marriage. Well, I’m glad that it turned out well for him, or whatever.

However, it wasn’t as fun as he anticipated it to be, for he had been ranting a lot inside the lab lately. Most of the time, it was about the money and the ridiculous amount of time he had to invest to make the whole thing work. The plans, the printing of invitation cards, the wedding banquets, dowries (not sure if that’s the right word but, apparently, the bride’s family requested for dowries, in both monetary form and gifts), et al. I could tell that he was going through the most difficult episode of his life… in what appears (to me) to be a gambling bid to secure a better future. But I didn’t hold back my opinions…

“Dude, why all the troubles? This is your wedding, not a ball sucking effort to impress people. If anyone were to have opinions about who you choose to spend your life with, they can fucking go kill themselves for all you care. You could have used the money to go for a really awesome honeymoon, and save yourself from all these unnecessary troubles…”

I know a lot of you people might not agree with me, but what the heck, just listen to what I have to say…

You see, the idea of having wedding banquets/receptions originated back in the ancient times when there were no systematic ways to acknowledge the social status of a particular couple in love… and when an affair eventually gets out of control, the female counterpart would eventually gets knocked up. And when that happens, fellow villagers tend to get panic over the matter and start to grab pitchforks and whatnots to head to your home (children born out of wedlock used to be a big thing back then). That was when you’d find yourself having a hard time to convince everyone that you’re not raping a village girl, but was having a steamy round of sex with your fucking girlfriend.

That’s probably how people come up with this ‘bribing’ format, to insure the reputation of the family name - ostentatiously organize a generous dinner for the villagers and have the mayor (or any bigshot) to bless the relationship… and from thence, to be recognized as a legit couple. So that
a) people know you’re fucking with each other
b) people know that both of you are not suppose to fuck anyone else (back in those days, you know),
c) people know that they’re not suppose to mis-fuck any one of you.
d) so on…

In the modern world, such practice is not necessary anymore - since we already have a functional set of systems to govern our rights and shit. We can just pen down our names in the registry and that’s about it. Wedding banquets/receptions nowadays are nothing more than a cultural rote, probably also an excuse for
- the groom’s friend to have bachelor’s night,
- relatives and friends to get together
- old abominable uncles/aunties to get drunk and croak like a toad in front of cheapskate karaoke screen…

An event of 2 people together is suppose to be a happy thing. If the wedding plan (banquet, reception, basically.. the whole package) is causing one so much distress and trouble, what’s the point, really?

That’s why I chose the option of not to hold one and spent our hard earned money holidaying at Hong Kong instead (and the remaining to buy an apartment). Lucky me indeed, for having such an understanding in-laws and wife.

But for my colleague BigSnake and many thousands of victims of circumstances, I can only hope the best for you. My advice is, if you can’t get away with it, then you can at least try to mitigate it. Just cut out all the unnecessary crap, it’s time for you to take charge of your own life. Only invite people you know or close to you, save yourself lots of money and use it to buy an apartment or something.

Remember, a brand new apartment can stay in your life for a very long time, but not your wedding guests.

The Company X management sent out a memo to all employees yesterday, that we’re all required to take an online compliance course - which is about some Personal Data and Privacy protection kind of thing - as soon as possible, or else face a constant badgering from that fat conniving HR bitch with a head full of pubic-like frilly hair… Knowing very well that the consequence of forgetting to do that online course can be more dire than a painful cancerous death, I immediately got it done as of yesterday.

So what was the whole thing all about? I can summarize it into only 3 sentences:

1) If thou saw anything oddly fascinating or intriguing about the company clients or employees, do not ’see’ any further.
2) If thou felt obliged to further examine or ’see’ that oddly fascinating or intriguing info, then make sure you don’t tell anybody about it after that.
3) If thou REALLY HAVE to tell anyone about that piece of oddly fascinating or intriguing info ANYWAY, then make sure that person you share with complies these same 3 rules.

Alright, it’s more or less interpreted that way. Whatever.

So, the whole thing’s about respecting individual rights. You know, keeping secrets and all that. But more often than not, I see these getting violated like a cheap whore on a broad daylight. That’s why we have telemarketers calling you and me and everybody every fucking now and then. So what good is having one firm respecting privacy and another violating it? What privacy? What personal information?

It’s virtually impossible to control information from circulating the planet nowadays. A good classic scenario would be - getting caught wanking inside your unlocked room, by your mom. Ask yourself, can you actually convince your mom to not tell anyone about it? Yeah, maybe she’d promise not to tell anyone etc bla bla bla - but eventually, the whole neighborhood will be sharing that very same secret (it actually happened to my cousin Kelv before… poor guy). It’s like going against the intrinsic human instinct of wanting to get nosy about anything.

“Oh man did you know her tits are fake etc etc? *gossip gossip gossip*”

I have been made to go through the same test before. A colleague once accidentally saw one of our fat hag manager’s (an ex employee now…) payslip on the printer tray, and told me about it. She was paid RM 8,900 something per month. I went like, “WHAT THE FUCK??? SHE GETS THAT FOR READING EMAILS AND IMPERSONATING A BITCH???” - I told everyone her wage the next day. Everyone fucking hated her from that day on. Why did I do it? Because I can’t help it. It was as if, I’d fucking bust my balls if I keep the information about her any longer. I’m sure most of you people know what I’m talking about.

That’s why I quoted - “violated like a cheap fucking whore”. Everyone knows about everything, they just don’t talk about it. The best way of safeguarding your personal data - starts with yourself. Don’t tell anyone about your fake tits. Don’t tell anyone about your illegitimate affair with that skank from Sales. Don’t fill in your real particulars in a contest just to trade that slim chance of winning a shitty vacation to bumfuck. Just don’t tell anyone, anything… Be a fucking hermit or whatever. If you can’t do all that, then I guess you’ll just have to be content about everything that the technology can do to your reputation.

Clicking pages after pages of that online training, was just another facade of sucking up to the management to NOT GET a bad review for the fiscal year. Yes that’s what we corporate drones always do, bluffing each other to get real.

Makes me feel like a dirty slut everytime I do that.