A Friday's Surprise

Alright now...

I should not be posting something like this. It is kind of sensitive and may be inappropriate for blog. Not when my work is concern, but this is my daily journal. At least that is what I think I have been doing.

I will just have to keep it as publicly vague as possible.

We were expecting a long-time customer to visit us this morning. Talking about business and forecast for the year 2007. Another busy but manageable year at work hopefully.

The presentation slides were not as hard to prepare, but taxing enough as we can never read our management's mind of what they exactly want. The job was done anyway, and I think I did a good job at it too.

A shocking revelation came late morning though.

I received a call from my boss saying that the customers are pulling out by February after making a great let-us-down-gently speech of how efficient and pro-active we were supporting them all these years, but at the end of the day, it was not cost-effective to do it in Singapore anymore!


I had to lead them for asset sighting of all the equipment they have consigned to us to pull back in 2 months time. Sigh. Tall-tale signs are already there, subtle, but already there. We knew it. It was just a matter of time, and the time is till February.

After all were accounted for, and after the customers have left, we were left to rethink what is our fate going to be like. After all, this customer was quite a substantial one to us, economic-wise.

Next week and the weeks ahead will be a time to pick-up the pieces, some pieces will be a good fit, some may be thrown away.

Not a good start to the New Year with a revelation such as this thrown at us on the first week of a work year. Things were good a week before when I got a good increment on my salary. Sigh... the wheel keeps turning.

Well, that will not get me down. I have to re-consolidate my manpower... justify and redeploy the workload and hope new things come our way fast enough to justify everyone's existence in the company.

Everyone in the office was obviously feeling a little down. Most called it a day by 5:45pm and left.

I needed a fixer-upper while I re-evaluate my position and my career path in the company. It is a good company, no doubt... but just too stressfully dynamic this day and age where competition from China and India is getting stronger.

I stopped by Courts Superstore on my way back and bought nostalgic songs from several of my favourite artistes. Depeche Mode Collection was sadly not found.

Instead I got the Queen of Cool herself, The jazzy Sade with her The Best Of compilations in one CD. Many favourite songs here - Smooth Operator, Ordinary Love, The Sweetest Taboo... I can go on, but what exciting is to listen to her relaxing songs on my bus and MRT rides. Smooth songs from that sweet face.

A prized find CD, I could not let go even though the price tag was a tad higher at S$16.95, but worth it.

I also found my cutie yet suave lady singer Dido with her No Angel album, a collection of her bests including my all time favourite songs - Here With Me and Thank You. A Hong Kong pressed CD that cuts the price tag to only S$7.95.

Then another wacky, take-no-prisoner lady, Cyndi Lauper with her compilation of Twelve Deadly Cyns album. Will always listen intensely to her True Colors song even until today. Very good lyrics that I think many can relate to. That cost me S$14.95.

So, 3 CDs all ladies today. The ladies will serenade their songs to me tonight as I blog and rip them into MP3 format and load them to my Dopod C800 PDA. Wifey would be glad that I will be loading the songs into her Creative Zen MicroPhoto player too.

Ahh, the songs of yesteryear. The good old times... until next week.