My wife first experience in earthquake

My wife fell down as she was about to leave her office in PJ, unknowing that it was the tremor arising from an earthquake occurred in Padang, Indonesia. She felt dizzy, couldn’t stand up for a few moments and everything was shaking. She thought that it was due to her low blood pressure as sometimes she also experienced dizziness.

When I told her about the earth quake happened in Padang and then only she realized that it was the tremor that caused her to fall down in her office this evening. Having no previous experience in earth quake, I can’t blame her for not evacuating herself from her office in time.

I experienced the earth quake 2 years ago when I visited Solok Selatan, also in Sumatra, 2, 3 hundreds kilometers from Padang. It was a light tremor. I could see the water in the glass was so shaky and the curtains were also shaky. An expatriate who was taking a nap in his room ran out and told us that it was the earthquake. But I supposed the tremor I experienced some years ago in Solok Selatan was not as strong as the one experienced by my wife this evening. At least I didn’t fall down.

Malaysia is blessed as we are out of the Pacific ring of fire and thus, no earth quake, no typhoons and other serious natural disasters. But things may change now, if a strong earthquake happens in Indonesia, we can’t be sure that there would not be any serious damage to our high rise building in highly populated areas such as KL, PJ, Penang and JB. Our buildings are certainly not built to withstand earthquake.

A bonus letter with a threat

Receiving a bonus letter should be a happy thing to do, especially if you think about the hard work that you have put in over the past one year and if the bonus is indeed a generous one that would really be a bountiful harvest for all the effort and hard work.

A bonus message by our SVP was e-mail to me and when I read it, somehow I feel a bet disturbed, as it carries a threat along with all other motivating messages. It literally warns those intended to tender resignation after receiving the bonus should think twice before doing it. Even though the pasture is always greener on the other side but higher salary always comes with more responsibilities and hard work. The message even suggests that there are difficult bosses everywhere and it makes no different whether working with the company or others and thus it is better to continue working with the devil that you know.

Finally, the SVP said that he will not stop anybody from leaving the company but he opined that some who left the company eventually regretted. This sort of “management by fear” doesn’t work anymore as there is abundance of vacancies available with the huge expansion in the plantation industry.

The biggest doesn't mean the company can attract people even with the good remuneration as the so called good remuneration is only given to the top people, while the ordinary executive and staff are just getting something similar to what others are getting somewhere else. SVP doesn’t seem to realize that he can’t fight the battle with all the well paid generals but without the soldiers.

Mother of all love

We don’t need a tragedy to tell us how deep a mother’s love is. We have seen enough. The Sichuan earthquake, the recent Morakot Typhoon in Taiwan and just a day before a morning blaze at Jalan Pudu. A woman and her 3-month old son died in a fire. The mother was still holding to her son when both of them were discovered by fire fighters after putting out the fire. The bodies became charcoal, but the love of a mother will last forever.

Sometime reading newspaper is a painful thing to do, especially in the early morning, coming across all these sad news. Worst still, when you read about all these disgusting people fighting for power. Ugly politician I’m referring to. Name calling, father of all nonsense, mother of all lies and what else? These so called leaders, their quality as a human is not even close to the mother who still wanted to protect her child at her last breath.

There are still a lot of people living in vein, those hardcore poor, those living without a proper roof above them. Some staying in squatters for years, not safe, just like what happened to the mother and son who died in the fire. Their wooden house is not safe to live in but who care? Does Ong care? Does Chua care? No. They only care who is going to win over the other in their political battle.

Boy, oh boy

As a guy growing up from a kampong in the seventies, I’m still admiring the simple livings of kampong folks after so many years working and living in town. Whenever I travel outstation while working, I always stop at small villages just to get the feel of the olden days. Those days when I was still young and everything seemed so simple and less complicated as what it is today. People were so accommodative to each other, respected each other unlike nowadays, people is so intolerable, only thinking of their own.

While travelling back from Endau Rompin, I stopped at Kg Lanjut when I saw a signboard pointing to the Lanjut beach. I thought that it was a beautiful beach but to my disappointment, it was just a beach with a few simple wooden shops and no visitor. I walked on a jetty by the seaside, and that was the time I saw a boat approaching the jetty. I could hear some young kids laughing and cheering, even louder than the noise of the motor boat. There were ten over young children coming back from school, wearing school uniform and carrying school bags. I asked one of the boy where were they coming from. He said they were just coming back from school which located on the other side of the beach at Rompin. These kids were around 8 to 10 years old but the way they climbed up from the boat and the way they running up to the jetty you will be surprised at how brave these boys and girls were. Perhaps to them, it is already a way of life, riding a boat to the schools without life jackets and so on even to us that was somewhat dangerous.

One of the boys ran down to the beach from the jetty. He dug and dug and dug. I was wondering what the boy was doing. Finally, the boy stared up to his school mates walking on the jetty and laughing cheekily. Then he threw something to the rest of the boys and girls walking slowly on the jetty. Some of the girls started to scream, some of the boys laughing and then I had a closer look at the things and there were two sea worms with a lot of spikes. A boy then picked up one of the worms then threw it at the girls and the girls started screaming and running again. I was so taken aback and my minds just flying back to those days when I was as small as this buggers doing a lot of naughty things like they did. I asked the boy what was that, he told me it was ulat bulu meaning hairy caterpillar. The boy apparently being stung by the caterpillar, he seemed painful. The girls were then laughing at him and said that he got what he deserved for his naughty work.

When we are young, we are innocent even though some are always naughtier than other. Somehow, as we are growing up, our hearts are gradually filled up with all sort of nonsense, hatred especially, dirty politics and slowly losing up our innocent. And we start wondering why the world has changed so much as compared to our younger days.

Reinventing the wheel

Sometimes big corporations are reinventing the wheel every now and then especially when there are changes in the top management. For instance, if a new boss is coming in, surely he or she will have his or her management styles and thus requires management team to make some adjustments to suit the new boss’ management requirement. But that probably would not affect the whole work force. Prior to the merger, the company I’m currently working with spent millions of dollar to development a new appraisal system. Each of the executive was given ample trainings and thick dictionary which contains detailed definitions of all those confusing HR terms and phrases. They called it PMD a.k.a Performance Management Development.

Well, that only lasted for two years than the merger came in. Naturally we have to abandon the old system and to adopt the new one. Again, a lot of training conducted for everybody to be able to do the appraisal. This time it is an on-line system. Within a time frame, the on-line system is opened for the employees to key in their KPIs and Leadership qualities and so on. Then the KPIs will be moderated by the immediate superior on-line. Six months later, you have to do mid-year review and a year later final appraisal. It seems very complicated isn’t it? Again, a lot of money was spent to develop the system, to train the people and also installation of the hardware and software. At the end of the year, the company will tell you that the performance of the company is not so good and thus it is not paying good bonus and increment. There you are, people get fed up, for all the nonsense that they have to go through, they get peanut at the end of the day.

When a new boss comes, the system will be changed. The government has recently appointed Idris Jala of MAS to be a minister in-charge of monitoring ministerial KPIs. Basing on the inconsistency of the government in monitoring the performances of its minister and also the civil servants, I do hope that Idris is capable to instill some positive changes and coming out with something effective and most importantly can last long enough to see positive results. Otherwise, we are just reinventing the wheels again and again, going nowhere all this while.