Pedrong Panaginip

I was sleeping like a log the night before that even Abby's wailing failed to jerk me up. Maybe it was the fatigue which was mitigated, or maybe aggravated, by a good lay in the hay. I maybe even be snoring like an old train powered by coal. I was too deep in the slumberland to notice and vividly dreaming of winning the first prize in Toto (lottery here in Singapore).

It seemed so real and really got me excited that instead of checking my emails for work issues, which is a routine that gives me the adrenalin kick at the start of each day at work, I checked the result online. Guess what? With a drooping shoulder and long face, I know I have to face reality and do it the old way --hard work, at least for the time being.

It's not that we are having difficulty making ends meet and striking lottery would ease up the purse. We are doing fine on the contrary. It's also so untrue that I'm into gambling. Those who know me would smirk at anyone who says so.

Sojourn

Today is exactly my 10th year in this company, which is basically the same amount of time I've spent in this little red dot one degree north of the equator.

So what exactly brought me, a self-styled patriot, here? Is the title of this entry a misnomer considering I've been here in my prime a bit longer?

dapat ka bang mangibang bayan
dito ba'y walang ka'ng paglagyan
bakit pa iiwanan ang lupang tinubuan
dito ka natuto ng iyong mga kalokohan ...

I'm Still Standing

No one is indispensable!

All the while I've known this to be true and in fact factored it on almost all career decisions that I made. I thought I was immune or at least less vulnerable due to nature and scope of my engineering responsibilites, but obviously I was wrong.

Our company is sort of downsizing not because of a slump in the industry but because some of our mature products need to be transferred to Thailand where overall cost is only a fraction compared here in Singapore. Cutting edge and technically challenging products however are here to stay, at least for the time being. For how long? It can be anybody's guess!

It's not really that gloomy as I'm not getting the pink slip yet. I'll just be tranferred to another engineering process. They need someone that can cope with a very steep and short learning curve. This is a seemingly management 'bullshit' at a glance, but humility aside, I know they are right. With just almost a week of handing over years of exposure and techical know-hows, they picked the right guy.

I will cease to supervise a 24/7 motley crew of engineering operators and shed being one of the engineers in one of the bottleneck processes in semicon assembly. My new job will definitely be less stressful and challenging, peanuts compared to what I was doing. In fact my job responsibilities were redistrubuted to 4 other engineers which creased their foreheads.

Anyway, knowing myself to be resilient and adaptable, I'll take this bull by the horn and eventually come out victorious!

You Live Within Me...

Four years…ganoon katagal ka na pala wala. That long and yet I still get teary-eyed whenever I think about you.

Missed you tatay…=(

I'll cross the desert like an Arab man...

The air was humid and the sun was really cursing but I still chose to walk and eat fried kway teow with my wife. I won't bore you with what a fried kway teow is, but I encourage you to try one once you visit this "little red dot". But of course not every fried kway teow taste as nice. But definitely this one in Jackson kopitiam really is worth the sweat, literally.

Word of the Day

uxorious\uk-SOR-ee-us; ug-ZOR-\, adjective: Excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.

It is batty to suppose that the most uxorious of husbands
will stop his wife's excessive shopping if an excessive
shopper she has always been.
-- Angela Huth, "All you need is love," [1]Daily Telegraph,
April 24, 1998

Just happen to chance upon this word. Anyway, woman deserves the same love and respect as man. There is no such thing as equal. Husband and wife should complement one another.