audit period

My team is in the midst of an internal audit. Definitely not the first time we've been audited by the internal audit team.

But erm....it's the first time ever in our 20 years' history and in my 10 years tenure here that my area of work is being audited.

FML!

I have a feeling I will receive quite a few audit observations. Just a matter of whether the lapses are severe, moderate or minor. :( I admit I've not been the most compliant....but hey, I started out with no process in place ok...and I slowly built them up over the years....

*fingers crossed*
*toes crossed*

Hope I don't kena too many observations....

Of careers and jobs and progression? Or the lack of...

My current boss is a nice guy. A people person. He's more of a "get everybody involved and everybody discuss together" kind of boss. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty and muddied in operational matters and he is rather independent in terms of admin issues. He has a PA but doesn't rely on her much. 

He's a techie and he's also experienced, having assumed several different managerial and leader roles over the years. He's quite lor sor though and can be quite abit of a broken record at times. He was even seconded to Brunei and led their government tech agency as their Director-General for a good 5 years.

Despite his experience, when he returned to Singapore, he remained a Deputy Director and was not promoted to a Director. And I wonder why. At his age (he's in his early 50s)and in his current role as our boss, I doubt he has enough key and strategic responsibilities to be promoted to be a Director. 

I see some of his traits and work style in me. And I wonder what my path would be if I am still in the same agency 5, 10, 15 years down the road...

Of course, from my current SM position, I still have many years to go before I hit an Executive Manager or Assistant Director position...and only thereafter will I hit a Deputy Director position. In the current team where I am comfortably at, we are already quite top heavy and I am fully aware I won't progress anymore. 

We spoke last week again. On the possibility of some role switching and some restructuring of our team. He mentioned he did consider putting the marketing function or customer service team under my care. Let's see how that goes...talk is just talk sometimes.....

人，大，小，天，口

These days, Nadya's scribbles and drawings include Chinese words and characters...
她长大了...*emo wail*

Number 2

Alyssa is progressing at her own pace. Slowly but steadily.

She's finally starting to speak in slightly longer sentences. "Mama, jie jie where?" or "Dada there. I want."

She can sing Twinke Twinkle Little Star fully though her diction is still rather unclear.

She is able to self-soothe a little. Sometimes when she gets upset over something, she wails and then runs into her room and grabs her blanket and her favourite teddy bear. And then she's okay, even if her lips are still pursed. :)

She is still our happy pill...Cheerful and happy and smiley and charming.

My firstborn

It started raining earlier tonight.

Nadya woke and said to me, "Mama, I think it's raining. Did you bring in the clothes?"

My heart melted. I felt touched that she actually remembered that this is what I do when it starts to rain.

It's at times like this when I don't feel like I have a soon-to-be 4-year-old girl. She seems so mature for her age sometimes.

Nadya

She's gotten a lot braver compared to before. At the goat farm a few weeks ago, she fed and petted the baby goats on her own. 

And at the Animal Resort, she fed the horse, the rabbits and guinea pigs on her own! She used to either cower behind me or I had to hold her hand to feed the horse!

She's growing bigger day by day. *beams*

Nosebleed...

Nadya has always given me middle of the night shocks with her nosebleeds. It happened more often when she was 1 & 2 years old...then it slowly tapered off.

Thereafter it was only once in a blue moon. For a long time, like maybe 6months to a year, she didn't get a nosebleed. Then suddenly 1-2 weeks ago she had an episode. And last night again. :(

I hope she grows out of it soon. And I hope she stops picking at her nose!

...

Seeking affirmation for my frigging whole life.

When will I ever be enough? For myself and for others? 

Patches

I did a patch test on 1 Aug to determine if there were any allergies which might have caused my lip dermatitis. I had to put on the patches for 2 full days before removing them. I couldn't wash my back and even after removing them, I still couldn't wash my back till after I saw the doc on 4 Aug. So the entire process took 4 days.



The result?

I'm allergic to Fragrance Mix and Cinnamyl Alcohol (which is found in Fragrance Mix as well). Fragrance Mix is a combination of 8 of the most commonly used chemicals used to create fragrances. Any combination of these fragrance chemicals can be used in a wide range of products like toiletries and toothpaste.

When I heard it, I wondered if I needed to change all of my toiletries and cosmetic products to something fragrance free. Thank goodness the doc only advised me to switch my facial wash and toothpaste to a fragrance free brand since it was only my lips that were flaring up.
Managed to grab some Simple products yesterday.  Using paraffin wax and steroid gel on my lips too.....

Here's to better and more chio lips in the days ahead!

Pek Chek

...is when you try to help a colleague with a piece of work to improve herself and to minimise customers getting back to her with questions because they simply don't understand what she is trying to say in her emails.....

....but the colleague doesn't get what you're doing and doesn't want to improve...

Feel like I'm talking to a wall.

Sigh. 

$$$$$

One of my business partners is a young guy. 4 years younger. But heaps richer lol.
He started his business with another guy, who is maybe 1-2 years younger than him. That makes them 33yrs old and 32yrs old this year.

They started their business back when they were 21 or 20. Built it to an impressive size....and yesterday, the first guy, who's on pretty ok terms with me, updated me that they'd sold their controlling shares to a publicly-listed company in Australia. I did not ask what the transaction value was. Nor did he share with me.....

After our conversation, I googled about it. And my jaw dropped.

The deal was valued at S$30million.

OMG lah. When will I ever see such an amount of money? Gosh.
Rupee and rupiah maybe can haha.

As it is they already came from well-to-do families, now their coffers are spilling over. The rich get richer.

But I don't deny as well these 2 guys are smart, entrepreneurial, hardworking and absolute go-getters. I know they worked their assess off in the early days of their business, pulling in 15/16 hour days or even more...becoming their customers own 24/7 technical support (their in the hosting and domain name business) when they couldn't afford to hire enough staff.

Hats off to them for pulling this deal off. :)