Boredom
Time seems to stand still,
You don’t feel too thrilled;
You itch to do something, anything,
You get on the internet randomly clicking;
You have a case of acute ‘boredomitsis’
But you know there’s a cure for something like this
Get up, do something you’ve always wanted to do
And lo, behold, you’ve found the breakthrough
You are not bored anymore
You have a purpose to explore
The cure to boredom is to constantly be busy
Live life and be carefree
The other day while in the train, on the way to work, I came across something in the newspaper, which made me pause. It was a letter to the editor which mentioned that students who are left handed should be actually, treated as having some kind of learning disability. I was pretty intrigued by this and so decided to research it a bit more. It is also because GG is left handed and has shown very clear preference to using this hand as her dominant hand right from the time she was a little baby. I had always thought left handed people were, in fact, smarter and more creative than us normal right-handed people since the dominant side of their brain was the right side and this side of the brain fuels creativity.
I could not really find any solid evidence which links left-handedness in a person to any learning disabilities. Yes, learning disabilities affect people who are dominantly left-handed but being a leftie is in no way linked to being behind in school.
I do know that a very small percentage of the population, around 10% or so in the world is left-handed and this has remained more or less stable throughout human history, but scientists have not yet been able to figure out why that ten percent of the population turned out to be a leftie!
In my specific case, as far as I know, no one in both S and my immediate family favours the left hand, but I can’t be very clear as in previous generations, being a leftie was frowned upon and people were forced to learn to use their right hand for everyday work. When GG was found to favour her left hand more, well-meaning friends and relatives immediately told me to start training her in using her right hand more and making that her dominant hand, but something told me to hold off and I let her use her naturally dominant hand at all times.
I personally feel that being a leftie has not impacted her in any way academically. If anything, not doing so well in her PSLE results has been a real boon. She is in a slightly slower programme and is one of the top students in her cohort, is a student leader and is a very active member of her CCA.
There may be some truth in lefties being more creative; GG is very musically inclined and is forever singing and dancing at home. She also likes to draw and paint and does this most weekends. At this point in time, she is also exploring writing, so she basically ticks all boxes from a creative point of view.
Are you a leftie? What have your experiences been? I’d love to hear!
At work, almost as soon as I log into my laptop, I have my headphones on and start listening to music. The music I listen to is mostly Bollywood, with some fusion and shlokas thrown in. I have been adding to this collection for more than 10 years now and it just keeps growing! So this poem is because of this.
Music to my Ears
I plug in my headphones and start to move to the beat
Making sure I am still sitting in my seat
The rhythm starts slowly, building to a crescendo
My body starts to move, starts to glow
Suddenly realising that I am not at home but at work,
I temper my movements and start working to the tempo that is playing
The music fills my head, fills my soul
My work reflects the music I play, making me feel in control
My music fills my days, makes my day fly
Because of my music, my days make me not want to complain
I’ve mentioned before, in this new place I am now working, I have been having issues at work, but I’ve never really elaborated on it. Today I am going to talk about some of what I am going through and what I have learned from my research on how to deal with such issues. Maybe someone else can benefit from it.
I have a colleague on the same team, who is junior to me, both in the number of years of experience we have as well as in the hierarchy of the organisation. For some reason, from the day I joined the organisation, this person has been borderline rude with me. They would be careful to be sweet and nice when in the presence of others, it was only when they were with me and maybe an intern who was working with them, would the nastiness surface. I was new to the organisation and I didn’t know how things are run. This person had been here for around a year before I joined. Anytime I asked them anything, it would be met with a curt, “I am busy” but they were not busy to chit chat with others during the time they were supposed to be busy. This went for around a month, but till that time it was done very passively. After a month of this, I sent this person an email about something which was not in both our job scopes, but which we had to do to help out. My email to the person was that when they were away, I will step in and the very rude reply I got was it was not their job too and so I was not doing them any favours. I had copied the email to our manager and the reply was also sent to everyone.
At some point, I did bring up this person’s attitude to our manager, but till date, I have not seen a resolution of the issue. I am not sure if the manager has managed to speak to this person, but since I don’t really see any improvement in attitude, I am guessing no.
So what do I do in such a case? I decided to read up and am following these points. It may be useful to others who are recipients of workplace bullying which is why I decided to blog about it.
When faced with a bully at work, we can either leave that toxic environment, stay quiet in the hope that it will blow away or confront the bully. Since I was new, leaving was not an option, I did speak to our manager, who didn’t do much to mitigate the issue and I didn’t want to confront the bully, but wanted to make sure I was no longer bullied
I first stopped talking to the bully. I didn’t interact much with them unless it was work specific and even then, I made sure I always tried to email them with a copy to our manager. This way, any rude or bullying behaviour would be out in the open and also documented since my problem was that this bully was sweet in front of others and rude when it was just us interacting. You could also keep a record of all interactions with the bully and if possible document every interaction.
After you have gathered the information, try to make time with the bully and speak calmly and emotionlessly. I need to work on this as I tend to get emotional in such times, but take deep breaths if that helps and speak to the bully. This approach may or may not work, depending on how the bully rolls, so prepare to take a step back and come back with reinforcements (aka your manager).
Usually, the perpetrator in a bullying incident is mostly intimated by you, either by what you bring to the table in terms of experience or job knowledge or what they stand to lose in terms of how your work will affect their standing in the organisation. I suspect in my case this is what happened. The bully in my instance probably thought I was a threat to them, though how I don’t know and used rude and disrespectful tones and language to compensate for that.
Another thing that usually works is not to stoop down to the bully’s level. It’s very tempting (believe me, I know), to respond with rude behaviour when faced with such behaviour, but I now believe in this, as Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high”! Respond to rude behaviour with extreme politeness. If the rude behaviour is via email, I go very formal and polite and when a senior person sees the email exchange, the contrast between the two tones cannot be more obvious!
Lastly, I’d say don’t take this rudeness and bullying personally and over analyse everything (I am guilty of this). It is possible that the bully might have felt slighted over something you said or did, which is why they are behaving the way they do. I suspect this could have happened in my case also. In the last month, maybe I said or did (or didn’t say or do) something which may have been important to this person. Maybe once you figure out the reason why the bully behaved that way, behaviours on both sides can change. I do plan to do exactly that and see if I can figure out why my bully is behaving in such a way and see if I can turn the situation around.
Do you have any other way to work around a bully? I’d love to hear your ideas!
Alone
In a sea of people, I am alone,
Lonely and in solitude, as I’d always known.
People around me talking and laughing,
But my ears hear only noise which seems like babbling.
Their mirth fills my ears but I still choose to ignore,
Passing off their talk as useless rancour.
I know in my heart, I am being anti-social,
But it seems like ignorance is perhaps blissful.
I don’t get sucked into people’s worlds,
Watch their lives, as it unfurls.
It’s a job, not my life which is already full of strife
I prefer to be alone, a loner all my life
Alone means being with your thoughts,
Alone means facing life head on, even its onslaughts
I love being alone, it’s never a pain
To pretend to like being with people, to have to feign
Memories and Such 