There’s an elephant in the room in my office and nobody wants to acknowledge it! I mean my leaving. All this week my co-workers, including Big B are ignoring the fact that I will be leaving at the end of the month. I don’t think my co-workers don’t know, there are too many things that I was involved with that I am no longer doing, which should have been their biggest clue. But everyone is pretending that things are normal. On Friday, one of my co-workers, ironically, the newest, actually came up to me when there was no one around and asked the question that others, who’ve been here longer, should have asked.

There’s a team drinking activity that’s was supposed to happen in February, but which kept being postponed for some reason or the other and is now scheduled for my last week here. I wasn’t very keen for a myriad of reasons, the main being the fact that I don’t drink much and prefer not to drink with colleagues and so I was not planning to go. Earlier in the week, one of my co-workers alluded to it and said I should try to make it. I am not sure, why out of the blue she suggested this. If this is going to be my ‘going away’ do, then I wish they come out and say. In that case, yes, I’d love to go, otherwise, I am still so very ambivalent!

The week was bittersweet as I did the last batch of something I really look forward to doing each quarter. I’ve not mentioned to anyone in that job I am leaving, so it felt bad to tell them I will speak to them again. Anyways!!!

I am going to spend the next two weeks clearing my desk and sorting stuff. I also want to make drafts of my farewell notes to people. But I don’t think all this will take up so much of time, need to find things to do this week.

I wrote about GG’s performance yesterday and we really had a good time there. Though it ended quite late, it was fun!

Onward to a new week, need to keep smiling so my last impression is a good one! Happy week folks…

I started the week feeling sorry for myself. My countdown is now at 3 weeks now and I just heard from Big B on Friday afternoon that he’s heard from HR that my position has been eliminated! So three weeks from now I am officially jobless. Actually now that I have the official confirmation, it’s easier to move on – till the meeting with Big B, I actually had hopes that maybe the contracts would be extended by a few more months which would buy me some time. I also need to speak to my helper about this, her contract with me ends sometime in September and so if I don’t have a full-time position in hand by then, I’ll have to let her go too.

I’ve written to the company which employs me and lets see what they get back to me with. I am probably the first of many who will be retrenched and so they’re going to be busy with finding jobs for others. I’ve thought about this and the next time round, unless the contract is of a longer duration (maybe 2 years), I will think hard about a contract position. The caveat being if the money is irresistible, which means from Day 1 I need to keep options option. Let’s see what happens.

I’ve been just going through the motions at work, with none of the enthusiasm I used to have earlier….I think this, more than anything else tells me I am better off ending this at the end of the month. Though Big B was quite apologetic about this, but like I keep telling myself – C’est la vie! I’ve started looking for jobs in earnest this week, so hopefully something will click very soon.

Something strange has happening to me for the past few weeks, strange because it’s never happened to me before. Most days when I wake up, I am slightly disoriented and need some time to actually figure out what day it is. I don’t know if this because of the stress I am under, but when I actually realised it a couple of days back, it slightly freaked me out. I’ve also started looking forward to Friday, which again has not happened to me in this company yet and so know that is my cue to get away. I was so different even a year ago when I used to be excited to come to work, but now all that is a distant dream!

One of my cousins is getting married (finally!) in July, in Canada and almost all of our cousins are going. I am so very tempted that this week I was looking at airfares. The cheapest is around SGD 1200 and at this point, I am not sure if I should splurge this much money when there’s no income coming my way. We have the India trip plus BB’s poonal at the end of the year and that will cost us a pretty penny! This is the biggest reason I can’t justify my spending! Let’s see how this works out…

I have plans for my period of unemployment, which I will post next week (I was waiting for the official confirmation to come through before I posted, didn’t want to pre-empt it)

This week will be a busy week for me as I need to do something I do every quarter and which I love doing, but it will be mixed feelings for me. I will not tell anyone I am leaving, but will not hide it also. On my last day, I plan to send out a generic email to some of the people I know, both here in Singapore and across the world and if anyone wants to stay in touch, then it would be great, otherwise I’m ok.

The other day I was texting my ex-boss, the guy who recruited me and he sounded quite sad to hear my news. In fact, he actually wrote he was embarrassed as he was the one who had brought me in. But I guess what he was embarrassed about was the fact that a year ago when I started seeing changes, I asked him if he thought I had a future here and if I should move on and he insisted he saw a bright future for me here, which was patently not the case….

Anyway, I have tons to do before I leave – need to clear my desk and most importantly my laptop. After this week is done, I won’t have much to do, so that’s my job for the last two weeks.

Hopefully your week is much better than mine! Have a great week folks!