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!

A quarter of 2016 is over!! Where are the days flying and why? This has been quite a bad week for me, you’ll know why as you read on.

I never learn and repeat this mistake almost every week. I try to catch up on sleep over the weekend, especially by taking a post lunch nap. Saturdays are not so bad, but when I nap on Sunday afternoons, I sometimes have difficulties going to bed at a decent time on Sunday night. So this means Monday I am pretty beat at work. Usually Monday nights are ok and I manage to catch up. But this week, for some reason I didn’t sleep well on Monday aslo and so Tuesday I was a real zombie at work. In this sleepy state in the afternoon, I decided to go down to the cafeteria in my office to see if I could get something that would wake me up, but there was nothing and on the way back, I decided to use the toilet, and I am guessing you know what happened next! Yup, I dropped my phone inside!!! It was for just a second and the phone has a cover and dropped topdown (that is the top part only was in the water for that one second). And there started my phone problems….

Intitally everything seemed fine, but later that day, the headphone jack got locked, and since then my phone decided to just randomly show me the power off button and the home button has become hypersensitive. My phone is around 15 months old and while I can still buy a new phone, I don’t want to spend the money. I’ve been reading up and doing what my good friend Google says, so let’s see if I can push this another few months…Otherwise it’s money down the drain that I can ill-afford to spend now L

I was also very upset with BB (see my post of yesterday for more details) and have since spoken to him about this. I need to work with him on toning down his aggression. I do think he’s become more aggressive these days compared to a year or two back. I’m not sure if this part of being a teen or the result of the games he plays. I need to monitor this and do something about it. I know teens don’t like being told off, so need to do this very diplomatically. He was such a sweet, non-aggressive boy; don’t know why this is happening!

Work-wise, I’m down to 20 days today and there’s still no clarity. I did speak to the company which employs me and they haven’t heard anything from this company. Apparently something should have come over the weekend, clarity perhaps, on if contractors should be renewed and if yes, for how long. The site manager did let me know that she knows it will not be for one year, definitely less. So now I need to wait for Big B to come back to me. Otherwise I am going to ask them to look for a new position for me. Nothing much to do except one slightly big presentation for which I need some data which will only be available at least a week from now, some web presentations which will take me all of next week and then my handover report! I’ve already done more than 70% of that, so I’m going to keep that till the last week to tidy it up. I need to check with Big B who will be my replacement and then will tweak it accordingly.

Oh, my reading challenge, I almost forgot about it. I’ve been quite diligent about reading one non-fiction and non frivolous book for the past two months, need to just be slight more diligent about it. As of the 31st of March, I’ve managed to finish 74 out of my targeted 150 books which is almost 60% of the challenge! Most are the really fun books (romance and chick-lit which don’t take much time to go through, I can read a book a day for these), so I guess once I hit 100 books, I’ll have to revise my challenge numbers….

Well that was my week, let’s see what this week holds for me. Hopefully a much better week and a better month than the previous one. Have a wonderful week people!

This was another short week and as of today, I am now down to exactly five weeks before my contract runs out. By right, the company I work for should formally let me know either this week or next if there’s no chance of continuing here, but will they do, I really don’t know.

I am also more confused than ever what will happen to me here, sometimes when Big B speaks to me or others, he alludes to me being around after the contract ends, but he does not say anything directly to me. Yes, the income coming in would be great, but I think I’ve made my peace with this situation, whatever happens, no hard feelings and I’ve got plans for the rest of my year, which I will share later.

Big B is going to be traveling mostly from next week for work and pleasure and I think in the next five weeks, he’ll be in two and out three. So far he’s in during what is supposed to be my last week here.

Life also will come a full circle – when I was recruited three years back, it was just before this major annual conference the department has and I had to get stuff ready in roughly two/three weeks’ time, and it all come together so beautifully that my then boss and his boss was full of praise. Now I will be leaving a month before the same conference, which will be in the same city as the first conference and my successor will be the one who has to dot the I’s and cross the t’s before the event and hopefully he/she is as successful as I was all those years back!

We went to a wedding on Good Friday and it was nice catching up with the extended family. The wedding was of the daughter of S’ father’s distant cousins and most of them are meeting GG & BB after eons and they were all startled how big they’ve grown – I’m talking some meeting them after 7-10 years, so you can imagine how astonished they were, since BB is quite tall (he is roughly 170 cm or 5 ft, 7 inches) while GG is shorter at slightly over 5 ft. 3 inches. The irony is that we all live in the same city and some of us live within a couple of kilometers away! That’s what a busy life does to you I guess….That’s why such social functions are great for catching up with friends and family…

Ok, back to the grind after a relaxing three days, gotta go to work now. Happy Monday everyone and we’re almost at the end of March which means a quarter of the year is done…..

This was a very short work week for me. Since Monday, I’ve been feeling uncomfortable in my stomach and on Thursday it became worse. So at lunch I came home after speaking to Big B and went to the doctor who diagnosed it as stomach flu. So the rest of the week I decided to work from home and I just love working from home – I get a lot done without having to look and speak at people I dislike!

I’m down to 29 working days here now and am even more confused if that’s possible. I spoke to the site manager of the company which notionally employs me and according to this person; even they don’t know what is happening. The headquarters of this company is undergoing some savings plan and contract staff comes under this. Supposedly more clarity will be made available soon and everyone will know where you stand. I did speak to them about potential future employment opportunities and was told they can try something elsewhere, but only once they get clarity from my company.

Then on Friday we got the formal notification that the company is moving – and this move will mean a longer, maybe tougher commute for me. The move is going to happen around 18 months down the road and so will probably not impact me, but that’s also a factor in deciding to stay I guess. On one hand, I will be happy to leave the irritants and some of the work I detest, but the thought of being unemployed, dependent on S for money is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies! Also the thought of starting out from scratch……enough said I guess…..

I’d mentioned earlier that we were planning to get some work done in the house and we finally did it last week. Specifically we renovated GG & BB’s rooms, their study tables and BB’s bed. The rooms look a lot bigger now, but this also meant that we ended up spending quite a bit more than we planned. We need to buy BB a new bed and a bedside table and we should be done. Then some electrical work which should happen next week and painting! After this, I am going to save up some money and do my bedroom and the hall next – there are some built-in furniture which I dislike!

So that was week 12 for us. Happy Monday everyone and hope this week (another short week because of Good Friday and Easter) is great for everyone!