A season parking lesson – Revisit 29 February, 2012
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Vroom Vroom.add a comment
Today is 29 Feb, horray to the special day that occurs once every 4 years!
So, it’s the end of Feb. I recalled that I made a blunder in Feb last year by forgetting to cancel my season parking at my work place despite only being in office for 3.5 days for that month.
Well, this year I was aware of the potential problem and made sure it will not happen again.
My ICT, as usual, took place from end Jan to early Feb, 11 Feb to be exact. I will be extracting my wisdom tooth on 13 Feb, so hopefully my MC will cover me until 15 Feb. So that meant I should only apply for half month of season parking (i.e. 16-29 Feb) for this month. I know that some parking companies do not allow for pro-rated season parking applications. However, I also knew that the parking company at my work place does allow, because I had applied for half month parking when I started work here.
So, in late Dec, I started contacting the parking company to request for half month parking in Feb. First, I went to the parking booth at the basement carpark to enquire. The lady there told me I would need to contact the headquarters for such a request. And so I did.
I email the person in charge at the headquarters, let’s call her Miss A. Miss A informed me that pro-rated season parking was not allowed, even though I knew for a fact that it was allowed because I had done it before. Anyway, Miss A was willing to ask her manager, Mr G, about it.
About 2 weeks later, I received a reply from Mr G saying that pro-rated season parking was not allowed, and that I would have to pay for the full month.
Since they will not allow me to apply for half month parking in Feb, my last resort was to cancel my season parking entirely and reapply for one after I’m back from ICT. So, I visited my company secretary, Miss T, to request for a cancellation of season parking form.
It was there that I recite to Miss T my problem and my exchange with the parking company. Miss T promptly told me, “Half month parking? No problem, I’ll settle it for you.”
Within the hour, Miss T drafted an email to the parking company, addressed to… surprise surprise… Miss A.
5 days later, Miss A replied the email saying everything had been approved and I will be paying for half month season parking for the month of Feb.
Should I be happy about this exchange? Well, of course, because I save half month of parking charges. But at the same time, I have to say, WTF?!
Why the double standards? Why did Miss A not simply give me the green light in the first place? Why did Miss A’s manager Mr G expect me to cancel my season parking and reapply, to go through the motion of unnecessary admin? Why did Miss A response so swiftly and differently to Miss T? Why did it take 2 weeks to reject my initial request but only 5 days to approve of Miss T’s same request?
I am very disappointed with such service attitudes. This is a problem that plagues much of our service sector today, including the public service. People are not willing to move out of their comfort zone. When faced with unfamiliar situations, these people simply shut their doors and hide behind the protection of their company protocols and policies.
My simple advice to them, before resigning to “it cannot be done”, first ask yourself “Why not?”
-Dear1
On Leave Taking – Revisit 20 February, 2012
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So, I have written a post early last year, sharing my thoughts on leave taking. Let’s revisit the idea and see how my leave had been used in the year 2011.
Coloured dates indicate the days I am not in office. Half coloured days indicate half day leaves.
Let’s revisit some of the ideas I brought up in my previous post.
- I didn’t clear any leave as I didn’t need to. My leaves were well distributed throughout the year and there was no need to clear any block leaves towards the end of the year.
- It is definitely possible to have ‘short’ working weeks throughout the year. By ‘short’, I mean any working week less than 5 days. In fact, I only have 8 ‘normal’ weeks in 2011, the other 44 weeks were all ‘short’.
- I mentioned that I preferred to take Wednesday off, and indeed that was what happened. Most of my leaves were on Wednesdays. Mid week break sure is good.
- I also mentioned that I preferred AM leave to PM leave. Well, that has changed. I now think that PM leave is better. The analogy is like doing homework when we were back in school. It is better to work hard first then play hard. That is, work in the morning, then relax the rest of the day.
- I used up all my MC. Some were serious, like stomach flu in Jan and suspected food poisoning in Nov. Some were medium-serious, like bad throat infection twice. Some were mild, like running nose.
- There were 2 off in lieu due to elections.
- I took 2 holidays last year. Once in January to Taipei, and once in August to Seoul.
- I went for a 1 week business trip.
- I brought forward 6 days leave to 2012.
So, all in all, I do think that my ideas for leave taking is feasible. Work life balance is important to me. I prefer to have regular short weeks so that I can spend some time with Dear2, have some personal time, or even to do piled up housework like washing the fans and sunning the pillows.
I am also thankful to my supervisors for never rejecting my leave requests and I reciprocate by being responsible and making sure that my deadlines are met and duties dutifully delegated when I’m not around.
Here’s looking forward to another work life balanced year 2012!
-Dear1
Mixed Vege Rice Phenomenon 18 February, 2012
Posted by dear1dear2 in Dear1, Internet & Blog.add a comment
Our blog typically draws 100 views a day since it’s inception. Imagine my surprise when I found out that my site stats went sky high overnight! Let me recount the string of events that followed the popularity of The Art of Ordering Mixed Vege Rice.
8 Feb: Someone shared the link on Facebook
On this day, there were 9944 visitors, of which 6473 came from Facebook. So I would guess that someone stumble upon this particular post of mine and really enjoyed it. Then this person shared the link on Facebook and soon his/her friends and their friend’s friends started visiting.
8 Feb: Someone started a thread on EDMW
On the same day, someone created a thread on EDMW to share the link too. Although I do not have the details, but I am guessing that the EDMW thread was created after the Facebook link share. The reason being, several replies on the EDMW thread mentioned that they’ve already read it. Since we only have about 100 visitors per day prior to this day, I find it unlikely that the people who replied on EDMW are regulars to our blog. Hence, I guess that they must have read it on Facebook earlier on the same day.
9 Feb: I came home and discovered the surprise
So I didn’t login on 8 Feb. When I login on 9 Feb however, I was puzzled to see the figure, 14608 visitors. My first reaction was that WordPress probably made a mistake. However, a quick look at my stats details revealed that the majority of the visits were to that particular Vege Rice post. This was when I made my discovery of what had happened the day before on 8 Feb.
Over dinner, I eagerly told Dear2 about the number of visits and she was just as excited as I am. It really made our day, our blog had its busiest day since our first post on 24 Nov 2006. I would also like to thank the readers who went on to read about us and our other posts. I hoped that you have found them interesting.
I also checked my Facebook account on this day to verify the plausibility of the small world experiment and six degrees of separation. Indeed, *one* of my friends had re-shared the link. This meant that over the course of roughly 1 day, the first shared link on Facebook had made its way through various connections (although I have no way of knowing how many degrees of separation) over Facebook and returned to me, the author. Interesting, small world experiment in real life, in my life! However, none of Dear2′s Facebook friends had re-shared the link. Small world experiment failed. Food for thought. :)
10 Feb: Past the peak
Traffic dropped to 5223. I suppose the interest had past. Nevertheless, it is still the 3rd most busiest day for us.
11-16 Feb: Steady decline
Traffic is steadily declining. On 16 Feb, it was still hovering at around 250 views per day. I hoped that this had meant that our blog had gained some regular readers. But then again, it could be due to residual readers from Facebook.
17 Feb: Talked about on FM100.3
So I was driving home as usual at around 6.30pm. I turned on the radio and tuned in to my regular FM93.3. By a stroke of luck, it was a song I didn’t like so I switched stations to FM100.3. Within the next minute of so, the host started talking about tips for ordering mixed vege rice. *Raise eyebrow* Could it be?
Indeed it was! The host started referring to the 14 tips of ordering mix vege rice, in Mandarin of course. I was grinning from ear to ear as I hear them recite each and every tip I had shared. My 心得 being shared on national radio is definitely something that I am proud of. :D
Dear2 wasn’t with me in the car as I was on my way to pick her up. But I still quickly SMS her to tell her about the good news. However, as fate would have it, Dear2′s FM radio on her phone was not working and she couldn’t listen in on the radio program. And I had no record function on the car radio. Well, I did describe the details to her as best as I could.
17 Feb: Page 10 of Wanbao
So it was mentioned by the radio hosts that the article was published on Wanbao. I eagerly bought a copy as soon as I had my car parked. Turn to page 10, there it is, everything translated to Mandarin quite accurately. I couldn’t hide my grin, My 心得 on national newspaper! :D
Here's the proof, 17 Feb 2012, Friday, Wanbao, page 10.
There was also a small additional section where the reporter interviewed some mixed vege rice stall owners to get their feedback. The owners rejected tips 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 saying they will not work but didn’t comment on the rest. Does this mean that the remaining tips do work?
A minor complain though, Wanbao didn’t cite the source. -_-”
18 Feb: My recap
That’s today, and that’s the end of my recap. It has been a phenomenon ride for Dear2 and I. Thanks to everyone, the readers, and all the various sources of mass media that have taken notice of our little blog. Do return and support us with your continued readership. :)
-Dear1
