wake up call

i woke up this morning and just sms my boss saying i'm taking urgent leave.

i just don't feel like working. yesterday, i was discussing about this new project with my colleague, and in the process my brain just felt like retreating. i had no urge to argue. i kept on thinking, what's the purpose?

it all started when i had the annual performance evaluation with my boss last week. i must say, the increment was not that flattering, only 6.9%. minus that with the extra money i have to pay monthly for that blood sucking ocbc housing loan, i just get like $40 more. duh big deal.

my boss said that my pay is already at the ceiling, which means as long as i don't get promoted, my increment would be limited. the problem is, he expects me to excel in wafer fabrication process, which we do not even do here in our plant, and then show leadership qualities.

what a crappy bunch of reasons. the only guy that got promoted in our group was from wafer fab plant, so he knows all those things. so naturally people go to him if they want to know about wafer fab stuff. not only people, even the bosses go to him. from there i guess where he looks like a leader. sort of.

that puts in me a losing battle, doesn't it? i mean, i can't be working in a western food franchise then be evaluated about my knowledge in sushi, right? plus, i'm starting to think that i could have overstayed in current company. this is my 7 years for god's sake, and that in semiconductor industry in singapore, is like ancient.

now that i'm not in the office, i could update my resume. it's friday anyway, and who works on friday? ok i do my weekly report on friday but overall, the work pace is much slower on friday, not to mention the long lunch people always go for, so it's not that i'll be missed much anyway.

actually i'm glad to be home. today is the second day of the fasting month. yesterday i felt all lonely during lunch break, you know, when everybody gets up from their workstation suddenly noticing the people around and the atmosphere is all lively. but i was just like, oh i'm staying put today. i felt so left out. it's not the food that i missed, but the company during breaktime.

since i was not gonna be deprived of my usual breaktime, i just read newspaper to kill time. there was this news about an old lady who was killed after being hit by a bus and then pinned under the tyres. what a tragedy. but it's her housemate description of her that caught my attention, because let's face it, people get hit by a bus everyday here.

her housemate said she's a lady with no hobbies. she would go to work, and come back from work, and occasionally go to the supermarket.

duh. i so don't want to end up like that. gone after achieving nothing i mean, although of course who wants to be pinned under the bus like that too. i mean, if i were to look back in my life, would i see something worth to cherish about?

one of the technician in my company fainted last sunday when she was about to leave for work. by the time she reached hospital, the doctor pronounced that she had already brain-dead. last tuesday they took off her life support system.

shocking. i used to submit job request to her to boil out chip from packaged memory for analysis. my memory of her is that, well forgive me but she was such a cranky lady. she would questioned my submission form, till i had to draw what i wanted. wasn't someone that was easy to work with definitely.

anyway, in her demise announcement, they described her as someone who was very lively. well that suits too i guess, cranky equeals lively, isn't it? i heard there was no symptom at all before that stroke, which is scary since she was only slightly above 50 years old.

people die very easily it seems lately here in singapore. last month there was this guy who was only 25 years old if i'm not mistaken, joined the cross bridge marathon and dropped dead while running. apparently he pushed himself too hard. i don't even know you can die from that.

perhaps those incidents could tell us something. if we want to live longer, we should not exercise and not go to work.

ok maybe not, but i guess we should just live the life fully. i mean, you can wake up and get ready go to work, where you have spent the last 7 years of your life before realizing it's impossible to climb the work ladder further, but God could decide 'ok that's it' anytime. so tell me, does it matter if i master the wafer fabrication process anyway?

oh gosh, this is not my mid life crisis, isn't it?




...ed