Banquet Lunch!

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I think I found my motivation in work and that is the ability to be creative and implement my ideas.

All Fired Up
I was to propose a budget for my portfolio at work but the problem is this: I am new and being barely 6 weeks old, I do not know how I am going to propose a reasonable budget which would be adequate for what I need in the next year... to add to that, I am totally clueless about budgetting but am learning.

Anyway, I thought of a wonderful idea (at least to me) yesterday and began writing an observation paper, documenting what I see as some issues that needs to be addressed in my portfolio and proposing a "seed fund" of maybe $10,000 to be set aside in the budget for various projects which would help address these issues. In this way, I will not be afraid of under-budgetting and yet helps provide the impetus to encourage everyone to be creative in finding solutions to some of these issues I have identified. This has got me all fired up and I got so excited, wanting to come back to office this morning to finish the paper...

All Dampened Down
However, motivation was dampened when my boss called me about an email I have sent to someone more senior in rank to me. Apparently, I was supposed to help compile a survey and was asked to approach this person (who is higher rank than me) for the figures and as such, without much thinking, sent an email to her to ask if she would have the figures. Wrong move! I should have bear in mind that she was higher ranking to me and should have given her a courtesy call about this before sending the email... but silly me just sent the email. No matter how polite my email was, on hindsight it still seem that I am "instructing" her to do work. So my boss called me this morning to tell me that I should have given a courtesy call first instead... well she did not scold me and this is a valuable lesson learnt but somehow my spirits was so dampened for a while in the morning... Somehow just can't stand myself making mistakes like that...

All Fired Up (Again)
Anyway, was "rescued" when I later received a call about a volunteer. I won't go into details of it but then from this call, I saw how meaningful my job can be... yes, it can be boring after sometime of just matching volunteers to services... just like being a matchmaker... it gets quite boring after a while. But it is when you know your job actually stand the chance of making a difference to someone's life that you feel passion again for the job. So this call provided that opportunity. So within a one hour this morning, my passion for my job went up and down, up and down... like the stock market.

Anyway, I am still going to write that observation paper and proposal for the seed fund. It ight be challenging fighting for it but I am all fired up and will nonetheless take up the challenge!

Banquet Lunch
Today, had a special date with my department. Was supposed to go survey a place for our staff appreciation dinner next year and also take the opportunity to try out the food at the restaurant (at our own expense) and also to celebrate 2 of our colleagues' birthday.

Today must be one of the most hearty lunch I have ever had so far... we literally had a 15-course lunch because the 8 of us went for the ala carte buffet lunch and we ordered and the restaurant kept serving... (forgot to tell you my department loves to eat and I have been forewarned to weigh myself and compare my weight a few months later).

Let's see if I remember what we had... we had shark's fin, drunken prawn, salad prawn, sea cucumber with abalone, fish maw with mushroom, sea bass with chilli, roasted duck with herbs, clams, stew pork, venison, fried vegetables, scallops with fried fritters, "Hay Cho" with deep fried bean curd, and some more I can't remember. To top that, we called for yam paste ("or ni") and bo bo cha cha (menu put "bo bo za za") for dessert and ended with fruits platter. Horribly full lunch but also relatively cheap... in the end, we all paid $15 each after discount :)

Shark's Fin Soup being Served