Lost...

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Phew! Had been lost for a few weeks now; lost in the world of work... now I am back!

It had been a challenging few weeks following my return to work from my in-camp training. Had initially wanted to catch up with my blogging but then guess I won't have the energy to really chronicle everything, so I am going to just give a summary of what has heppened during these past few weeks:

• The Day I Conquered 200 emails - The first day back to work from my In-Camp Training was so daunting I just became so unsure how I am going to survive my next In-Camp. Remember coming back on the first day and I had like some 200 emails to follow-up. The miraculous thing: I managed to finish replying all the 200 emails and did the necessary follow-up work e.g. phone calls etc within just a day! Woo hoo! What an achievement! Anyway, gave thanks to God that week for seeing me through that horrible Monday, wasn't sure how I was going to survive but somehow did.
• The Day I Toured Toa Payoh Central - Can't believe I stayed in Toa Payoh all my life but just don't find enough time to really walk around the town centre. Met a brother-in-christ one day and had dinner and a heart-to-heart talk with him. And since it was his first time in Toa Payoh (he is a Malaysian), I played host and took him on a tour of Toa Payoh... what an eye opener!... Toa Payoh is just a town with so much character and history... didn't really take time to appreciate it until now...

Tour around Toa Payoh Town Centre

• Failing Eyesight - Think my eyesight failing me... Stood at KFC one day and realized I can't see the menu from the counter... think I might need glasses soon... guess long hours in front of computer doesn't really help... have to change image liaoz... now with specs... hmm what kind of specs would suit me? :)
• Long Prayer List - My prayer list seems to be getting longer and longer. These few weeks, I keep coming into contact with friends and people whom are going through a rough patch and I want to pray for them but somehow I just haven't been able to catch up with my prayers, in fact, stopped praying over these past few weeks because have somehow have buried myself in work... Guess is time to review my priorities and pray for those on my prayer list and talk to God once more.
• What on earth are they thinking?! - I really wonder sometimes whether what is wrong with some people? I really don't know what they are thinking of? During my In-Camp, read of stabbing in Henderson Road (seems like Singapore is having more and more of such shocking news), read of how a person torture a cat until his eye socket was hanging out of its body and had to be put to sleep (sicko!), came to be reminded of "Happy Tree Friends" which is just plain bad idea to mix violence with cartoon (super sicko!) and recently discussed about gross movies with friends; was told how horrible and meaninglessly gross the movie SAW was... senseless and brutal killing... OK call me "old fashion" or whatever... all these just worries me...
• Commissioned as a Fisher - Completed my "Becoming a Fisher of Men" course in church and am now a commissioned "fisherman" :) Learnt many a helpful lesson on witnessing.
  
• Being Hawker - My organization organized this internal fund-raising event for work done in some developing country and we all became hawkers for a month... each day, departments will take turn to sell food stuff for lunch and tea break... My department made chicken rice in the office and on another day we made chin chow and sold bee hoon with chicken wings... some departments cooked porridge, yam rice, agar agar, some made sandwich, brownie... it was a whole month of feasting and meaningful and fun volunteer work... Found out it is not easy being a hawker. Also had some fun working with my volunteers at another centre's funfair for our elderly beneficiaries and guess what I was doing? Yes, selling food again hahaha... had our funny moments e.g. put satay into oven to heat but later realized we didn't even switch on the power... me and my volunteers just laughed hard...
• Confirmed! - Yup, I got confirmed finally! And some more, on April Fool's Day... friends were like asking me, "you sure it is not a joke?" :) Finally, the 6 months seemed like forever. Anyway, I appraised myself and my boss appraised me too, ended up my own appraisal is way lower than my boss' appraisal but the appraisal was a good discussion of my strengths and weaknesses... wow realized so much has been achieved in these 6 months... with God's grace. Everything just fell into place for me during these few months so much so it can't be coincidence...
• Crisis in Association - My old workplace seems to be undergoing a crisis... was told that even the director has tendered his resignation. Seems like there are internal problems caused by undeniably bad management and also external problems and unreasonable opposition from an organization from the public sector... disappointing! Got me so worked up I just decided that I will renew my membership with the association and help with the battle.
  

Use Chairities; They are Free Marketing Tools

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Using Charities

Adapted from "Hey You" by fragallo

Something recently really made my blood boil. My colleague was sharing with me about how some business out there are misrepresenting charities by using their organizations' logos when doing their sales pitch.

In a recent case, it so happened that there was this company who was going around trying to get people to attend a talk by their company and their prospect were given a lucky draw ticket at the end which bore logos of charitable organization, one of the logos belonged to my organization and we are not aware of any partnership with this company.

Now, it is not just the fact that the organization I am working in is misrepresented that really made me mad but I was like thinking: "What audacity! Where's their conscience? Why use charitable organizations for your own business agenda?!" It is as if charities in Singapore haven't got enough on their hands to deal with, given all the recent developments and scandals in the social service scene, which had most likely reduced public's confidence of voluntary welfare organizations. Now these "unethical" companies have to come in to further complicate matters. It does help to know that some of these salesperson were very aggressive when doing their sales pitch...

And you know what? When we subsequently lodged a police report, we were told that very little could be done unless the member of the public who alerted us about the matter or our organization wants to sue the company for misrepresentation. I mean, don't VWOs have better ways to spend their money on beneficiaries rather than on unethical people and pursuing legal action against these people?

I really am wondering what the relevant governmental bodies are doing about this matter because up till now, it seems that the sector is taking a rather passive stance towards the whole matter and only reacting to it whenever there are cases of such misrepresentation. Already, I am starting to have doubts when I am constantly approached by people at MRT stations selling donation tickets from some supposedly unheard of organizations. Yet, they are able to produce a copy of the police license (which in my opinion seems like a simple piece of paper that can be easily reproduced). Do we have to wait till some big scandal happen again before we decide to act? What are all these people thinking of?!

I am a Volunteer Too!
I am also quite disappointed when it comes to newspaper reports on volunteerism. In my line of work, I track newspaper articles on volunteerism everyday and it is only rarely will you have articles on it. However, in recent weeks, with the unveiling of the political candidates for elections, you can always see how there is so much mention of this candidate doing volunteer work here, volunteer work there. I just hope people do not use volunteerism as a tool to build their profile...

In a Spiritual Desert
Of late, I have also been feeling "spiritually dry", feeling that I have not been growing mch spiritually. I must admit that I haven't been disciplined enough to have my quiet time with God, pray and read the bible, maybe that's the reason why I am in a "spiritual desert" now... It just feels different... I am also struggling with the decision whether to go for missions trip or not. It seems pretty much impossible for me to join my cell group for their missions trip to China in October as I foresee that that period will be a peak period at work but yet I am not comfortable enough to join another group for missions trip, given my social anxiety.