April Fool ....

April 1, 1996 – Bahija reported 9 am sharp at 15th floor. Waited for 30 minutes, didn’t see anyone coming to greet me, I was worried – hey, wait a minute “was this a April Fool trick ?’. Geeeee, today I celebrated my 9th year anniversary :). I started my working life on this date. Wow , nine years – such a big figure or rather long time. My first manager, was a nice Malay lady. She’s a sporting, fun lady. There were 10 of us who joined my ex-company on April 1. All of us were fresh, young, energetic, eager to build our so called ‘career’ …..

We were brought to 19th floor to be introduced to the team – it was the Services dept , where everyone was supposed to be based offsite at the customer site. If one was sitting in office, that meaned he/she had no project, and it was deemed as ‘not efficient’. Back then, this young 10-kakis group were placed in 22nd floor. Gee, the initial first week – was super duper boring. We were given TN3290 dump terminal – those green or orange color text based terminal accessing via VM operating system. We sent online messages thru VM mail. Had so much time to kill till we read the HR employee handbook in, out, upside down, and hafal the benefits. It was that short 2 to 3 weeks that we got to know each other, after those honeymoon weeks, all of us kena ‘jual baby babi’ – assigned to various projects with different customers. Back then, the ‘in’ thing was ‘Ecommerce’, e projects….none of us wanted to do AS/400, Mainframe, scanning, Visual Basic, C programming projects. But anyway, we obeyed and took up the assigned projects. Some time in July, we attended the ‘new employee orientation program’. Ours were held in Singapore – 3 weeks of brain-washing sessions. Participants were all new hires around the Asia region. Today, most of our ’10-kakis’ have left the company, tinggal 2 orang. We celebrated our 5th year anniversary at TGIF……may be we should arrange for one next year :)

1996 was a special year for me (on my personal side on top of learning, adapting to working life). Jan 2 – was the day I returned from US (back then, I was quite reluctant to balik kampung). Q1 was the time I mend my broken heart, also busy applied jobs and attended interviews. First paycheck – managed to belanja my parents for a small dinner. It was also the first and the last treat for my beloved daddy. I wish I could have more opportunities to belanja and serve him. Unfortunately, a tragedy happened, and we lost him. My whole family had to go thru a shocking funeral experience, the after shock / after funeral situation. Getting rid of the ‘hate’ feeling on Teddy Bear, helped mum went thru the sudden changes in life. That year also Teddy Bear had a lot of serious seizures and declared a few emergencies……It was a high impact year for me. I truly believe things happened for reasons, and I know the timing was just right that I was fated to be home from States – after that incident, the migration idea is erased from my memory. So I mourned for 1 year, had to change the whole wardrobe to black, blue, white or darker color.

1996 was a good year for Greedy. Thru her, I met Ringgit, Anti-Ringgit, Joey, TLG (my sister’s school mate), and a few other industrial trainees. So kiew, 3 of her industrial trainees are my colleagues now, the world is indeed small. It is this year, I met Bootidelicious, Mr Soon To Be GM, Coolman…….It’s also this year that Janice lost her sister in a car accident, KP lost her daddy due to cancer ….I recalled very well, we talked and shared about the sorrow moment, and how all these tragedies flew into our lives…….it’s part of the journey. 1996 – I can't categoried it as bad or good year - mixture of both - a significant year in my life, and will always be an unforgettable year !!

Happy April Fool & Happy Anniversary to me :)

p/s: I read Ringgit's first blog of the year (1st working day) back in Jan 1, time zooming fast, Q1 was over, reach my turn to blog about my '1st working day'.....dahsyat - this year, I feel that time is flying super fast ....still, no matter how busy we are, please remember to value lovely people around us, and not forgeting the most important one - ourself