Busy Days

Dear Diary,

I figure that if I do not quickly type something now... I may not get a chance for the next few days again! It is just getting so busy and packed. Yes, my schedule was kinda packed over the last week or so. Imagine starting work at 8.30am, then rushing for night class which starts at 7pm (sometimes, there isn’t time for dinner but thankfully the school provides some snacks to munch on) and ending at 10pm. Hop into my car (Thank God for my Opel), rush home, bathe, wait for hair to dry... then sleep. The cycle repeats again for all the weekdays in the 12-day period. On Saturdays, we have lessons from 1.30pm to 8.30pm (no dinner break!).... On Sundays, it is 10am to 6pm (with lunch break). I just survived that first 12-day period ordeal, haha... Not really “ordeal per-se” except for the fatigue aspect. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more and analysing case-studies of many successful world-renown companies. Basically, the difference between a MBA and a BBA is that the former supplements theory with loads of case-studies. In doing so, we learn from corporate mistakes and strengths over the years. So in these 12 days, we looked into more than 10 companies (BizRate, Audi, Lenovo, Sony, Henkel, De Beers etc) and tried to apply the theory in the practical context.

So it is now about completing a 3,000-word essay on a marketing audit of my own company and catching up with the details of the lectures by reading the 600-page Kotler textbook and revising that 600-page ring file of materials. Need to prepare for the close-book exams too but that is about 2 months later. This MBA class had a diverse mix of nationalities and careers. For example in my team (Group 3), we have a German management trainee (PhD in Law), a Chinese national working in a Western MNC, a (Chinese national?) working as a supervisor in a Japanese firm, an Indian national (doing IT?) and myself (the only local). The rest of the class included nationalities from neighbouring countries like Myanmar, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia and possibly more! They work in Yahoo, Caterpillar and what-have-you... An interesting mix indeed, especially with a British lecturer who cracked the typical Englishman jokes. =) We have tonnes of recommended materials to read up which we can assess from the virtual university online portal and that new email address with the suffix “bham.ac.uk”. I sure hope I can find time to check out their e-library and you know... attempt their past-year exam papers (yes, I am so “Singaporean”), hee... Set up the Facebook group for my class too! See... I am proactive, okay? ;-)

This upcoming week, I am gotta give myself some good rest before I embark on my assignment. Want to catch that movie “Revolutionary Road” starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio... anyone wanna catch it too? We can watch it together if we know each other well enough.  Tomorrow, I will be treating a colleague dinner as she would be leaving the company by the end of the week. People come and leave our lives... it is pretty common. I used to be quite affected by it when I was younger. Forget those cheesy autographs you signed on your classmates’ books when you were parting after Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE). You know... those signings-off “Best friends forever”, “Keep in touch always” or “Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you” kind of stuff... hahaha... Most things don’t last... maybe I should go check my New Balance shoe prints on the pavement along Aljunied Road. If it is there, it should last for quite a while, hahaha... Last week, I accidentally ran onto wet cement, leaving my foot prints and a horde of furious construction workers behind. :-S

Upcoming weekends are basically packed... Think there is some performance practice on 25 April. Going to Malaysia with my family on Labour Day (1/5). There will be a performance for the elderly the next day morning (2/5), followed by Young Adult Ministry and then a friend’s wedding dinner at night. A trip to Batam (9 – 10/5) to provide medical care to the poor in the villages. Military physical trainings on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 28 April for four weeks. It’s incredible, right? So many things to do! Anyway, I have been following the AWARE news recently on the Straits Times. I don’t know why people are making such a big hoo-ha over the new EXCO. They won fairly in the AGM and it is plain ridiculous to be tabling a no-confidence vote on a committee who hasn’t even have a chance to do a single thing yet! However, it is obvious to even the blind that there is a hidden agenda. The co-ordinated usurp of power, ironically, is pretty much the value the organisation promotes and may I quote “...encourage positive change, and support women in realising their highest potential.” The new EXCO, no doubt, will champion women’s rights. However, the profiles of these new ladies been mostly evangelical Anglican Christians from the charismatic “Church of Our Saviour” shows the conservative stance they will take against fornication, abortion and homosexuality, which may ruffle the feathers of the liberals who had been shaping AWARE slowly into an organisation sympathetic to modernistic morality. We will see how the events unfold over the next week or so. Should be pretty interesting especially when you can see those stakeholders thrashing it out... What’s most puzzling is DBS suddenly chastising Josie (the new president) over accepting that role on national newspapers when in any normal case would have been a man-to-man chat in the meeting room of that bank. What’s going on beneath the scene? We can only guess.

God Bless,

Andrew