A Typical F*cked-up Friday

Here I am sipping my Cranberry Cooler, right after savouring a Caesar salad and cream of mushroom soup at Dome Cafe, Bangsar Shopping Complex. Somewhat uplifting, considerably healthy meal, as opposed to the roti jala and nasi lemak I had last night for dinner. I am here just pondering about the day. To tell you the truth, it’s been a pretty fucked-up day. Can’t find a appropriate adjective to properly describe it. Think I’ll stick to the tried-and-tested and simple ‘fucked-up’. Call this limitation of vocabulary. Or linguistically-challenged. Anyways, this quiet meal alone is kind of like a more positive, relaxing end to a somewhat gloomy day up till now.

The day started bright and early, with J beside me. She was the last thing I saw as I shut my eyes last night and the first thing I saw when I opened my chinky pair of corneas this morning. It was wonderful to have spent the night with my sayang, right before her company trip to Phuket. We made it a point to spend some quality time together since she’ll be away for the weekend – basking in the sun in her bikini, feasting her eyes on the tanned six-packed hunks and consuming generous amount of Mekong whisky.

Work started alright I guess, mixture of boredom, some productivity with the CD-ROM project I am doing for a international hotel, a revised ad and a new campaign for a property developer thrown in for good measure, some major troubleshooting and technical support for a colleague’s Mac (which happens to be a spanking new PowerMac G5 2Ghz dual processor, yums!) and the usual catching-up with ups and downs at Zerotohundred and PPS.

Stuck. In the middle of nowhere.
Despite being slightly (an understatement, naturally) brain-dead – call it the ‘pre-weekend syndrome’; and preoccupation with my colleague’s G5 (I was frantically trying to recover her address book which I had mistakenly deleted when moving her account from Microsloth Entourage to Apple’s Mail) The latter part of the day was spent thinking about the property campaign which I was so stuck at. Even my copywriter was frank in saying he hadn’t thought about any new concepts and that it would all end up the same old, same old crap at the end of the day. For once, I think, I agreed with him. Totally.

Issues, issues and more issues. Pass me tissues.
The fun started when I was called in by my bosses for a private chat in the conference room. From their expressions and gestures, I could sense it wasn’t good. It was long overdue, but unexpected. Appraisal time, folks. What’s funny was that I got a salary revision months before the evaluation, which is quite out-of-the-norm. Perhaps they trusted me, or perhaps they were just complacent. But whatever the case, the traditional “How do you feel about the Company?”, “How is work?” attempted to break-the-ice. Formulaic almost. I didn’t have much to say, instinctively expecting less shallow, more life-threatening questions. In summary it wasn’t all bad, but some rules were laid out. The highlights were the punctuality issue. The freelancing issue. The PowerBook issue. The leadership and team issue.

Wake up, godammit!
All of which I had already come to expect. Remained calm and answered as diplomatic and honest as I could. Punctuality had always been an issue, especially with my lady boss and I think what worsened the situation was my frequent self-inflicted half-day attendance of late. What’s funny is that they were never caused by my involvement with any freelance work, which they suspect I am involved in. My sleeping habits (or rather, inability to wake up in the mornings, on time!) have been erratic recently. Contrary to popular belief, the live-wire Vernon does get tired from time to time, and that extra 30 minutes of shut-eye helps me get through the day. I find it uncanny that I could be early for four days a week, but she only notices me on the day that I am late. Go figure.

Being free…
The freelance question thrown at me was parried, but not denied. I did not deny that I did not do any freelancing, and any freelance (when I ever had the time) was done in my own time, using my own equipment. To expect designers not to be freelancing is quite unrealistic. I personally have yet to meet a designer who doesn’t freelance, or at least haven’t ever freelanced, in their entire career. Impossible. It’s the nature of the trade, whether you make money out of it or not. Freelancing is rampant, it’s healthy when done right and ethically. I stressed my commitment to the Company in which I give my 100%, unaffected by whatever I do on the outside of the office in my own time. I reiterated that I would make a bigger effort to be punctual. As one of the seniors, it was again stressed that a good example be set in terms of punctuality and performance. For all it’s worth, I do agree.

Water and oil. Don’t mix. Can’t mix.
From the issue of freelancing, my trusty PowerBook was brought into light. It was quite a silly question to ask, “Why do you bring your PowerBook to work and what do you do with it?”. I explained that I separate what’s personal (emails, downloads, yada yada in my PowerBook) from work (company projects, work email and yada on the office PowerMac). Makes sense doesn’t it? It not only helps organise my working and personal life, but also keeps my office Mac trim and free from personal crap! But oh no, they would have none of that. Result – PowerBook banned from the office. If I do decide to bring it in, it would have to remain shut, in sleep mode or kept in the bag.

Anti-antagonistical antagonist.
I accepted it without a single antagonising remark, truly untypical of the rebellious me. I can sometimes surprise myself, given my ‘unsurprisable’ nature, I’d say it’s pretty spectacular. Never one to abide by the rules, not especially those deemed unnecessary and bothersome – like timesheets for example, I was surprisingly (it’s that word again!) docile. Not a whimper. Nothing. Force field disabled. Anti-aircraft guns disengaged. Heh.

I am a crow. So shoot me.
To top off the ‘appraisal’ so-called, my leadership qualities or lack of, was questioned. Me – MIA Graphic Design Club president, former captain of the school’s soccer and volleyball team with honours, former captain of the Miri and Sarawak tennis team with honours. Questioned. Hmm… what’s going on? Beyond questionable doubt, that was the past, but hey, does account for something right? Could it just be the environment, not suited for a clear-cut teamleader and peon set-up? I questioned the system in place (or absence) and the traditional, usual way of things being done within the Company. The designers, mostly independent. Unsupervised. They do not need to be babysitted. I believe in thinking, working independently, not overly-reliant on others to get things done, although delegation and workload-sharing is essential on bigger projects. I was, as a result of questioning the system, shot down. Like a crow shot to bits by pellets from a shotgun. Blown to smithereens, broken wings and all.

Come together…
I was then led to believe that the other team was ‘more together’, despite the fact that realistically, since their projects usually involve annual reports do require massive amounts of togetherness to ensure everything goes like stink! Frankly, the same can’t be said about my team of 5, which has projects as diverse as the flora and fauna in the tropics. One’s doing a whole campaign on beverage, one is a campaign on property development, one’s on a greeting card rampage, and another’s on a website and annual report. All aligned somehow, but all independent. I relish the variety and depth of our team’s work, but here it is, teamwork and leadership being questioned. I heard words like ‘demotion’, ‘senior designer’, ‘designer’ and ‘perhaps better’ lumped up in the same sentence. I wasn’t deeply impressed by that statement. Sure sounded a whole lot like a threat. Head on chopping board? Hmm..dunno, but close. I realised then that it was either show some ‘visible to the bosses’ eye’-type of leadership qualities from today onwards, or literally ship out.

Me. Flawed. Imperfect.
At the end of it, I came to realise that there was some truth in their concerns. There ARE certainly aspects of me that can and needed tp be changed and improved. Starting with punctuality and time management. And leadership skills. I chose to see the constructive, positive aspects of the meeting. I didn’t completely agree to what was remarked, but I found some truths and glaring weaknesses within myself, which I need to address for the betterment of flawed moi. I walked out of the room with a dark cloud over my head, but not quintessentially negative.

For what it’s worth, short of hanging one by the balls and pulling nostril hair with a plier, self-realisation backed by brutal honesty is the finest of motivation.

The 90-minute wait.
Waitaminnit. A 90-minute wait you say? That is totally unprecendented. To wait for someone you’ve never met for that long? This, I think, a trait for someone who has incredible patience, or just plain stupid. Dunno, you decide. I was kind of looking forward to meeting this stranger, a female visitor from Sarawak (my adopted home state for some years!) this whole week. This date that was set wasn’t romantic in nature (sorry, I am taken!), but more meeting a fellow Sarawakian kind of event. Like an old friend union type thing. So I looked forward to the date with zest, despite having a fucked-up day overall. But oh no, it would never turn out smooth would it? I waited at the Bangsar LRT. And waited. And waited. Called her, text-ed her. No replies, no return calls. Great. Fantastic. So I waited. My gastric juices were starting to build up at this point, causing some discomfort and I could tell that if I didn’t eat anytime soon, another bout of gastritis would set in. To make matters worse, I so needed to pee!

She only SMS-ed me to tell me she had arrived. At 9.30pm. I had just left the station, unimpressed, frustrated, hungry. All I wanted to do at that point was get home, take a piss, shower and have a nice quiet dinner, alone. I didn’t reply her messages until the next day. I did incidently, do all those things I mentioned, hence this post and meal at Dome. Saviour of the day. A quiet, unstressed hour of comfort food, WIFI and ‘me-time’. Some distractions offered via cutie chicks passing-by, though 🙂 Where do they come from, geez!

Well, if it’s any consolation to myself, I look forward to the weekend. Especially the track day at Sepang on Sunday. Yippee!

Anyways, never mind me – have a happy weekend, fellas!