Intellectual Capital

The title itself can be misleading. I'm not talking about something intellectual actually, just my thoughts on the sharing of our knowledge. On Friday (13/06/08), I had a very good discussion session with an intellect of my office. A 'doc' indeed. The group talked about intellectual capital or asset of an organisation. This particularly refers to tacit knowledge. My god... what the heck is tacit knowledge... hehehee.. why does my topic sound so intellectual all of a sudden.

To my understanding, our experience and knowledge that we gathered in our everyday lives are our tacit knowledge. We use this knowledge to make some important decisions in our lives, like when we agreed to marry someone. You may have had so many boyfriends before, but what made you decide to marry that particular someone. In the process of making that important decision, you have actually used your knowledge about him (of course making comparison between him and your other boyfriends is unavoidable) and your experience being with him for so many years. You actually derived that you can live with that special someone till eternity and beyond after you have calculated all the possibilities and teh what-would-have-beens. Well... that's a simply way of giving a meaning to a very intellectual word.

But what is interesting is that if capturing, storing, sharing and using knowledge is very important in an organisation (and in our personal lives for that matter!), why oh why our government didn't see that. Or... they may have seen how important that is, but being public servants, they are just too lazy to explore. Or... the initiative has been put forward, but there was no one to champion it... or, whatever..!!

Just imagine if our civil servants were highly effective people... we could become the most effective government in the world. And a lot of this sharing and using of knowledge would actually make them self-improved people. when I talk about civil servants, I really mean those from the top management to the lowest grade of staff. I believe that leadership by example really applies here.

And yes, when I talk about capturing, storing, sharing and using knowledge, I do make direct reference to the knowledge management.

ieja

DEALING WITH LOSS OF LOVED ONES 1

Yesterday, I chatted with a friend. Our conversation revolved around her love life, and without realising it, we took a turn to talking about deaths of our loved ones. She recently lost her brother. Her question to me was: how do you deal with the loss of your two brothers? It took me a while to answer her. At last, I answered: I never got into terms with both losses. It's as simple as that, you will never come to terms with death.

I had two brothers, one died when I was 20 years old. He was 12 years old. It was 13 years ago. I was then studying for my A-level somewhere in Cheras. When I was studying back then, I used to commute almost weekly to Johor. Yes... my friends said I was crazy, but I was too attached to my family (besides, I hated the food there). There was one weekend, we just got our first assignment, and I decided to stay back to finish it. I was in the IT lab one morning when one of the students there called me out and said that my dad had called looking for me. I thought it was weird of him to call me (he never called - I called him). He wanted me to call him back urgently. So I went to the pay phone and called his mobile. He was in a car or something. He told me to come back home straight away because my youngest brother just had an accident. Later I found out that he was actually in an ambulance carrying my brother to the hospital.

My heart skipped a beat, but from the sound of his voice, I was sure that it was a minor accident, and that everything was OK. So I packed an overnight bag and headed to Puduraya. I tried to find a ticket back to Johor, but because it was already noon, I could only get a 2 pm bus. I had a few hours to kill before boarding time, but I was too numb to do anything. I ended up sitting on one of the seats that they provided at the bus station. I was not myself of course as I still felt that there was something else that my dad didn't tell me. All the while, I was reassuring myself that nothing bad happened.

The bus journey took about 4 hours to reach my hometown. By the time I reach my destination, it was 6 pm. When I passed the first junction to my house, I saw a pool of blood. It was still there... and again my heart skipped another beat. I walked quickly and there at my house, a lot of people gathered. I went straight in and asked for my mom. In the living room, I saw books of Yassin. I found my mom still crying, and then it was confirmed.... I just couldn't hold my tears anymore...

I didn't even get to see him for the last time. I didn't even get to kiss him goodbye...

The week I was at home, I was not being myself at all... yes.. who would... Things keep coming back to me, how funny he was, the tricks I played on him, how cute he looked when he made that cheeky face... Even the week after I got back to college, I was still not myself... It just didn't feel right somehow that he was not around... and the feelings that I experienced were out of this world, the regrets I had... I just couldn't express them. And the worse part was that the tears didn't seem to want to go away...

That was the first experience of losing a member of my family that I had to cope. It is still painful thinking about it...


ieja

I'M PISSED

What had happened in the past few days really really pissed me off. Why am I pissed? Well, for starter, the rising of the petrol price. Secondly, the rising of the edible items' prices. And last but not least, with the Government for not handling the whole situations right.

I have expressed my hatred on discussing politics, but it seems that nowadays, a lot of us (including Hubby and I) are drawn to arguments that are closely related to the topic that I hate. I'm not going to talk about politics as I believe the mainstream and non-mainstream media have that covered already. Besides, I hate talking about politics.

But coming back to why I'm so pissed off... Have you ever had a feeling when you are so frustrated with something and you just can't mouth it out to the right person? It's just like when your boss shouted at you, the most you could do is talk bad about him behind his back. But you would still have to do the shit work that he wanted you to do. What else could you do? Unless if you want to be in his big black book, then go ahead and rebel. But what kind of rebellious thing can you do to get the frustration and anger out of your system? That's what I'm pissed about. I'm angry with the Government, and there is so little that I can do to get the frustration and anger out of my system. I can't bloody throw a Molotov cocktail to a government building. I can't stop buying petrol or rice or sugar or whatever just to rebel. I still need to drive and eat. Oh.... bloody hell...!!

What used to be RM 70 per tank is now RM 100++. What used to be RM 200 per week for groceries is now RM 250++. Now, can things get any worse than that?

Ieja