YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

You are my sunshine my only sunshine

You make me happy when skies are grey
You'll never know dear how much I love you
So please don't take my sunshine away

That's the song given and sung to me by Hubby. But when my son was born, that song (without we even realising it) was passed on to him. He is our sunshine. I realise that I haven't written about him in my blog and I guess it's high time I opened my private life to (just a little bit) to this cyberworld. Not for others to take a peek, but more for him (when he knows how to use the Internet that is) to read what his Mommy had written about him here...

During my pregnancy with Iqie (his full name is Rifqie Shaqirin), Hubby and I were eager. We recorded every development and kept all the scanned pictures. We read a lot of materials and subscribe to a few newsletters. As first timers, we had a lot of questions and worries, but alhamdulillah there was no complication or whatsoever during the pregnancy. The delivery though was a bit tough. I had to spend 2 nights before Iqie was born due to low amniotic fluid (oligohydramnios). Then, I was in the delivery room for 6 hours before he finally decided to come out. The doctor had to use forcep delivery to help him out. But he was OK, crying his lungs out demonstrating his vocal power. The rest was history.

As he grew up, Hubby and I were fascinated by what a child can do to you as parents. All of a sudden, you have this midget to look after (I had a few pets before, but that was different...), how we had to adjust our lifestyle, financial arrangements and a lot more to suit him. In some way, I even put my career on hold for a while... And all these were done out of love... We had pictures of him taken (Flickr) and videos recorded for almost every occasion (YouTube).

Now, he is almost two. And we are still fascinated with his development (well... as first timers I guess...) and with ourselves as well. So far... we haven't screwed up... hhehehe (not yet maybe). But with what's to come... there will be a lot of other things to learn and discover for us as parents and for him.

My concern now is how is he going to take on a job as a big brother when his little brother is born...

ieja

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MALAYSIA?

Whenever I read the front page of a newspaper, there will always be new news of corruption, allegations or other nonsense political related headlines. They make me sick - enough to make me stop reading newspapers altogether. What is happening to Malaysia?

I have told enough times that I hate politics. But nowadays, it's everywhere... what's with Anwar's new so-called "recycled" dirty political tactic of sodomy allegation, Najib's not-so-secret affair plus sodomy activity with the deceased Altantuya, with anti Pak bodoLa's move of getting enough signatures in a petition to ask him to step down, with anti Khairy's blog that claims that he's the one plotting every evil deed and the sole reason why Malaysia is in it's sickening state... and many more to add to the list.

As sickening as I find it everyday, I just can't go about doing my business without thinking what is going to happen to Malaysia. Who is going to be our saviour. Apparently, I don't see any public nor political figure that can lead us out of this mess. And I'm worried. Not only for me and my family, but for my son and his soon-to-come little brother, and other fellow Malaysians.

As a non-political extremist or supporter, I know shit about the implications of all this mess to our social and economic stands. But what I know is that it's not good at all for the nation to have this kind of turmoil. I sense (as an oblivious person most of the time) that there is no more peace, security and sense of belonging anymore. That scares me sometimes. And I also know that if there should be any foreign interference (by this, I mean the IMF) in our nation's financial activities, then there would be hell to pay in future.

So, who should I or rather we fall back to? I don't see any eligible candidate at all... And that's scary... so, what I'm going to do is to plan my finance cleverly so that when the bad time hits us hard, my family and I will be prepared for it. I also see that there is a need for everyone, not only me to have a contingency plan, well... just in case if the political situation gets worse and the extremists get more extreme in their actions. Migrating would be an option... hehheh but a damn expensive one... or... a sponsor to continue my study overseas is not a bad idea, and take the whole family along... yupp... why not...

ieja

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

KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOCIETY

This is my second blog for May. I know I've missed 2 weeks of blogging and I haven't been true to my words - to blog very week. But truth to be told, it isn't because of lack of time, or because I was deprived of any Internet Connection. I was simply being myself... putting things off until the last minute!

May has been a very rewarding month for me... in terms of career advancement as well as in terms of new knowledge acquisition. I think I've learned a lot these 3-4 weeks than I had been in the last 2 years. When I say learning, I mean in all aspects of consulting work as well as in my personal life.

First of all, I'm now involved in the development of a blueprint for Knowledge Management (KM). Take a wild guess who that is for... hehehhee... To my surprise, this whole KM thingy was actually highlighted by our beloved Tun M. (and guess in which year..) in 1991. WOW!!! How long ago was that...?? In 2001 (if I'm not mistaken), a govt. agency (which naming of it is unnecessary) came out with what they called "Knowledge-Based Economy Master Plan". The heading itself can send shivers down your spine. And in that so-called Master Plan, there is a specific chapter (Chapter 8 - Fast Forwarding the Public Sector into the K-Based Civil Service) - one whole bloody chapter dedicated to the public sector. And in that so-called Master Plan, it is also stated that our public sector should achieve K-Based Civil Service in (take a wild guess again...) YEAR 2005!!!

And here we are... (my team and I actually) just starting to develop the blueprint... so what does that tell you..?? When all the top guns on their leather seats are preaching about KM, the arms and legs are now scurrying about doing god knows what to make this happen. I just hope that this "initiative" won't be like other gov. project implementations where THEY DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO ASSESS THE ROIs...

ieja

A NEW CHALLENGE

I missed my weekly deadline to post a new post. I missed my first week of May blog... This is so typical of me you know... putting things off until the very last minute. I always find excuses not to do things. When am I going to change?

The question is not "when am I going to change?", but "am I ever going to change?". People say that old habits die hard... and I believe in that to some extents. Once, someone told me that it is going to be hard for someone to change his routine or habits once he has reached half of his lifetime... which means, if you are 25 years and above, it is likely that you will die with the habits or routine that you have incalculated in you for the first 25 years of your life.

Like I said, I believe in that to some extents. For instance, if in the first 25 years of your life, you have never been serious about praying 5 times a day as a Muslim, it's going to be very hard for you to start in the later years of your life. I have real life examples on this you know... That's how I draw this conclusion. But at the same time, I also believe that if you have great willpower, you can change yourself, no matter how hard it is and how long it will take you. I have also witnessed this in some people.

It's funny you know... with that realisation, I still have difficulties in changing some of my bad habits... like putting things off till the last minute... hehehhee... I suppose old habits do die hard... and I really really really need strong willpower to change that habit of mine...

ieja