Oh, So Random

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Am feeling really burnt out recently.

There are a hundred and one million things to do, but cos of the changes in our office there are now less people to share the burden with and of course more stress to go with the work.

I just want to find a place and SCREAM OUT LOUD!!!

I imagine myself in the middle of a tropical rainforest and when I scream all the birds will fly out of the trees in shock; I shout in front of the great sea at a beach and all the fish will be scared out of water.

The thing is there isn't even a decent place where I could really scream and destress. Wherever I go in Singapore there are bound to be people and if I dare even shout people will think I'm gila and send me to IMH.

Sigh...

What am I going to do? I feel so tired on a daily basis and it gets more and more dreary to turn up for work. As it is I count two complaints on my account due to poor follow up.

I couldn't help it, how am I to finish so much escalations, field a thousand questions, do transaction monitorings, handle all the admin and HR issues and not feel like I'm a candle which has been burnt to the wick?

And on top of the workload there's also the issue with my Grandmother. I used to be able to stay back later to clear work but I do that less now as I have to sometimes leave earlier to make it in time to go to the hospital to visit her before visiting hours end. But if I don't stay back my escalations cannot get done. Now, cos of the team I'm heading, even if I do stay back it doesn't help at all, I still have to answer questions endlessly as there are still people in my team who are at work when my shift ends.

I really really prefer the time when I was in the 7am shift. Though it was unexpected to me to be placed in that shift but it was a blessing. Wonderful to be able to go home earlier. And even if I went home later it wouldn't actually be as late.

I still have unfortunately quite a lot of TMs to be done. But it does not seem like there is ever a time to do it.

Imagine my anger when a team member from another team came over to ask me some question and dared tell me that her team leader was doing TM!! I need to do TM too! But I don't do it at the expense of other team leaders and neglect my own team when anyone from my team has questions.

I really need to become less of a sponge. Why should a case which has been handled by another TL be handed over to me halfway? Is it even fair to do this to me? And the worst thing is I have too much backbone to follow suit, throw the cases that were escalated to me from agents from other teams back to their TLs.

Now, I'm trying to slowly cultivate the practice of turning them back to their TL. We each have our own workload and there is no reason why I deserve more work than others. If I receive a task for everything that I'm asked to do I believe I can top the task list in task closing.

But the fact is, my tasks seem to be not moving. I clear one task and more come through. It's a can of worms after another can of worms.

When can I stop being bugged? Physically, emotionally and mentally?!!

That's why today I went crazy. For a moment I wished I could be fired and I voiced that out in front of my director!! I said that if I was fired I didn't have to worry about the 2 months notice period.

How crazy have I become to say this in front of her at a time of such economic uncertainty.

Seriously speaking though, I wish I could really take a rest. Have one day where I can stay at home all day, no need to go to gym, tuition, work or anything at all. Just complete relaxation at home.

When will this day come before I really turn crazy??!!

I know the DEC hols is out, in fact my schedule has even been altered so that others who are taking leave will be covered by me.

Woe is me!!

I can only hope and pray, a million and one times that my CNY hols can be approved. If not, if not I might really just go nuts with the non-stop work.

Am I coherent to you? I fancy all of a sudden that I'm jumping from one topic to another and there's no complete link. Am I still making sense to anyone?

Exhausted, I'm completely beyond bushed and on top of my fatigue I have a numb and frozen shoulder due to the stress. I need to relax, I need to go off and rest but when will that be?

Mingmei is so tired she wants to cry and laugh at the same time. No more, no more, I wish for there to be no more pain, no more stress, no more despair...

I scribbled at ;; 7:59 PM

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

It seems that I have been surrounded by a lot of the same type of fear recently. The fear of the great unknown, of disease and pain, of death. And with the fear there is a great sense of helplessness...

. ~ .

It first started with my Grandmother. My father's mother is the only grandparent I have left on both sides of the family. About 2 months back (or was it even earlier?) she suddenly suffered from a minor heart attack.

She was feeling breathless at night and it didn't get better the next day so she was sent to the hospital. She was in SGH for close to a month. We thought she had to go for surgery, a bypass if it's serious and if it's not so serious, stenting.

We were so sure that she would at least be able to go for a surgery that we kept spending time prepping her about it. We slowly psycho-ed her that a surgery would be the solution to her pain, she will either survive the operation and get better, or simply not survive the operation. And though my Grandmother hadn't been quite so lucid for the past 2 years since she fell and hit her head, she seemed to understand and accept what we told her.

Little did we know that even an operation was not an option for her. After a long and extensive check, the doctors at the Singapore Heart Centre decided that she was not fit enough to have an operation.

There were too many arteries which have calcified and given her age, even if she were given an op the risk is too high and it will not improve her standard of living overall. Bypass operations are expensive and beyond that, they are very hard to recover from, so in the end she was ruled out for the bypass.

"What about the stenting?" we asked. Also out. Again too many arteries are affected and no point at all to stent for her. Believe it or not there is no way out, the only thing that we have left is time, time for the inevitable to happen.

When the doctors had come to this conclusion they decided there was nothing much more that the hospital could do for her and she was discharged. We didn't say a thing to her about her not being able to op, that she has no chance to really be treated this time.

Somehow, as though by sixth sense, she had known. It could be that she could see it in my Aunt and Uncle's faces when the doctor talked to them, it could be that she was still wise enough to deduce that something was not right, she suddenly became depressed and refused to eat when she went home.

No medicine, no food, she just simply clammed up everytime we tried to give her something. It got so bad that not that long after she was discharged she was admitted again, this time to TTSH. All the time we tried pacifying her, coaxing her, scolding her, bribing her but nothing worked. We were for a moment just as helpless as she was. She couldn't help her situation, and we couldn't help her.

My Mum said it could be the fear of death in my Grandmother which brought about her wilfulness. We have basically been told that she would never really recover from her heart problem, and death was a matter of time. It was as though she was trying to push herself further along that path, and the only thing that kept her alive was the fact that she wanted to live. That's why when she was hungry, she still ate, and when coaxed like a baby, she sometimes also ate.

She has now come out of that funk and we worry less cause she's eating and taking her medicine again but truly nothing fundamentally has changed. We are still waiting for time to catch up with her...

What is it like for her I sometimes wonder. To come to a point in life when we are completely helpless and at a loss about what we can do. Perhaps I have already entered that phase in my life, except the helplessness is not for myself, but for the people around me.

. ~ .

I saw and experienced the same helplessness in someone else I knew very recently after my Grandmother's episode. A colleague came to the office and all of a sudden he collapsed when he reached his desk. It was completely unexpected and caught us totally off guard. All I could think of at that moment was, "What happened?! What happened?!"

All there was at that moment was fear. His fear that something would happen to him, my fear that something might happen to him.

I later learnt that he's now suffering from a condition. The big and ugly C word that has struck terror and depression in him. There are many things that could run across a person's mind in a situaion like that.

Will death come? When will it come? Why has this happened at so young an age? What about the money? As the sole breadwinner who is going to take care of the family if anything happens? What about work? Will the job be jeopardised especially at this time when money is so crucial? When to let the family know? What to do next? Will my next day be my last?

I could only imagine how terrified and how lost I would be if put in this situation. Yet all I could do was to stand aside and watch things happen and ask "Why?" and "How?".

The fear was almost enough to drive him to his death but thank God he overcame his negative thoughts. But the fear would not end. He has the courage to live but no one is brave enough to not fear about how the future may unfold in this situation...

. ~ .

Even more recently there was the same fear and helplessness again. (Am I now beginning to magnet in all this?)

One day, I woke up to find my roommate in tears. She wanted to know if I had any medicated oil and she was crying.

For no rhyme or reason she had gotten up that morning with extreme pain on one side of her body and she could hardly move when she first got up. It was bad and she didn't know what it was.

Again I was thinking "How?", "Why?" but I didn't know what to do at all. I was frantic myself in my heart. It sounded like symptoms of a stroke but it CANNOT be!! She's even younger than me! I didn't dare to voice out the question in my heart.

She was crying badly cause she didn't know what it was. We woke up our other housemate but she also didn't know what this was all about. We were just bumbling around trying to calm her but we were at a complete loss. I realised that especially for me, I was just completely stoned. There was nothing I could do except trail them around in the house from the room to the living room, to the toilet and then back again to the living room.

As my roommate has a family member who is not well back at home, she is all the more sensitive to all of this. While she never voiced it out in her pain, I could sense that the fear really ran much deeper.

What if something bad happened to her, too? Could this be hereditary and she got it earlier than she thought she would? She is in a foreign land in order to make more money to help her family with the financing for the treatment of her family member. What is going to happen if something happened to her? And I thought, she is all alone here, who should we contact if something goes wrong? What should we say?

Yet I could do nothing at all, nothing I could say would comfort her as it was legitimate fear and her condition was foreign to us all. How could we reassure her when even we don't know what this really is?

Very luckily in the end we found that it could have just been a very severe case of a stiff neck like condition. The body is just frozen in place and movement simply hurts very badly. I could only say "Thank God!" that nothing really is wrong and this could be just a result of the extreme work stress we are facing in the office.

But what if something did go wrong? What could I have done about it except to wallow in the deep sense of helplessness?

. ~ .

I have had enough fear and helplessness to last me for a long time if not a lifetime. I see the fear in those around me and I experience the same terror, albeit in a milder dose. I pray sincerely that all around me will feel better. I pray for a way where I could be more of use to my loved ones.

And I wish never to be plagued myself by the same fears and also the torment of the unknown...

I scribbled at ;; 9:13 PM

Sunday, November 23, 2008

As most of you would have guessed I don't create my own blog skin.

Have been "window shopping" for a replacement blog skin for the better half of the night but haven't found one that I liked so far.

Xiaoyu!!! Why have you not created anything new recently?! I love your work and I love Jimmy Liao's work!!!

Haven't found anything I like to replace this skin but it has been around for some time. Will have to find something somehow.

Time changes, and it's time for my blog to "change clothes".

Cannot rest till I find a suitable new dress for my blog. Will continue my skin hunt tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have better luck the next day.

Have got much more to say but really am low on energy. Have to say goodnight now.. Tata..... See you'll very soon....... (hopefully..)

I scribbled at ;; 11:50 PM

Cough cough... Wah, this place is so extremely dusty with all the cobwebs, how long have I not been back here leh?

In the spirit of spring cleaning, (can't wait for CNY to arrive and for the dreary hols to end) am back in business.

Hopefully this time I can sustain my enthusiasm for longer and write more entries? Hahaha...

In truth I'm back here cos of a special request. Ok, not so much of a special request but I'm back due to the comment of a really special friend. My dear friend PX mentioned that she does experience a bit of disappointment whenever she comes to this site and sees that there's absolutely no update at all.

I'm so touched that after this long there are still friends out there who support my blog!!! *weeps tears of eternal gratitude* At the same time really super guilty. Not only do I not keep in contact with most of my friends and peers due to my abnormal and sicko love relationship with my job, I even deprive them of the chance ot get updated on my life cos I leave this place in ruins!!! I'm an evil friend!! I ought to be shot!!!

Ok, enough of my dramatic antics, haha... The point is, I realise I haven't been updating anyone about my life, at all.

I won't blame any friend who doesn't count me as a friend anymore. Afterall all relationships require some form of maintenance. And I, the most lazy and heck care friend in the universe, always never bother to update my friends or keep in touch.

I would like to sincerely thank all my friends who actually keep me in the loop and keep me involved in their lives. If not for them all, I would be a miserable working class old maid who has nothing but her job to fuel her life and when her job begins to mean less to her, she would be left with nothing at all...

Damn, again I have slipped into my drama mode. Have I watched too much drama recently?? Or maybe I've watched too little so am suffering from a sudden outpour of dramatics? Gee...

Whatever's the case, for the time being Mingmei is back in business on her blog.

For those who are reading this, thanks for visiting this site and remembering Mingmei from time to time.

I scribbled at ;; 10:45 PM