Friday, March 24, 2006
Ok so I'm duty BOS and I'm rather determined not waste this entire duty day on Drew Carey, goodness gracious me and Seinfeld.
LRI has come and gone, much as I'd like to say we got a fantastic grade and everyone went back smiling, patting each other on the back, having most of the specs go into the mess and getting stone drunk. We didn't, well they did the stone drunk bit, but mostly because we didn't do that well. I myself feel bad, after all the effort we put into it, i really don't think the grade we got doesn't justified the work that we put in. Of course there were many factors that came into play. For instance the new format in which we were tested which we didn't know about at all, until the day the testing team arrived, the new bunch of standards which we didn't know about until the testing team arrived (news kinda takes awhile to get to us over here). Needless to say we were quite taken by surprise. But all that is done with now.
Now that the LRI is over, everyone in the workshop is more or less taken it easier. As for me, now that they don't really need that much manpower in the workshop, so they've put me inside the office. Now the good thing is I get to do paper work as well as work on the ground.
Also for those of you who remember a few posts ago, I mentioned that I hated the fact that I can be a bit manipulative, okay very manipulative at times. Well I've come to see that the Lord can turn around negative personal traits that for the greater good. You'd be surprised at the amount of manipulation that's required in my new post, lots of planning ahead, loads of fiddling with time, personnel and etc to fit a schedule. I like such a positive output in my job, so much so that I even work on OFF days at times just cause it's nice to work at.
But no job is perfect.
The bad bit being that as of the new batch of people entering my workplace there are 2 more warrants, which makes it a total of 4 Warrants sitting in the immediate vicinity of my table.
What this basically translates to is alot of requests from them for things they can jolly well do themselves. I will try and describe them as well as give my opinions as to what sort of persons I think they are based on my experience with them and pray that they never find this blog. Here they are in order of acquaintance (of course with their identities changed and encoded with my very own self developed unbreakable code system : THE ALPHABET).
Warrant A, no doubt one of the most patient people I know, almost infinitely patient with the people under him, especially if they've pooped up. Polite enough to say thank you, but strict enough to do what needs to be done in terms of discipline. Though for some reason he still can't recognise my voice whenever I answer the phone.
Warrant B, hmm so much can be said about him. When he first arrived he tended to touch the guys here, alot. In fact it scared them quite abit. Though it did die down after a while, so the general concensus is that, that's the way he bonds with people or so we hope. He's a rather loud person and often in my opinion using that to bully people into submitting to him though over time that can lead to explosive confrontations. Often he launches into lecturing a person before understanding the situation. Let's have a personal example:
It was the second day at my new post and there was a request from HQ for a detail to the post office. Of course me being new and there being no one around, the most logical thing would have been to call the MT spec and ask him to either arrange or at the very least tell me how to. The genius of an MT spec upon hearing my request quick as lightning passed me on to Warrant B where I got an ear full of how inconsiderate I am for calling him, how I supposedly think he's goofing off, how I supposedly in some unimaginable way was asking him to come back and arrange the detail, that and a whole lot of other stuff that just didn't make sense and just got me peeved.
Of course one of the good things about Warrant B is that he's the first Warrant to apologise to me. I suppose he just suffers from a case of " talk before you think ". There are other incidents that he's gotten into, such as not returning the office key and getting me into trouble ( he apologised after that) and playing Bejeweled alot during office hours but this isn't a trashy gossip blog or at least not for this post so I'll leave it at this.
There's Warrant C, who is of course my direct superior who thus far is pretty alright (he once offered me a cookie. Sad isn't it? That I consider people who give me cookies as pretty alright). He does seem to be desperately trying to learn the ropes of his new job as fast as he can. He isn't around much in the office so there isn't much for me to say about him.
Finally there's Warrant D, I'm quite sure I get what he's about, but it seems that ever since he's gotten here there have been rather drastic changes in the inspection and work schedule in the workshop. Which just leads to a big headache for me, considering I handle most of the vehicle's paperwork, etc. I don't understand this, why new management or rather management in general is so addicted to change, almost as for the sake of having change. As if equating change to progress. Which it obviously isn't, more often than not the changes that the superiors implement are simply a step back. Perhaps they feel that if they don't change something they're not doing their job? Or maybe it could be they feel it undermines their authority if they let any piece of work pass their hands without finding fault or (failing to find any fault) tweak at it. I speak in terms of the general of course. But I digress.
Anyhow he too seems to suffer from " talk before you think" syndrome. For instance often when I consult him as to (for example) if the paperwork for such and such a bunch of vehicles can be put on hold and before I can even finish the sentence he shoots off a " NO!". Of course I've found a way around this, namely by ignoring his no and moving on to the reasons why the work has to be put on hold, usually the answer after that is a yes. It would also appear that warrant D has chronic infancy syndrome. For instance, I can be busy flying around the office desperately trying finish up new unexpected work and he can come in stretch out on his chair and ask me to help him call someone up on the phone for him when he's not 3 meters away from the phone. Which is not unlike MTO who this afternoon popped into the ops room and had the audacity to come in sit down and wait a good 10 to 15 mins for me to finish and then ask me to make a less than 1 minute call that is his job to make. What on earth do they teach officers, they'd better have alot more qualification to handle their position apart from nine months of idealistic training. Not that all of them are bad, just that the methods for selection had better be improved upon. Perhaps genetic testing.
But really I should be more understanding, I should try empathize more with him. Maybe he's concerned about the amount of telephone related deaths that take place around the world every year, better me than him right? No doubt he didn't want to risk getting electrocuted, because death by telephone electrocution is not only painful but an embarrassing way to go and he didn't want to be part of that statistic. Though I tell you, at the moment he was in danger of becoming part of another telephone related death statistic; clubbed to death by telephone receiver.
Anyhow the first few days at my new post have been made all the tougher by the absence of the MTL clerk who's gone on home leave leaving me to grapple with the administrative work of the MTL in addition to learning my new job and on top of that thanks to the genius of the MTO he's sent me to do teaching, quite against my better judgement. But as with most things he wants to get done, it doesn't matter what i think so long as the job's off his to do list.
Hmm looks like this is becoming more of a rant than anything else. Oh well it's good to that after this I went to Taipei for a 4 day holiday AND I took about 8 gigs worth of video which i'll be sending home shortly once i manage to find my dad a suitable birthday present.
Alright that's about it.
Jon.P
LRI has come and gone, much as I'd like to say we got a fantastic grade and everyone went back smiling, patting each other on the back, having most of the specs go into the mess and getting stone drunk. We didn't, well they did the stone drunk bit, but mostly because we didn't do that well. I myself feel bad, after all the effort we put into it, i really don't think the grade we got doesn't justified the work that we put in. Of course there were many factors that came into play. For instance the new format in which we were tested which we didn't know about at all, until the day the testing team arrived, the new bunch of standards which we didn't know about until the testing team arrived (news kinda takes awhile to get to us over here). Needless to say we were quite taken by surprise. But all that is done with now.
Now that the LRI is over, everyone in the workshop is more or less taken it easier. As for me, now that they don't really need that much manpower in the workshop, so they've put me inside the office. Now the good thing is I get to do paper work as well as work on the ground.
Also for those of you who remember a few posts ago, I mentioned that I hated the fact that I can be a bit manipulative, okay very manipulative at times. Well I've come to see that the Lord can turn around negative personal traits that for the greater good. You'd be surprised at the amount of manipulation that's required in my new post, lots of planning ahead, loads of fiddling with time, personnel and etc to fit a schedule. I like such a positive output in my job, so much so that I even work on OFF days at times just cause it's nice to work at.
But no job is perfect.
The bad bit being that as of the new batch of people entering my workplace there are 2 more warrants, which makes it a total of 4 Warrants sitting in the immediate vicinity of my table.
What this basically translates to is alot of requests from them for things they can jolly well do themselves. I will try and describe them as well as give my opinions as to what sort of persons I think they are based on my experience with them and pray that they never find this blog. Here they are in order of acquaintance (of course with their identities changed and encoded with my very own self developed unbreakable code system : THE ALPHABET).
Warrant A, no doubt one of the most patient people I know, almost infinitely patient with the people under him, especially if they've pooped up. Polite enough to say thank you, but strict enough to do what needs to be done in terms of discipline. Though for some reason he still can't recognise my voice whenever I answer the phone.
Warrant B, hmm so much can be said about him. When he first arrived he tended to touch the guys here, alot. In fact it scared them quite abit. Though it did die down after a while, so the general concensus is that, that's the way he bonds with people or so we hope. He's a rather loud person and often in my opinion using that to bully people into submitting to him though over time that can lead to explosive confrontations. Often he launches into lecturing a person before understanding the situation. Let's have a personal example:
It was the second day at my new post and there was a request from HQ for a detail to the post office. Of course me being new and there being no one around, the most logical thing would have been to call the MT spec and ask him to either arrange or at the very least tell me how to. The genius of an MT spec upon hearing my request quick as lightning passed me on to Warrant B where I got an ear full of how inconsiderate I am for calling him, how I supposedly think he's goofing off, how I supposedly in some unimaginable way was asking him to come back and arrange the detail, that and a whole lot of other stuff that just didn't make sense and just got me peeved.
Of course one of the good things about Warrant B is that he's the first Warrant to apologise to me. I suppose he just suffers from a case of " talk before you think ". There are other incidents that he's gotten into, such as not returning the office key and getting me into trouble ( he apologised after that) and playing Bejeweled alot during office hours but this isn't a trashy gossip blog or at least not for this post so I'll leave it at this.
There's Warrant C, who is of course my direct superior who thus far is pretty alright (he once offered me a cookie. Sad isn't it? That I consider people who give me cookies as pretty alright). He does seem to be desperately trying to learn the ropes of his new job as fast as he can. He isn't around much in the office so there isn't much for me to say about him.
Finally there's Warrant D, I'm quite sure I get what he's about, but it seems that ever since he's gotten here there have been rather drastic changes in the inspection and work schedule in the workshop. Which just leads to a big headache for me, considering I handle most of the vehicle's paperwork, etc. I don't understand this, why new management or rather management in general is so addicted to change, almost as for the sake of having change. As if equating change to progress. Which it obviously isn't, more often than not the changes that the superiors implement are simply a step back. Perhaps they feel that if they don't change something they're not doing their job? Or maybe it could be they feel it undermines their authority if they let any piece of work pass their hands without finding fault or (failing to find any fault) tweak at it. I speak in terms of the general of course. But I digress.
Anyhow he too seems to suffer from " talk before you think" syndrome. For instance often when I consult him as to (for example) if the paperwork for such and such a bunch of vehicles can be put on hold and before I can even finish the sentence he shoots off a " NO!". Of course I've found a way around this, namely by ignoring his no and moving on to the reasons why the work has to be put on hold, usually the answer after that is a yes. It would also appear that warrant D has chronic infancy syndrome. For instance, I can be busy flying around the office desperately trying finish up new unexpected work and he can come in stretch out on his chair and ask me to help him call someone up on the phone for him when he's not 3 meters away from the phone. Which is not unlike MTO who this afternoon popped into the ops room and had the audacity to come in sit down and wait a good 10 to 15 mins for me to finish and then ask me to make a less than 1 minute call that is his job to make. What on earth do they teach officers, they'd better have alot more qualification to handle their position apart from nine months of idealistic training. Not that all of them are bad, just that the methods for selection had better be improved upon. Perhaps genetic testing.
But really I should be more understanding, I should try empathize more with him. Maybe he's concerned about the amount of telephone related deaths that take place around the world every year, better me than him right? No doubt he didn't want to risk getting electrocuted, because death by telephone electrocution is not only painful but an embarrassing way to go and he didn't want to be part of that statistic. Though I tell you, at the moment he was in danger of becoming part of another telephone related death statistic; clubbed to death by telephone receiver.
Anyhow the first few days at my new post have been made all the tougher by the absence of the MTL clerk who's gone on home leave leaving me to grapple with the administrative work of the MTL in addition to learning my new job and on top of that thanks to the genius of the MTO he's sent me to do teaching, quite against my better judgement. But as with most things he wants to get done, it doesn't matter what i think so long as the job's off his to do list.
Hmm looks like this is becoming more of a rant than anything else. Oh well it's good to that after this I went to Taipei for a 4 day holiday AND I took about 8 gigs worth of video which i'll be sending home shortly once i manage to find my dad a suitable birthday present.
Alright that's about it.
Jon.P
