I always ask this question to myself and people close to me. I feel that this is one of the most important questions one should always ask.

• Why are you here in this company?
• Why are you here in this job?
• Why are you here in this shopping complex?
• Why are you here in this gym?
• Why are you here in this world?

All these questions only have 1 similar purpose – to make your presence in whatever place to be more worthwhile. Ask yourselves why are you here in this company? What is it that you want to do? And what is it that makes you join this company? Are you here because you want to contribute? Or are you here because there’s something this company has that attracted you?

Or if you’re asking why are you here in this world, then things like your purpose of being here, or what makes you feel your stay can be more meaningful, or perhaps what are the things that you think will allow you to answer the first question?

And this does not apply only on personal level. A team manager should always know the purpose of his/her subordinates of joining the company. Is it because of the job scope? Or perhaps the money? Or the benefits? Know the reasons well and try to make them happy by managing those reasons.

However, I realized that most people, including the managers, bosses, etc, do not care about this question at all. People will just be here for the sake of being here. They never think about the reason of being here. If you ask them, they wouldn’t be able to tell you.

Hmm, sounds a little bit like sleep walking, no? You go to a place without realizing why you are there!

Come on people, I’m sure you can do better. It’s fine to go to a place without any reason from time to time but it’s not really a good habit and you will not appreciate the time spent. Wanna go to a vacation? Then state your reasons of going there – spend more time with your parents, take a break, etc.

Ask more such questions and I believe once you found out about your reasons of being here, you will appreciate the moment more.

Hope it helps.

Some of my friends are getting tired with their jobs – irresponsible colleagues, chinaman bosses, unreasonable supervisors, long working hours (no rest at all), the management people getting weird……and the list goes on and on. I can only say that during times like this, the list of weird things will become even longer than before.

Better to check what's on the other side first, Mr Fishy

And all the signs are pointing to one thing  – get the hell out of there and find yourselves a better job!

But how true is that? How much “better” do you want your new job to be?

The thing is, when changing job, there’s always the risk of leaving a not-so-good company for a super-duper-bad company. Or in other words, jumping into a deeper shit.

But how can you do that? Here are few things you need to pay attention to.

• Research the company. Check the company web site, information, history and also Google around for any information related to the company. It’s not difficult to actually know more about the company by using Google.
• The outlook of the company web site. This is quite important. If a company does not pay close attention something as simple as web site, which is the first thing clients see (and clients here mean $$$), what makes you think they care about something more complicated like their own employees?
• Try to search Facebook and LinkedIn for contacts within the company. Most likely you will have some friends who have worked in that company before…or their friends. Try to dig some information about the company and its working culture.
• Study the office and its atmosphere. If you are not comfortable with the office and the environment, or some of the employees there look pretty much like zombies, then maybe it’s better for you not to put too much hope in that company.
• Be yourselves during the job interviews. If the interviewer is trying to find faults with you, or is not being polite and friendly, then most likely he will be the same after you’ve joined. If you think you can work with such person, fine. Otherwise, it’s better not to torture yourselves by joining them.

So make sure you do all these homework before you actually make the decision whether to join a company or not. And if you’ve done all those stuff listed above, and you personally feel it’s safe to join the company, then by all means go ahead. The last remaining element is your luck, which is completely out of your control.

But if you’re afraid that you have pretty bad luck and thus might end up jumping into a deeper shit…then take some time to think of what you really want. Grass is not always greener on the other side but if you don’t have the courage to go to the other side……..how would you know?

Most of us (maybe 95%) are indebted to our parents who have sacrificed a lot for us. But it’s funny that there are a majority of us who either don’t care about our parents, or we don’t dare to show that we actually do care. And there’s also this minority group of people who like to take their parents for granted.

Family and parents are 2 of the greatest gifts ever

The reason behind this? It’s either they’re selfish or they are afraid to show their true feelings.

I used to be like that (afraid to show my love and gratitude) when I was younger. A lot of people like to call me “mummy’s boy” because I stick around with my parents a lot and they tend to be quite protective. But after being called “mummy’s boy” for so many times….and sometimes even laughed or looked down by other people, I got so sick of it that I started to distance myself from my parents. That behavior hurt them a lot but they understood what I was going through and they didn’t dare to comment much or to restrict my so-called “freedom”.

Few months later, I realized my mistake. I’m glad that it just took me few months to notice, and not years like many other people did.

Currently, I stay with my parents. I told them to sell their house in Johor and move up to stay with me permanently in PJ. I love their company and I enjoy the time spent with them. I don’t deny that there are still some people who gave me a weird look (especially the girls) when they know I’m staying with my parents or when my parents called me during my lunch break.

If they ever ask, I’ll just tell them truthfully that the caller is my dad or my mum because I’m proud of it and I’m grateful for all the things my parents have done for me. If you’re not happy, jealous or envious, then feel free to do so. I do not need to ask you whether I can show my gratitude to my parents or not.

And for those who feel ashamed or hesitant to be close to their parents, or afraid to show gratitude to them….it’s time to change your mindset. Sad to say, but time is running out for everyone including your parents. If you don’t love and thank them now, when do you want to do it? 10 years? 20 years or 30 years later? Are you sure it won’t be too late by then?

During my first job in a local IT company, I used to play a lot of Warcraft and Starcraft games in the office with my colleagues. We would go to office every Saturday, work for half day and play for half day. It’s a very fun and enjoyable working culture – you work hard, you play hard.

And this kind of culture is not new in most companies since there are a lot of people (mostly the guys) who will use their company resources to play games together.

Seriously, I wouldn't mind if we have an employee like this playing game in the office

The issue here is, this is illegal. One should never use company resources to play games since it is not part of your job description. Company resources should only be used for work-related purposes and by using the computers to play network game (and to install illegal software into the computers), it can be considered as serious misconduct depending on how strict your IT support and HR people are.

To make things worse, there are people who actually play such games DURING the office hour.

Maybe this kind of behavior is OKAY few years ago but certainly not OKAY now. Remember that we’re in a recession now where many people are still jobless and more companies are trying to terminate people.

My advice to everyone – don’t give your bosses reason to terminate you. Misconduct is a serious offence and they don’t really need to compensate you for terminating you.

If you want to play games with your colleagues, spend a few bucks, go to the cybercafes.

After all….it’ll be very sad and pathetic if one is being terminated by the company …for playing computer games.

P/S … i might not be able to reply comments as often as before since i’m in the middle of a WAR. =_= din sleep for few days already…project going live.

Recently, my parents sold our old house in Johor since they hardly stay there anymore. They spend most of their time with my sister and I in our PJ condo. Furthermore, maintaining a 20-30 years old house is not cheap at all especially if there’s nobody taking care of it. Thus, we’ve decided to sell it off even though it’s quite a difficult decision to make.

While moving and packing our things, my sister and I talked about the past….the incidents experienced by us in that house. After all, we’ve been staying there for over 20 years. Surely, there are some feelings left for the house. The quarrels, the pets, the playing sessions (yea, i used to play masak-masak aka cooking game with my sister. I know it’s sissy but well, she has nobody else to play with), etc. We miss all of them. And at one point during those conversations, my sister cried because she was sad that we have to sell the house …and we might not be able to go back ever again.

I’m sad too (i’m not heartless). But I told my sister that we HAVE to sell the house. Due to our hectic work schedule, it’s pretty hard for us to go back to Johor so often and thus, our parents have to help us to go back and clean up the house (and sometimes fixing it since old house tends to be quite problematic). And they’re no longer as young and energetic as they were many years ago. Furthermore, it’s very expensive to maintain that old house and we wouldn’t want to burden our parents in terms of financial too.

Thus, it is necessary for us to sell the house off no matter how much we hate to sell it.

It’s for the sake of our parents – which is good enough a reason to sell the house.

Those reasons actually helped to prevent my sister from crying again (she’s very emotional and sentimental).

That is my story. I’m sure most of you have encountered something similar before – something which causes an extreme emotion. Maybe it’s due to your loved one leaving you for work purposes, or your kids going to another country to further their studies, etc. Whatever it is, I feel that it can be overcome if we managed to find strong reasons to convince ourselves that “it is going to be fine”.

This does apply to other things as well such as when you want to buy that ultra expensive bag. All you need to do is to try and find some good reasons NOT to buy. Just like when we’re selling the house. It’s easy to find reasons not to sell the house but for our case, we want to find reasons why we should sell the house so that we will not feel that sad. Remember that finding a positive reason is always more encouraging than finding a negative one which can be quite damaging.

So the next time you face such a situation, maybe you can spend some time to find some good reasons to overcome such an extreme emotion. Hope it helps.