Dining @ La Forketta (Dempsey)

Deardear brought me to an Italian restaurant named La Forketta to eat on last Monday since I was off coz I claimed my Hari Raya off-in-lieu. It's another upmarket restaurant located at Dempsey Hill. It has a nice ambience as we sat outside at the veranda area... kinda feel like I was in some european country.

However, the food was just so-so... not considered fantastic. Every table was served with the bread basket as a starter which looks like this...


Each basket costs $4.90 in case you think it's complimentary... but if you don't want it, just like the staff know.

Then we also ordered other starters which includes a parma ham salad and a bowl of prawn bisque.


The waiter served us with the wrong salad at first, and only realized it after we have scooped up some of it onto our own plates. Luckily we have not eaten it coz we were busy taking pictures of the food. Hahaa. We were told that they have served us with the tuna salad by mistake, so they took it back and served us with the correct one. Here's how the tuna salad looks like... by the way, this is just a portion of it that was scooped onto my own plate.


Then comes the main dishes... Deardear ordered the seafood linguine and I ordered the slipper lobster spagetti. The seafood linguine's presentation definitely looks more appetizing than the slipper lobster spagetti! As for their taste, I personally prefer the seafood linguine as there's a variety of seafood to eat while mine was quite boring...


Anyway, the total cost of this meal added up to about hundred plus... I don't know the exact amount coz Deardear paid for it. =P

After dinner, we then went to Orchard Rd for some shopping... As it was already quite late, most shops were closing, so we went to Borders instead just to past time. Deardear wanted to look for books on wine, so I just walked around alone. Had some fun searching for Wally in the 'Where's Wally?' book! Kekeke...

Just before we went home, we had ice cream at Gelatissimo outside Shaw House. =)

Facebook

I think Facebook is becoming the next 'in' thing now compared to Friendster! Friendster has somehow became boring bcoz it only allows users to add their friends and to send testimonials, or now known as comments.

Facebook is not just about adding friends and writing comments... In fact, it is now getting popular bcoz of the wide varieties of applications provided for users to add and modify their profile page and also to use these applications to interact with their friends online in the form of messaging, playing games, 'poking' one another, comparing and analysing each other's personalities, buying and sending one another virtual gifts.

Initially, I thought Facebook was just like another Friendster or Multiply website, so I was reluctant to sign up when I first received the invitations by my friends. Then again, I signed it up all of a sudden. Hahaa! I guessed I must be too bored or probably bcoz I heard that it is different from Friendster. Now I am like addicted to it, just like how I was so addicted to Friendster years ago!

Anyway, if you are my friend who owns a Facebook account, remember to add me in your friends list and send me many many gifts... Hahaaa!! =P For those who have not signed it up, what are you waiting for??? Oh no, I sound like I am working for Facebook... Maybe they should pay me some advertising fee!

Another Relaxing Weekend Past Comes Another Stressful Work Week

It's always at this timing of the weekend when I start to feel moody... It's going to be the start of another work week... I have been told by one of my team leaders that my speed of checking a stack of applications within every 2 hours is too slow... and my speed would affect the entire department's productivity as a whole. Hence, she is going to sit next to me to observe on how I do my work this week. Stress!!!

Eversince weeks ago when the management was still not focusing on our productivity, I knew that my slow productivity would eventually becomes an issue for me as I have been monitoring my own productivity myself. Since then, I kinda fear that this will be one of the factors which may affect my stay in this employment.

This coming Thursday (18th Oct) will be the day for my confirmation after working for 3 months. I seriously doubt that they will confirm me due to my incapability in speeding up my working process. I do not know why others could do it so fast but I can't. I have been trying to find out why I am so slow... I have been asking around on how the rest are able to do it but the answers that I got in return = no answer. Everyone told me that speed comes with experiences. And experiences are accumulated over time... so if time is needed, how is it possible for me to do things at the same standard speed as the seniors!

On the contrary, there are other new colleagues who have also been on the job almost the same time as me but they are doing fine and do not have such productivity issues! Why am I the only one who can't cope??

I have been trying very hard to check through the applications and to do the income computations as fast as I can, but it still happens that I am always half the time slower than the rest! I am starting to doubt myself... Probably I am just not suitable for this job, probably I am just not a number person (coz I used to hate maths!)... Maybe I am being overdetailed in my checking process since my trainings were taught by 2 team leaders with different methods, so in the end I checked the most items. (For example, since trainer A told me to check item A, B, C but trainer B told me to check item X, Y, Z... so in the end my method would be to check item A, B, C, X, Y, Z!) Or maybe I am just slow in pressing the calculator... or maybe I get too much interruptions caused by other colleagues asking me questions or me asking my team leaders questions which in turn causes lost time, I really don't know!

There were even times when I tried to work as fast as I could, however the number of applications in a stack seems never ending... and I even felt dizziness while I was doing the calculations. I felt like I was floating and the surrounding was spinning! I think I was high on credit card applications!!

My team leader just did my KPI performance appraisal on last Friday. I wonder if it is going to affect my confirmation as well. The critcal moment is near... but I feel confused. I am afraid of not being confirmed by the company yet sometimes I hate this job so badly till I wish I can quit and look for some other jobs!

Or should I say I am just being practical coz I need the income and would want to find another job first before quitting... Hahaa. Furthermore, it will be better if I get confirmed then I quit, rather than to be rejected after probation which might not leave a good impression to other employers during future employment reference checks.

No PH Replacement For Me On Monday...

Selamat Hari Raya.... And happy anniversary to Deardear and me yesterday! Yesterday was a public holiday but bcoz it happened to be a Saturday which is a non-working day for those working on Monday to Friday, these people have their public holiday replaced on this coming Monday.

Very unfortunately, Saturday is considered as a working day in our company and although I also work on a 5 days work week from Monday to Friday, my public holiday is given to us as an off-in-lieu claimable before December this year. Thus I still have to go back to work tomorrow! Damn it!!! I hate work!! =(

Oh yah, I took a few pictures of my office after work last week. Here's some pictures of my workstation... many Hello Kitty stuffs!! Hehee!! And the white boards which were just put up 2 weeks ago to record on our daily productivity, efficiency, trainings and performances. The last one is a picture of the surrounding in my department...


Anyway, Dear and I went shopping yesterday as usual, just like almost every other Saturdays and then catched the movie 'Mr Woodcock' around 11plus at night together with the other 2 couples - Choco and Grace, Andrew and Audrey. The movie was funny yet not so funny... coz there were a few parts which were meant to be funny but I could only hear a few people's laughters. One thing for sure is that the last part was the funniest!!

By the time the movie ended, it was about 1.30am. Since it was already quite late, everyone decided to go home. When we walked to Choco's car parked at the open space carpark opposite Cineleisure, his car was showered with bird shits!!! Yucks!! It was so damn disgusting!! =b

Needed A Break!

I was late for work yesterday. Once again, I procrastinated to go to work and thus arrived 30 minutes late at work. In fact, I was having a slight headache and I should have seize the opportunity to take MC, however I didn't.

When I arrived at work, there was no applications for me to process on my table. And when I asked one of my team leaders for applications, she said that they have finished allocating all the applications and there wasn't enough left for me... so she told me to do the cleaning up of the old applications which needed follow-ups with customers.

That was what I did the whole morning till noon. Sometimes I wonder what are my job responsibilities. It seems like I am working there more like a temp staff doing all sort of extra jobs like filing, sorting and things like that rather than a permanent staff with specific tasks!!

Since there wasn't much work to do, I took half-day leave and met up with Deardear to go shopping!! At that moment when I stepped out of office, I felt freedom. And when I walked along Orchard Road, I feel that I am back in my own world - the world where I see young fashionable people and NOT mountain tortoises!!

Although I was having a slight headache, I told myself to cherish this half-day leave. The thought that others were working while I was shopping made me feel great! Hahaa!

Shopping with Deardear and buying things that I like made me even happier!! Thanks to Deardear for buying me the pants and stuff toys!! I also bought a black jockey cap from Adidas. I have been spending alot of money recently but I think I really needed this retail therapy! =P


We also watched 'Resident Evil: Extinction' last night... The movie was great!! The main character is so cooooool!! It's another must-watch movie, especially for those who has watched the previous parts before!

The movie also ended my half-day 'holiday' from work. While I was on my way home in the cab with Dear, my headache became worst. Maybe it's a sign due to my resistance of going back to work again on the next day.

This morning, I still woke up with headache. This is my chance for not going to work again!! And yes, I took my first MC today after so long.

P/S: Sorry to the gals - Fang, Eileen and Tammie for not going for the dinner at Hilton coz I was having quite a bad headache and felt kinda lethargic to go out so late. Hope you gals enjoyed yourselves just now!

Error, Errors and More Errors... Stop Blaming It On Us!

When was the last time I blogged?? I'm so lazy to blog these days... even had the intention to close this blog. But thinking twice, I cannot bear to close it after all the effort I have put in setting it up previously!

Anyway, my life is getting so routined week after week. Routine means boring to me... so there's nothing much to talk about except more complains about work. I think I am also suffering from my quarter-life crisis. I have no motivation to go to work everyday. I just feel like taking MC every morning. The moment I wake up on each and every single working day, I will just hope that I am not feeling well so that I don't have to go to work!

Well, I think my company simply treats us as robots. They expect both quality and quantity from us! To a certain extent, we can only choose to achieve either one of them... Bcoz when you want more quality in work, quantity reduces due to the time spent on improving the quality. But when you want more quantity, quality will definitely be affected and thus drops when we rush through our work to hit the amount of quantity expected of us.

Never did I expect an office operations job to be somewhat similar to the call centre whereby we need to hit the targeted number of calls taken per hour (quantity) and at the same time, providing excellent customer service qualities to the callers. For my job now, we are being measured on our errors versus our productivity... meaning we must try not to make any errors while processing customers' credit card applications and we are being tracked on the number of applications each person processed during every 2 hours interval. I all along thought that office jobs should be kinda relax, doing things at my own pace, own time own target, as long as I can meet the dateline. I really regret taking up this stupid job manz!!

What's more?? I even have to call up customers myself when this was not even stated as one of the job responsibilities in the JD previously. This is actually the call agent's job, but soon I will not just be working in operations but also taking on the roles of call agents! Feel so cheated for taking up this job! These few days, my colleagues and I were scheduled to attend customer service trainings by pairing with a buddy from the call agents department! Guess what?? They don't even have voice logging machines! They expect us to use manual tape recorders to record down the phone conversations with customers. That's not all! The buddy system was so redundant bcoz... I cannot hear what the customers are saying but only can sit beside the buddy to listen to how he speaks to the customers! That's so dumb!!!

Worst still, he treats me like I know nuts about customer service. Come on lor, don't try to smoke me hor!!! I worked in another bank's call centre before!! I can only say this guy is super tua kang!

That's not all... Everyday, we are just being pin-pointed on our errors and productivity! All they focus on are these 2 factors! When we cannot finish our work in every 2 hours, we will be asked on reasons for why we are not able to finish... Despite we cannot finish, they will still allocate somemore work for us and expect us to finish everything by end of the day. Sometimes if we cannot finish by 6.15pm, we have to stay back late to do OT even if we have an appointment with friends after work. This is so stressful and unmotivating everytime my work becomes overloaded on a particular day, especially Mondays bcoz it's the day I will meet Deardear after work!

However, when there's a slight improvement, there's not a single word of encouragement or action of appreciation from our bosses to boost our morale and motivation... Instead they will just go on and focus on the bad part like for example, they will sent out emails stating something like this - "Although there are fewer errors made in this month compared to the previous month, the number of errors are still very high. Please try to be more careful in checking, especially when the volume is considered low during this period."

If you receive such emails daily, don't you feel irritated and unmotivated to go to work? They always make it sound like we are the ones to be blamed for making errors! But in actual fact, they should blame it on their poor training systems! Moreover, we are not robots... We are just human beings!! No one human being is perfect ok!!!