I wouldn’t say I’m really that much of an expert in IT project management. But I’m not fresh out of school. I’ve been working for enough number of years to have seen many things. So it is really annoying when a bunch of non-IT people want to interfere with my project planning, because they think that I’m doing it wrong, and they think they know better how to run IT projects on the basis that they know how to run non-IT projects.
Sometimes, I think about how silos are formed in organizations. You know, the sort of situation where fellow colleagues are divided into organization groups that are oblivious to the existence of the others. Or, they compete with great hostility. They might as well have belonged to some other company altogether. It’s related to politicking, but it isn’t quite the same thing.
Today, and this time of day particularly, is one of those special moments in time where the day, month, year, hour and minute are all the same. It seems like a good time to post some rant at this auspicious minute. Yeah, I missed 08/08/08 08:08, but I’m sure this will do just as well. It will be a busy day (like any other day of course), but I’m sure I can find a few minutes to gripe about something.
Yes, President S R Nathan came by today, not to visit me, but just to visit my workplace. I’m not important enough, so I had to sneak a photo shot from far back, behind a glass wall. Hence the strange reflections you see in this photo.
Yeah, the cat has finally been let out of the bag. Actually, it became officially announced many days ago, but most people seldom read official news. I would have missed it myself too. So it took an email announcement for the news to really get out, and I became deluged (happily no doubt) with a big bunch of emails. Thank you everyone, I am indeed honoured. Heh, if this sounds cryptic, then let it be so.
Every now and then, someone asks me “Are you a student?” It has become a sort of introductory line at seminars and conferences for sales and PR people to start a conversation with me. They look at me, then look at my name tag, see that I come from a university, and then think that I’m probably a student.
It’s funny how when we are small kids, we don’t need to be taught to get together to have fun. Yet when we grow up, oraganizations spend large sums of money to teach adults how to work together. Team building is becoming an important thing for many companies. Today I was called back to a RSAF team building event; Last Friday, my work place organized a team building retreat at Orchid Country Club.
How often have you come across mindless instructions? This one is not as funny, but still, do you need instructions on how to exit a door? These instructions are pasted everywhere at my work place, probably because we have too many PHDs (permanent head damage) around who don’t know what to do with a door.
Ah, but therein lies the challenge with this particular door. The instructions refer to an exit button, but there are no exit buttons. In case of emergency, the instructions refer to a break-glass. But there is no break-glass either. In fact, what you have is a numeric keypad. I’m sure PHDs will have no trouble figuring this out, so no instructions needed. Exit buttons are just too complicated.
I hate writing minutes. I wonder why hasn’t anyone yet invented an automatic minute taker. It doesn’t help when people in the meeting talk nonsense 90% of the time, jump back and forth between multiple topics, and some people speak for the sake of being heard.
Sometimes it takes hours to write the minutes. They should have called it Hours. And, how often do minutes actually get read?
I think we had 11 oysters each, from The Line restaurant at Shangri-la Hotel. It's a big buffet with plenty of food.
Lunch at Lerk Thai some weekends ago.
