I almost cried today . . .

when I had to say good-bye (even though it was just a soft good-bye) to my colleagues.

It was much harder than I expected, and it definitely took much longer than I expected. (Seriously, for those who may be thinking about leaving a job, you should count on having at least 2 years for every year that you have worked to have enough time to actually get around to say good bye to everyone . . . so, I should have at least about 3 days or so. AT LEAST.)

After all, it had been 1.5 years. Of course, it’s not like it was a complete perfect and completely peaceful 1.5 years, but you know, in the end, there were more good memories than bad ones over the 18 months, and I’ve learned much more than I expected, in areas completely outside my expectations!

Above all, I had gotten to know so many great people. They’re truly the first group that I would call my “work family” and I’ll always remember all the great time I’ve had with them, and all the things I had learned from them all.

You know who you are . . the biggest thank you and you’ll always be in my heart . . . always.

I just came back from a company outing yesterday. Spending 3 days away from the hectic Bangkok was quite a surreal experience, especially since we got to spend half a day doing CSR activities (painting school building) at a local school in Ratchaburi by the Thai-Burma border where the average family income is just 100B a day.

It’s this kind of things that makes me reflect upon a lot of things in life. A hundred baht (roughtly 3$ a day) can mean so much out there, while it’s barely just one cup of starbucks here at the office. (well, approximately 1.5 cups of my usual Solo Espresso shot.)

Yah, just that much. My luxurious wake-me-up each morning is enough to feed half a family for a day. My usual outings with friends probably can feed a family for a whole week.

 It’s not like this is something I have never known before. The disparity between Bangkok and the rest of Thailand is probably almost a common knowledge. But to be honest, this is something I truly appreciate in this job that I’m doing — the opportunity to not just sit in the office and enjoy my “little bubble”. Through work, I had been to 3 CSR activities in 3 different schools under 2 different context. On top of that, I get to spend almost 2 months outside of Bangkok, doing the actual “sales” job, getting to see what a tiny provincial store in Chiangrai or a local supermarket in Mukdaharn is like.

But then, of course, that whole little experience at the school was quite a contrast to the resort that we chose to stay at. It is quite a nice place to stay at though, and I intend to write more about it one of these days.

I had the hell of a time trying to get to work this morning. While the traffic going INTO the office complex wasn’t any worse than any other Tuesday, but hell started once I approached the company parking floor.

Okay, so it’s actually NOT that unusual for the parking to be completely full. But usually, that does not happen before 9:15 and usually NOT on a Tuesday this week.

The most surprising bit was that when I tried to get from one building to another (in hope to find a parking spot) in the very same office complex, it took me longer than it did to drive from home to the  office itself!

The reason for this morning madness? I found that out when I was walking pass the biggest auditorium on-site. Perhaps THOUSANDS of people were lining up for a free “Bab Bird Bird” concert ticket that the bank (whose HQ was where our office is located) is giving away for free for people who have a certain balance on the bank’s credit card.

The free giveaway was supposed to start at 9am, but apparently, I was told people started lining up at TWO am!

Okay… maybe it’s not comparable to the iPhone queues or anything, but I guess that does go to show how much star power that Bird still has after all these years…

PS. I ended up getting to my desk at around 9:50 am… but only one other person in my department was there before me. *phew*

There’s some new development in my work life today. (No, I have not quit nor have I been fired from the company yet! (Yet!!!)) but there are definitely going to be some changes for my work life during the next 2.5 months. Quite different from what I had thought it’d be.

So, there’ll definitely be more “work” (งาน — ngarn) for me to do, while not so much more of the money (เงิน — ngern) part. Funny how these two words sound so similar in Thai, while one doesn’t necessarily imply the other (although (in my short working experience so far) more money usually does imply more work!!!)

In any case, while I don’t want to get into the details of my work life on this blog, for those of you in Bangkok (or Korat, for that matters), if you’d actually like to help me make the next few months of my work life a tiny bit easier… feel free to ask me on im or anything!!!!

I had pretty much been absent from the online world for the past few days. No, I had not been enjoying the long weekend away anywhere last weekend (5-7 April) nor am I planning to go away anywhere during the long weekend this weekend (12-15 April). Since I got back from my little adventures at the book fair on Saturday, I had pretty much fallen ill, and besides having to be on bed for almost all of Monday that I had off, I also had to take another day off on Tuesday and spend it completely in bed as well. So there, that was my first fever of the year 2008. And HOPEFULLY, that would be the last as well!

I did manage to finish a few books so far this month. One of which is The Godfather, which may be the reasons why I was also feeling nauseated on top of the fever I had. (Gosh! some of the details… add that to my livid imaginations, and I could imagine some blood splattered across the pages!) So, after finishing that book, I had to quickly find something light to read.

But yah, so I added 4 more books to books list.

So, I was just issued a brand new Dell Latitude D630 today as a work laptop. Well, this does come at a good timing, as my own person Lenoivo had just broken down a few months ago.

To be *completely* honest though… I’m not sure if I should be happy or sad… On one hand, it *is* really better than the old work desktop. (At least now I can manipulate a half-a-gig excel file and save it to disk w/o having to completely freeze my excel every time, rendering the file almost completely useless!)

On the other hand, however, Dell is definitely not the smallest/lightest laptop out there. The one I have weighs 5.4 lbs (2.5 kgs!) and with its standard-issued laptop bag, it’s a whopping 10 lbs (4.5 kgs!) And THAT doesn’t include all the print-out documents that I’ll have to carry with me when I start to take my work home. Seems like unless I get a good set of wheels for this laptop, I’ll get to do weight lifting on a daily basis.

Which brings me to another negative (maybe the most negative) point about having a laptop. Now that I have a laptop, then I can take my work back to do at home. Now that I *can* take my work back to do at home, then I’m going to be *expected* to do work at home.

*sigh*

While that may not be right in terms of work-life-balance… it does seem to be the culture here and I don’t think I’d be able to break out of it, at least not while I still want to progress up in here.

Anyway, when I went to pick up this Dell (darn… I’ll have to come up with a better name for this baby!!! Nothing obvious comes to mind, unlike the case for my Lenoivo and my Noikia…) at the IT department, I made the mistake of *casually* mentioning to my friend who was also there that the laptop comes at a very good timing… right after I had just broken my own laptop! The staffs there gave me a stern look, and told me that’s not exactly the kind of thing they wanted to be hearing about… ^^% Well, I do hope that they won’t have to hear about me breaking this one or anything anytime soon!

SO yah, what *should* I be naming this baby? I’m still open for suggestions!