Baby Xin - 5 months' old

Baby Xin now gets some tummy time, and can lift her head when placed on her tummy. She can also turn herself around when placed on her back. She is generally a happy baby who can play on her own for some of the time. Everytime I look at her, I just wish that time stands still for a while, so that she stays the baby she is a little longer.

Father's Day

This morning I went to the temple to conduct a Sunday class for little kids. It was a mad rush for me as I have not done enough preparation for the class, I blame my busy schedule at work and home. Anyway, at the last minute I grabbed some old cardboards, some Ikea colour pens and a pair of scissors and thought about a good art project that the kids could do since it was Father's Day.
And here are the results.
These 2 are made by Wei and Yuan since they joined the pre-schoolers' class - their own class was cancelled and they didn't know. Besides that, another teacher also taught them how to make potato salad for their dad. So on this Father's Day, J got some homemade presents.

Rejuvenation

These past few weeks I have been caught in a whirlwind of marketing plans preparation for next year, including the very critical numbers game. This is when the CFO challenges our assumptions for sales and growth, fieldforce and marketing expenses. Usually we would project a growth that is in line with the market trend and expenses would increase less than the sales growth.
I guess I must count myself lucky. The CFO has a lot of faith in my brands. Although my brands command brand equity, they are very old and have a lot of competitors. Yet the top guns challenged me to grow 4 times above market rate by pumping in more resources for next year.
Sometimes I think, even the big player-competitors which are pumping in money now has very little growth, yet I am expected to deliver a huge growth because it is believed that my brands have been neglected when the sales were outsourced to another company.
I need to rejuvenate my brands. Not only that, I need to rejuvenate my own mindset. Only with that then I am able to rejuvenate the imagination of my team. Otherwise everyone would think the same way as I am thinking now, that it is almost impossible.
I will be positive. I will think "can do", and try my best. My CEO says there is a difference between a stupid target and a stretch target. I just need to know which is which ;-)

Photo courtesy of Stuart Seeger, http://www.flickr.com/people/stuseeger/

Ms. Octopus & her Juggling Act

I want to pen down this incident so that when I am retired one day, I can read about this and laugh. Last Monday morning, 31 May, I was alone in the house with 3 kids. J went back to his hometown with both his parents as they had to attend a funeral. The natural thing for me to do was to take leave and stay home. Unfortunately I had an important meeting at 11am, and even after testing water with my boss, I had a feeling that taking leave was not an option.
So I took the 2 kids to their "Aunty Van" driver who took them to school, with baby in tow in the morning, arranged for the teacher at the daycare to take them in after school, and I would pick them up when I got home from work. As for the baby, I'd arranged with my mom that I would take the baby to her for the day. I fed Baby Xin, changed her and got ready for work. I put all the baby stuff (bottles, milk powder, diapers, clothes, the works) in a bag hanging by the pram, put the baby in the pram, and on me I had my handbag, laptop bag, another bag for my documents, and my breastpump & bottle. When I thought I was finally ready, I took the lift down, pushed the pram to my car, strapped the baby in her carseat, threw the pram in the boot, strapped myself in the car and voila! I was ready to go.
Just as I was driving out of the guard house, I suddenly remembered something was missing. The kids' towels, change of clothes and snacks. These were requested by the daycare teacher earlier when I asked her to care for the kids. Thinking that I did not want to be carrying an extra set of things on Monday, I had specifically asked J to help send those to the teacher last Saturday, and of course, he had forgotten. And sure enough, on Monday morning I forgot these things as well, even though I had seen the bag of stuff lying around.
Only that I remembered just in time. I turned back, parked the car, and for one crazy moment I wanted to leave Baby Xin strapped in her carseat while I run upstairs to grab the crucial bag. Sanity returned and I unstrapped her, grabbed my keys and up the lift I went. After getting the bag, while waiting for the lift, I had beads of sweat on my face, and I was hoping, "Please, let the lift with working ventilation come." - because the other lift's ventilation was not working. And up came the lift without ventilation. Sigh.....
After that, I was really off to go to my mom's.
I arrived work at 10am.
And then, I was told, one of the crucial attendees of that all-important 11am meeting, was on emergency leave. Meeting was called off.
Now I remember why I want to retire young....

One good vote, one bad vote

Due to tight deadlines, I am finding it a challenge to blog this past week. So here is a quick update on work.
This week, 2 senior vacant positions came about in my company. Immediately I thought of my friend who had been jobless for almost 9 months since her company closed down. She had expressed that she would like to go back to work.
So imagine my surprise when I emailed to her about the positions, and she said that she had heard lots of bad vibes from a mutual friend about my company.
I just smiled and shrugged and I was not going to reply her email. First of all, positions of that level are hard to come by. Secondly, my colleague (the mutual friend) tends to be more negative and tends to complain about work, but all in all, he is doing well. Thirdly, I am also in this company and I am very happy here.
Why do people choose to listen to the negative instead of the positive?