Hope to see you again, Ramadhan.

22

I turn 22 today! Here's a picture of Jared Leto and a giant cracker

Charming, isn't he?

I'm flying off to the UK in less than a week and trust me, I'm not looking forward to it.

First, I may still be in a Raya mood at that time and having to stress myself over what has to be packed and what has been packed is not a thing one should worry about that time of the year.

Second, I will be going alone. I'm fine with the flying, although I must admit going through customs and immigration might be a bit scary. It's the registration at LSBF that I'm worried about. Before this, I have 5 of my friends with me so it wasn't very frightening. But this time, I'll be completely by myself without anyone to sesat with me! Gahhh, help me God.

Third. This is the hardest part. Saying good bye to loved ones. Guys, I really gonna miss all of you and I really hope you can join me in London soon! :) It'll be fun with all of you around, it's gonna be like a long-term vacation.

Other than those things, I think I'm all set to go. Yeay me. Go me.

Jasmin, before you go to the States to pursue your nannying career, I suggest you bring your ass to the UK and have a Euro trip with me first. Only after that, I will give you my consent. Comprende? Hehehehhe. Berangan pelis.

And as for you, dearly beloved, thank you for all the birthday gifts. Even though you're not the first one to call and wish me a happy birthday, you're still first place in pretty much everything else.

Hope I'll be fine over there. Ya Allah, protect me from harm.

Hallo Ramadhan!

Hey guys. Ramadhan's coming in two days and I'm excited because of the fact that there's gonna be tonnes of bazaar Ramadhan. I know that's a pretty messed up reason to anticipate Ramadhan but hey, I know a lot of people out there can't wait to go browsing for food, too!

So, I'm going away in a month time and I'm having mixed feelings on when should I actually fly to the UK. The offer letter states that I'm gonna be starting on 22 August 2011, but the class time table shows that there won't be any classes until the 1st September 2011. So I think the one week (lebih kurang laa) gap is for the orientation programme, which I am willing to attend, you know, to know some new friends, to get familiar with LSBF and etc. Also, I'm kinda excited to celebrate the 1st Raya in Malaysian Hall. I don't know if that's strange but Raya hasn't been a big deal for me since....5 years back?

But Dad said something last night and it made my heart melt.

Me : Ayah OK ke kalau akak nak pegi before raya?

Ayah : Kalau boleh ayah nak la beraya dengan semua anak ayah. Tak seronok la kalau ade yang takde.

Me : OKLAA OKLAAA AKAK PEGI LEPAS RAYA ='(

Howzattt? How can celebrating raya in Malaysian Hall beat that? So I might be going on the 2nd day of raya, which means that my friends won't be able to send me off at the airport, which is quite sad. Hurrhurrr.

Here are some random facts that I want to rant about :

1. What's up with people taking photos of their branded stuff and publish it online/show it off to people?

2. Saying 'thank you' is one thing, but you have to be grateful, too.

3. Biro Tatanegara courses are racist, one-sided, extreme and totally unnecessary!

4. Just get married already.

5. Some guys should stop being perverts. (Providing that us girls stop wearing stripper outfits when we go out hahahha)

All these rants are like reminders to myself (except for number 4) as well as reminders to those who I want to remind. Hah!

Congratulations!

Congratulations to the beautiful lady standing beside me in this picture. She just got married yesterday! I wish her all the happiness in the world and may your new life gets barakah from Allah.

And now congratulations to me for my resignation from work! And now I'm looking forward to pursue my ACCA! The title 'chartered accountant' is what I'm aiming for next, besides from getting married hahaahaaa no I'm just kidding. I'm daydreaming about getting 5 digits salary before getting hitched, so that I can have a full-blasted English themed wedding. That means I have to work hard, play less, study smart & concentrate!

Berangan boleh, kan? Tapi kena usaha la :)

An exaggeration of a bad day

Today was the worst day so far in my working life.

Last week I did what I always do on the 10th of every month. I process the staff claims.

So I did the usual, list all the names, put in their bank account numbers, put in the amounts that they claimed for, upload the list into an online banking site, ask for approval from the directors, and the payments are released.

So it went smoothly and without problem. Or so I thought.

By the end of the week, I keep receiving calls from this former employee whose claim was included in the batch that I just processed.

She kept telling me that the amount that she gets is far less from what she submitted.

This does happen, but not that frequent. Sometimes they mistook their claim figure with another figure in their bank accounts, and sometimes they didn't go check at all.

So I didn't panic and I told her maybe there was a delay from the bank.

On Friday evening, as I was driving back home, another staff called, and informed me of the same issue.

By this time, I was all frantic and I texted my colleague who was still at the office, I thought of asking for her help to check the list that I made.

And to make things worse, she replied my text saying that SHE didn't get her claim AT ALL.

Yeay, happy weekend for me.

So, this morning, I found out that the bank account numbers of 18 people in the list got mixed up!

They ended up getting somebody else's claims instead of their own!

YYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIIIKKKKKKKKKKKKEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

I panicked, felt like vomiting, crying, wailing, hiding because I was so very ashamed and all those worse feelings that you can ever imagine.

But what puzzled me the most was how can the bank proceed with the payment when it was undoubtedly obvious that the name of the beneficiary and their bank account numbers were not tally??

What the hell, Royal Bank of Scotland!? If you rejected all 18 payments, at least it would be easier because I could've just paid the people the exact amount they claimed for.

But noooooooooo, you just blindly pay them when it was so freakin' obvious that the bank account numbers didn't belong to the right people!

And then I had to spend like an hour figuring out who has been short paid and who received more money than they should!

So I asked my boss what I should do.

She's very kind and she helped me to sort this mess out.

But one thing that's driving me crazy is that when she gives instruction on what to do, the volume of her voice was 100% megaphone-loud.

Hey, I'm embarrassed enough about this even without you yelling instructions at me, or rather announcing to the whole office that I've made a huge mistake.

Thanks boss ;)

And then this technician came up to me and said, "Farah, takde salah masuk claim dalam bank account saye ke?"

What the actual f***?

He didn't even have claim in this batch, how the freakin' hell did he know? Maybe it was the announcement my boss made or maybe someone spread this issue all throughout the office.

Good news spread like wild fire in that office, and by good news I mean people's mistakes and by wildfire I mean in the speed of light.

So the conclusion is, I am ashamed and I've never felt this pathetic before. The end :)

Might I add a little bit here, I want to express my gratitude to the Superman who listened to me when I was crying like an over-sized baby over the phone and came to the rescue during lunch hour. Thank you! You made me feel a whole lot better about myself!

Monday to Friday

Monday :

As usual, the Monday blues strikes me again. Normally I would be OK by lunch break, but this time, I wasn't. It was mainly because, over the weekend, I've set my mind that I was gonna be on a half day leave on Monday, when it was actually on Tuesday. The realization came late at night and I got cranky from A.M. to P.M. Menarik bukan? So work was slow because my brain is still at home, sleeping.

Tuesday :

Even if I was on a half day leave, I still had to wake up at 6.30. I had an interview with MARA for the education loan I've applied for. So after much talking to myself whilst getting ready, I had a quick breakfast and Dad, along with Andi, drove me to Bangunan MARA. My interview was at 10 A.M. and I arrived there about 9.30 A.M. I signed the attendance list, and sat down. Funnily enough, the number of people there didn't match with the name listed in the attendance. I could call that good luck, then?

So the interviewers thought it was necessary to interview each person for an hour or more, which was totally stupid because I only got called at 12.45 A.M. The irritating part of the interview was the man didn't even wait for me to finish talking! He just blurted out his opinions here and there, which I find very rude and disappointing. I got out half an hour after that, which was worrying because everyone else before me got an hour of Q's & A's. Those who are supposed to attend the 12 A.M. interview were told to get their lunch first and come back at 2 P.M. Janji Melayu at its best.

I got back to the office on 3 P.M. and I thought that was a waste of time. I should've gone home and sleep my butt off.

Wednesday :

On a normal week, I would feel good on Wednesdays because it's the middle of the week which means that it's closer to the weekend. But on this day, all I felt was blah. I don't know since when, but I am now officially unmotivated to work in that company. I'm tired of the gossips, I'm sick of the scandals that's been going on between staffs, I'm utterly disgusted by the inside politics, I'm tired of my colleagues expressing their disappointment and their resentment towards the company every single day. I could say that it's not their fault that they feel that way, because that company is somewhat being unfair to the staff.

But on the bright side, I lost 2 inches on my waist and we had free lunch for today & tomorrow which will add back the 2 inches that I've lost! There was this supply chain meeting and there were some outside people involved in this meeting. So the company had to pretend that we're rich and nice so we ordered food for everyone. So fake but that's just my opinion. Yummah!

Thursday :

I've never seen my boss so stressed out. I heard it was all because of the meeting and something about stocks, not stocks as in shares but stocks as in inventories haha. But I was told that he brought the problem to himself. He didn't do much work and when things turned out to be a bit different than what he expected, he wouldn't know what to do. Also he likes to make decision on what other people should do without even discussing with them.

So he called some of my colleagues to join the meeting to help him explain matters that he couldn't explain. Some boss, huh? I heard murmurs of dissatisfaction from the cubicles of people that he called to join the meeting. After this incident, I kinda swore to myself that I'm going to resign, whether I get that MARA loan or not. Surprisingly, that night, my parents suggest that I resign, regardless of the result from MARA.

Oh yeah, lunch today was different. Admin ordered the food from another caterer whose food was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the one we had on Wednesday. I had my first otak-otak in a cup, which tasted a tad weird.

Friday :

The day of the week where all underpaid employees do less work and chat more, yeaahh, because we're already underpaid, why do more work on Fridays! Hhahahhah. Today, 3 people told me that they're leaving. And I told them I'm gonna be the 4th person to leave ekekekkek.

Nothing good about this Friday, except the Uncle Bob's fried chicken Andi bought at the pasar malam. So gooood...

BAMM!!

It was a pleasant morning. The sun was shining ever so brightly and I was on my way to the office. Federal highway was horrible as usual. So I drove and drove while listening to the radio. It's a rare occurrence you know, me listening to the radio because I normally listen to my iPod. Dangerous, I know. So, I was less than a kilometer away from my office, when this car came right out of the junction and went into the lane where I was speeding, tak la speeding sangat tapi laju la, confident kan, yela jalan aku haha, and then ape lagi, terjadilah traffic collision. I hit the brakes but it was too late. I rammed straight into the guy's car. According to that guy, aku 'terpelanting ke depan' when I tried to stop my car. But the damage is done.

At first, I panicked. My mind was trying to think, 'OK salah siapa ni? Salah aku ke salah dia?' That was the only thing I could think of after I 'terpelanting ke depan'. Thank God I didn't have my iPod plugged in wehhh, kalau tak dia boleh salahkan aku. At that time, the air is full by the sound of people honking their cars. Weh sabar la kan, aku ni tengah blur kot, post accident effect. Then this car, which was a Honda Civic, started to drive away. I thought he was going to just run away and leave me there. And then he signaled me, saying that he'll stop at the other side of the road. OK lah, fine.

Then, one of his friends, who was also in that car, came up to me. Aku ni konon nak tunjuk garang lah, nak marah dia, apsal tak berhenti bila nak keluar simpang. Sekali keluar je kereta, kaki menggeletar, badan menggigil, air mata jangan cakap lah. Pastu nak marah jugak punya pasal, ha marah la tapi suara yang keluar tu memang 'garang' abis lah. Menggigil je mulut. Apppaaassaalll t-t-taak t-t-t-tengok d-d-d-ulluuu?? Haa??? I felt so gila pathetic at that time, I felt so weak. I don't know why I cried, it was clearly NOT my fault. Pfft. I think because I was under a lot of pressure and I was still stunned about what just happened. Plus, it was my first car accident involving another car, you know, moving car with people in it. If it's car accident involving inanimate objects like trees or cones or people's house gates, I think I can handle that kind of pressure. Or just ignore it.

Luckily the guy was a nice guy and he admitted that he's the one at fault, which makes all the shenanigans much more easier.

My poor wukong is now in Sungai Besi, alone and cold amongst other cars.

Syiiaaannnn diee? Cube cari nombor plat dia? Tak ada bukan? Tau kenapa? Sebab dah terlekat kat kereta orang tu. Tulah orang kata, kissing kuat sangat mestilah tertinggal lipstick. Ha lebih kurang camtu la nih. Lambang proton pon takde. I was thinking of replacing the Proton logo with an Autobot logo? Or Decepticon. No? Too rempit? OK.

But all in all, I couldn't do nothing today if it wasn't for my Dad. He settled everything for me, I just stand there veiled in hopelessness. I love you Dadi. :D