The end of an era… *dramatic face*

(Post dated entry… Drafted this while back, didn’t post it)

I first joined the Mars team in March 2013…. That was after a superbly frustrating 11 months or so working on the other team.

Will not elaborate more on the pains of working in China since I’m about done soon….

The thing is…. I was sort of inspired for this entry when I looked around my surroundings and it crossed my mind that it’s amazing how different things became..in just 2 years. Isn’t it tue that the only constant in life are changes?? 

Actually, planning teams in China can be quite the force to be reckon with. The Mars planning team is not a big team but at the peak, we probably had a staff strength of 20ish.

2 Business Directors, 1 Planning Director, 4 Assoc Directors, 6 managers/supervisors, 7 Planners/Execs and about 2-3 interns.

That was somewhere between 2013 to 1st half of 2014.

Fast forward to End April 2015…

2 Business Directors, 1 Planning Director, 1 Assoc Director, 4 managers/supervisors, 1 Exec and about 0 interns.

I don’t even know if I can say we are half of what we used to be…

Definitely the end of an era… 

So yeah… I just wanna say that these 3 years in Starcom had been one hell of an experience! Thanks and no thanks!! 

Onward and forward…..

Going by the books

5 days before I leave China and I experienced the biggest fight I’ve ever had here. 

Going by the books is not a bad thing. But I believe in flexibility when necessary. You can say that I have no principles… But fact remains that this is my own POV. 

Had arranged for the movers to come and pick up my boxes for shipping and I forgot all about getting the permit from estate management. When the movers came, I promptly made a trip down to the estate management office to apply for the permit. Now the problem is, my landlady is in England holidaying. And they insisted they have to call her, else they cannot give me that piece of paper. 

It was 4am London time. 

I started out trying to reason with them… To no avail. And it broke into a massive quarrel… To which at one point in time, there were 3 of them against me. Apparently I was being unreasonable…they were yelling about how there are people who quietly move their things out in the middle of the night, they have responsibilities towards home owner etc, and I’m being extremely inconsiderate by asking them to give me some flexibility. And I’m like…. Urgh!!! It’s 12 noon! 

The thing is, the movers had already loaded my boxes onto the truck. So the only option I was given was to unload and get them to come back another day. In between all that, both estate management and myself were trying to get my landlady. At 4am London time. 
Obviously the calls were not picked up.

Decided it’s not going to work out… So I went back out to look for the movers, only to see that the truck had caused a massive deadlock in the carpark. What ensues was another fight with the security. No.means.no.

Went back to estate management… Pissed off, desperate and frustrated as hell, I offered to pass them my passport first, until we get the landlady in the afternoon. No. 

*weeps*

Just as I decided to give up, my sweeeeeeeeet landlady picked up the call. Sweetest half asleep voice I’ve ever heard. Couple of minutes later, all cleared. And apparently she ranted at their inflexibility… And lack of sense. (She later called me and asked if everything was ok… And told me she felt they were just being stupid).

I am sure there are 2 schools of thoughts here.. It’s good that they went by the books. Ensures home owners don’t face drama of losing fridges, sofa, wardrobes and etc. But on the other hand, the complete inflexibility was appalling. Aggressively so. 

In retrospect, I don’t blame them for standing on their ground… But on the other hand, I totally felt that it was unnecessary pain. 

At this point in time, I’m still trying to recover from the drama. Think I’ve hit my life’s quota of quarreling with people from just this incident alone. 
Thank you China. Many invaluable lessons learnt.