Someone remarked that I hardly blog about work anymore. Well, there is hardly anything funny to blog about at work because I have been busier than before. And I don't really want to blog about things that piss me off at work because this "blogging" thingy has since made a name for itself in Singapore. The word Blogger even has a Chinese equivalent to it. The first time I heard it on the news, I thought they were talking about some terrorists. Everyone blogs. Everyone knows about blogging. So I don't want to step on some big fat tails just because they think I say something inappropriate about work.

But today, after reading the Mr Miyagi's post, I too have something similar to share.

My team recently joined a new department and we went for our first department meeting. One of the guys appeared to be very enthusiastic throughout the meeting. He almost leapt up to his feet when it was time for him to give a presentation. I thought it was just his enthusiasm that made him punctuate his sentences with itself, like, "the presentation itself will tell you how the whole process itself works so the users can go back and try out the product itself."

Subsequent department meetings revealed the same thing. Once I counted more than 10 itself when he gave his update.

I never notice this behaviour when we speak to each other normally. I think he only does that when he switches on his "presentation mode" itself.

Last Friday, we had a division meeting in the office. Each Department Head took turn to present their deparments' achievement. I can't begin to describe how boring it was. And their slides - their slides were perfect opposite of what all the presentation gurus preach. Each bullet point was a paragraph of words in font size 14 (well not exactly, but from where I sat, they sure looked like). Almost all of them put up a screenshot of their timelines in MS Project. Jesus! Do we care what their timelines were? Even if we do, are we going to make anything out from the tiny fonts sitting at the end of the other side of the room? After 2 and a half hours, nothing from the presentations registered in my head.

I found this excellent article by BusinessWeek on an interview with Marissa Mayer, Google's vice-president of search products, on how to run a meeting like Google. She holds an average of 70 meetings a week, so she must know how to conduct one effectively.

A Google meeting features a lot of displays. On one wall, a projector displays the presentation, while right next to it, another projector shows the transcription of the meeting. (Yet another displays a 4-foot image of a ticking stopwatch.) Google executives are big believers in capturing an official set of notes, so inaccuracies and inconsistencies can be caught immediately.

I think the ticking stopwatch is an excellent idea. Coincidentally, I was telling my co-worker about it because Yahoo! Open Hack Day used that too. Alternatively, we should do it the Academy Awards way - start playing music when time is up.

Since we are at the topic of presentation, personally, the best presenter I've seen so far is Steve Jobs. He is a master presenter. Just watch any of his keynotes. His slides were simple, clean, big and together with his presentation, bring points across. Presentation is never about slides full of bullet points and reading off them. If that is the case, there really isn't a need for someone to be there reading for the audience, is there? You might as well just leave the slides there and let the audience read them themselves. Presentation Zen has very good articles on Steve Job's mastery. While you are at it, check out also Bill Gates' presentation slides and you'll understand what Zen vs Complexity is all about.

Another late night verification; because customer die-die also want the version to be updated in production environment. So under the Bor-pian Act, section 265, we had to update the version and do the verification after office hours. Initial plan was to start verification at 10pm, because the IT guys needed don't-know-how-many hours to do back-ups and apply the update. At 7:50pm while at my dinner table, PM called to say update was done. So clearly, someone had over-buffer the time needed. So I quickly had my last bite of my dinner and rushed back to the office.

As we are preparing to cut-over our team's biggest customer thus far to production, stress and pressure is reaching an undesirable level. An impossible vendor and an over-demanding customer do not help either.

What we don't need at this point is a moron at work who not only does not help to play his part, he creates more work for us to do. I can empathise with people who learns slowly, but I certainly can't tolerate those who refuse to learn and try to get away with it. And this moron belongs to the latter breed.

Everytime any of my team members has to talk to him or get him to do something, our blood pressure rises double. One of my team members was recently told by her doctor that her blood pressure was indeed high. No joke!

He shall be officially known as Blood Pressure Boiler, aka BPB.

Me: Something is not right. Emails from our application are not reaching the recipients with external email addresses. But emails sent to internal email addresses are ok. Can you please check?

BPB: Strange... *continues with grandfather's story*

Me: ... just please go check what is wrong.

An hour later...

BPB: So is it ok now?

Me: ??!! Did you like inform me that you have fixed it???

BPB: You didn't test?? Fixed already.

Me: *trying to keep calm so as not to let blood pressure rise* Ok, I'll test it.

Of course, the test failed.

Me: I still can't receive the emails!!!

BPB: Ok I'll check.

Me: *raise hands in despair*

This issue, believe it or not, took 2 days to resolve.

I'm taking a 3-week break from work; clearing my annual leave till end of the year. Finally!

Just before I left, I received an email from the Human Resource department that I would be getting my 5-year service award. My first reaction was - WTF?! I've been with this company for 5 freaking years? Unbeliveable.

Anyhow. Hopefully, with the break, I'll have some interesting stuff to blog, instead of just complaining about work all the time. But I couldn't help it, could I? I spent the past 6 months thinking and doing nothing but work.