Willennium - who else ? We are talking about Will Smith

I am excited about the news of Will Smith, one of my favorite western movie stars.

His interview published in Straits Times (LifeMovies section) 23 Dec 2007.

At 39, Smith is officially the biggest box-office draw in the world, more bankable than Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and, yes, even the two Toms.

Smith is just a school dropout-turned-rapper-turned-sitcom star-turned-movie mogul and he beat the odds and now world most popular celebrity.

*Will Smith along with other African-American icons like Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obana - rewriting the rules.

On Stephen Chow ( one of my most favorite Chinese stars):
" He has a style and flavor like no one i know. He is a genius ! "

Just got back from Hongkong

Ha, I just got back from Hongkong with my family 2 days back. Chilly wind and pretty cold about 15C. Too much walking the streets, well, just a few days so made full use of the few days, you know the streets are packed of people, so making the touring around a little more painful. Well, i have been many times Hongkong, what really attracted every time were the usual stuff like food, relatively cheaper merchandize and the night scene. The night scene at the harbour is particulary attractive, but i didn't go to the harbour side this time as i was far too tired..

Service standards of Cathay Pacific didn't meet my expectations, thought that they should have done a little better, particularly i didn't like the food, economy ticket but i think CX was one of the top airlines in Asia, or perhaps the world, should have done a little better. On the contrary, the service staff at the department stores and restaurants are pretty good, i praised them the last time - last year about this time i was in Hongkong too. They service staff on the ground certainly impressed me and some of my friends too. Do they intentionally put up an act to be very friendly? My impression of them is that they are pretty sincere, pretty polite and attentive.

Well, i considered the recent trip as one so-called good break from my year-long hectic work pressure. Unbelievable and i am wondering why on earth some people like me got to work like round-the-clock for many years, what shall corporations do to really improve the lifestyle of their workers? Don't they have the right answers? Or was it one of their business objectives at all?

Pictures of Chelsea FC's Winning Smiles

A day has just passed so quickly

Got home about an hour before midnite of a Friday - TGIF ? yes, but in the office. Ask me what was on my mind when i touched home, seriously quite empty, a long day with fully congested schedule, so-called multi-task a nicer way to describe a day of staying alive, handling many things at one go, and honestly i spent most part of my day working for everyone, of course for myself as well, even though the broader way of putting it is i work for the corporation, deep down i am sure many working in corporations would know that you do the gaps what people have are not doing, you can be a boss of dept right at this minute, next you are on the floor working side by side with the workers and doing their jobs, or another minute you are being chased by other staff to submit all kind of things, ha.. what really bothers me is there are always tasks come to your desk last minute ( not sure that's how planning works ) and i have to submit the next minute. So many a times you are like driving a ferrari having very little time to really enjoy what is going on around you.

Special Tribute to the SPECIAL ONE !

Jose Mourinho - The Special One !

What a Character ! Legendary !

Your name will forever be associated with the success of Chelsea FC !

Your name has entered the Hall of Fame of the World of Football !

Chelsea FC have lost their Legendary Manager & Coach !

It must have been a real shock to the world of football, real shock to all the fans of Chelsea FC that the SPECIALONE - LEGENDARY Coach Jose Mourinho has resigned. His players are saddened by the sudden departure of their most respected Manager & Coach.

Fair or not? Who decides the fate of the club? Simple, the BOSS obviously. It was a gamble the boss undertook. Such thing does happen in corporations, you upset the boss even you are not wrong, you had better be prepared. Well, we can't change the fact, damage is done, fans around the world are emotional, the only thing they can do is try to get over it, continue to support the team and the many great players, who need strong support from their fans, and we hope that they will win the Sunday match vs ManU, and to win the following matches, surely these wins will be the best farewell gifts to the only SPECIALONE.

Foreign talents

I think many organizations are filled with many foreign talents, there have been debates on the topic of foreign talents over the recent years, obviously there is no conclusion, because we do know that Singapore do need foreign talents, but are there upsets due to the influx of foreign talents ? Have we thought about would there be some kind of imbalance for foreign workers vs Singaporeans in certain sectors or even certain organizations ?

While i questioned the subject, i am not suggesting we do something drastically to foreign talents, they are needed for this country, there really are foreign workers with specific skills that are crucial to fill the gaps in our talent pools. I think over emphasized on foreign talents could cause possibility of discounting the capabilities of our locals. If an organization has most of its senior positions filled by foreigners, what then happens to the locals? So they go abroad since they don't find the space for their growth here, so we are importing talents and we are exporting talents, i don't really know if the inflow and outflow do balance, but my senses tell me that we are importing more foreign workers in all levels than exporting our talents, if that was true, then what is going on with the labor market ? More jobs have been taken up by foreigners.

Think about this.... ( will be back on this topic ..)

What worklife balance really meant to staff and corporations?

I am starting to write about worklife balance.. what it really means in the corporate world today.
Worklife balance is supposed to mean that we should be spending enough time in work yet having adequate time for our private life, like family or hobbies or things like that. Many companies like MNCs always talked about worklife balance, have they really achieved their objective? Check around, ask your friends, may be your children who are working for the corporate, ask yourself, ha..ha... what do you get ? Super long work hours in some cases, some of the staff continue to work day and night while the corporations are still on the side talking about worklife balance..year after year.. what went wrong? Anyone bothered to find out or try to change? May be or may be not. Who will decide to do something? What really are causing the imbalance worklife balance situation in corporations?

Are staff empowered to change the situation? No, it is obvious that they would never be given the power to change company policy, there are costs to the corporations, hiring of more staff will cost them more...so what happens then, nothing really has changed..life goes on...now with the high turnover of staff in most industries, management are simply just catching up with all the hiring work. Reactive than really effective means to address the situation. (to be continued..)

Paper paper paper every where in the current computer world ?

Nowadays people work much longer hours than people used to do 2 decades ago. Strange enough 2 decades or beyond we didn't have sophisticated computer hardware and software, most things were manually done, and lots of paper floating around. Think about today, you probably still see lots of paper in the office, papers are not going away, reports and forms are not going away, there are still snail-mails and postal service continues to be around, in fact, they are even improving their service to manage increasing volume in a more efficient way, better smiling service staff.
So what are we saying here ? Technology improves every other day, but many people are still sticking to the old habits, which means that the bosses still want to see hardcopy memos, reports, documents, legal papers, etc......and the bosses just like to pick up their most expensive fountain pen to sign off these documents. Ask the staff who work in banks, and they will tell you that customers still perfer to submit application forms to the service counter and get their transactions done. Great, isn't it..

So aren't we supposed to be saving the earth? reduction in cutting down more trees? solving the global warming issues? well, we got to work much harder in tackling some of these old habits, paperless has been a primary save-the-earth objective in business world but we still have a long journey to the ultimate result.

How about you readers of this topic ?

another day &*%$#0)!?>&/]

Another long, really longggg day .. what's wrong with the working today ? really.. haven't figured out.. there won't be logical explanations to what really is going on in the corporate world... didn't big companies keep making money yet we continue to be spending lesser and lesser on people..so everybody says it is a norm... so saving for the companies to go further.

Now the competitions for experienced employees are up, the last 18 months saw unusually large movement of staff, musical chair alike, especially the financial world, young employees go job hopping, couple of months in each company, and not surprisingly nowadays employers don't really care whether their employees are job hoppers, they even pay more for experienced from another company, pay hire to make sure they snatch the target employee, so this becomes employee-market, really good time for employees, especially the graduates who enjoy increase in pay when they switch job, marketability so to speak.

This is so different from the employment market we used to know, say 15 to 20 years ago, forget about loyalty, which is refined now, loyalty is not measured by years of service, it is more a value kind of concept to young generation workers. If they do see they have value in the company they stay on for a while and they go job hunting.

Think about long service award for employees, any company still sticks to 5, 10, 15, 20 and multiple of 5 years, i think it is time to adjust the intervals, employees nowadays probably have 2-3 years in a job, they move on.

What happen to values in our employment systems? In the first place, are there values that really bind employer and employee? Honestly, i don't really know, my guess is values are ambiguous now, letter-of-offer is simply another document to sign, anyone bothers to read the terms of conditions? Or there are no terms and conditions anymore, perhaps. Those hiring agencies (so called the head-hunter) are just too busy, they basically go around persuing employees to leave their current jobs and join the new employers.