Adjusting to New Schedule

I know I have been very quiet for these 2 months. Not only I write less, I also blog hopping less. One of the reason is I don't get to access internet outside my home. Another reason is the change in our schedule.

Last month, hb has changed job to work in new company. For the first time after 9 years, we are not working at the same place. So no more going to work together using same car, no more doing crochet at the car on the way to work, no more resting or reading in the car whenever there is traffic jam, no more having lunch together too. It is totally a new schedule for all of us, including the children.

Since the workplace is farther, hb has to wake up much earlier than before. Kids also have to wake up early as hb will be sending them to school on the way to work. At first, I was worried if the kids will get sleepy in the school. However I received a very positive feedback from Lynn's teacher. Lynn is a slow person in the morning. She needs longer time to "warm up" after waking up. So waking up earlier means by the time the class started, she will be fully awake and become active. :) Since they need to wake up early, I'm trying my best sending them to bed as early as possible at night. Depends on the time we reach home, the kids may go to bed as early as 9pm, or latest by 10.30pm. And they have to wake up before 7am. Mon to Wed, there is no change for us. My parents will go pick up the kids and we will have dinner at my parents' house. Thursday and Friday me will go pick up the kids and then I will take them for dinner near our house.

After hb started new job, we hardly have dinner together during working days. He works much longer hours in this job. He always come home late and has dinner by himself before coming home. Sometimes he even reaches home after 12am. So now left I pick up the kids myself. Whenever I go pick up the kids, for sure they will ask me where is papa. They are so used to both of us go pick them up together. But now they are used to papa always working late. Instead of asking me where is papa, they will say is papa still working? So most of the time when we are at home, I'm alone with the kids. Not only kids, I'm seeing hb much less nowadays too. Sometimes when he reaches home, I am so tired that I want to sleep. I started missing having lunch together, I miss the time we can chit chat in the car on the way to work and back home. I'm sure the kids miss their papa come pick them up from school too. Because every time when I go picks them up, first thing they ask me is where papa is. And I feel bad that every time I have to tell them papa is working late today. And they don't understand why last time papa doesn't have to work till so late and now has to.

In the past, we hardly call each other as we don't need to. However now, every night I will call him once for the kids to say good night with him. Other time I will sms or skype with him. In the past, we see each other almost 24 hours everyday. Now, sometimes we just manage to see other less than 1 hour in a day excluding the sleeping time. Many times after he comes home, he go to bed right away. If he's not that tired, he will tell me about his work during the day. Sometimes he needs to work during weekend too.

As for myself, temporary I'm helping my friend to prepare the financial statements for her company. The only challenge is I have to use MS Excel to do the bookkeeping manually. It is tedious and very high human error. Anyway, this is just temporary. My schedule will still change. Hopefully I get to settle down soon. And be more active at blogging again.

Change is in the air

Sorry for the long silence. Had been real busy after the new year started, especially in work. Early of the month there was change in the company. When I looked back, there was a major change every year, since year 2005: -

2005 - First VP rotation
It was the first time, the COO (Chief Operating Officer) introduced VP rotation. VPs from different division, are being swapped to take over another division, best suit their strength and expertise. However, the VP for my division had not been swapped. I guess at that time, no other VP were able to take over as the head of my division yet. (I was in the Business processes division. My company is doing software development, and my division was in charge of the business requirement, design and testing.)

2006 - Second VP rotation
This time, we had a new VP being swapped to take over my division and at the same time I was promoted to DVP. The new VP was a lady (previously we had a male VP). She was friendly, but her style was totally different from the previous VP style. I took quite some time and with some adjustment, to get used to her style and helped to oversee the whole division.

2007 - Third VP rotation
In the 3rd VP rotation, the lady VP had been rotated to other division. And I become the Acting VP for the division. Well, you can say it's a promotion to me, but only to the title and increased responsibility and workload. In term of money wise, no change. :(

2008 - New COO
The existing COO had been promoted to President earlier. So instead of playing multiple role in the company, they had promoted the project manager at that time to be the new COO. She was a capable person and being well accepted by everyone in the office. Again, new management, new style.

During the year, there was a restructure to all divisions. We separated into teams instead of division and we were no longer using title VP, just called team leader. My team is now called Application development. No more QA division also. Each team has to build in internal QA process to maintain the quality of the work. New blood added to the management team, as well as departure of old comrades. And instead of leading the whole team by myself, now I have a 'partner' as there were 2 team leaders in the team. We segregate our area - he will be more focus on the content details, while I'm more on the managing and coordinating side. He's friendly and easy going. But still it's a learning process for me to work together with him, to achieve the best results.

2009 - President taken over back the role of COO
Early of the month, CEO announced to the management team, that the President will take over back the operations. While the old COO will focus on the marketing side. Not a too big change for me, as I had been working with him since when i first join the management team in 2007. He is a very knowledgeable person. He reads a lot. Majority of us like to approach him when we cant solve the issue. I'm actually happy to work with him again.

As I'm working in an IT company. The company is fast moving and thus change is common here. We always have to adopt ourselves to changes very quickly and be responsive. So we have to always be prepared. Yes, this is challenging job. And stressful too. :)

Extracting orange juice?

Everyday during lunch and after office hours, I will need to do my daily 'homework' - to express milk for the boy. Most of the colleague in the office know that I'm breastfeeding the baby. Few days back as usual, after finishing the 'homework' I was cleaning the breast pump in the office pantry. Before the office was relocated, I used to do it in the Ladies toilet. We used to have our own toilet just for the staffs here. There are cleaners come to wash the toilet every morning so it was well kept. However after we have relocated to new place, we no longer have our own 'private' toilet anymore. We have to share the public toilet with another company on the same floor.

So while I was still cleaning up the breast pump, a male colleague bumped into me. He saw me do the washing and asked me what is the thing.

He: Hey, what is that for? Making tea?
Me: Err... nope.
He: Extracting orange juice?
Me: Hehe... no lar. *laughing at him* (I actually can't help myself from not laughing after hearing this. Lol)
He: Oh.
Me: Err... this is actually for the milk for my boy. hehehe

Apparently he never see a breast pump before and he thought we should be using electrical one. Well, he's a married man but no kids yet. :)

A Sweet Birthday

Today seems just like another ordinary day for me. Morning took some time off to take Zhe Hao for his scheduled check-up. Then go to work after that. As usual, work is busy. Discussions, meetings etc. filling up the days.

Something unexpected coming up in the afternoon. Hubby bought me a piece of birthday cake! Well he's not the very romantic kind to me (but at times he will do something which surprise me too). He's so sweet! Suddenly all the work pressure, date line, tasks have been put aside. Enjoying the sweet moment I seldom get.

This is probably the sweetest birthday I ever had. :)

Well, it's another working late day. We only get to eat the cake at night as our dinner. ^_^

Oh my car

I was so bad luck. My new car was being knocked down by a lady end of last month. We were heading for lunch with the family after visiting the child care center. We were on the queue waiting to make a u-turn in Jalan Cheras. As usual, the traffic was quite heavy due to it was Saturday afternoon. I was drinking my soup inside the car while the 2 kids were taking their nap. Suddenly a "bang" and I was thrown up a bit and the soup were all over my pants and the seats. I quickly check out the baby and the girl. Luckily both were fine and continue sleeping. Not to be bothered by what had just happened.

We drove in to the furniture mall nearby to take a look at the car. Well, it was quite badly hit. The MyVi car that hit us was not that bad, just some minor scratches. I felt very "sum tong" to see my new car being smashed and become out of shape. *cry*

Due to the busy work schedule, I managed to send the car for quotation and repair 2 weeks later in mid of October. Guess how much price I get quoted to fix the car? It was more than RM2000 ! I got shocked over the price. According to the person in-charge, the bumper and the back light need to be replaced (as the part that was holding it was broken). Just the parts itself already cost slightly more than 1k. Then the workmanship for the painting etc cost anothern 1k. So in total when I pay the bil it was closed to RM2100.

I pity the lady who hit my car. She was driving her friend's car. So she has to pay her friend as well as us. And she does not earn much. She proposed to pay by 4 installments to us. Me and hubby had to trust her and agreed on that. My brother and his wife think that we were too kind.

Stress, stress, stress

Recently I'm having so much stress. Stress from work and stress from home. I had lost 3-4kg within 1.5 months since I went back to work about 2 months back.

At work, we all are working without days and nights to get things done before the dateline. Some of us even had to come back to work one full day on Saturday for the past one month. I'm glad that I still can enjoy rest day on Saturday. However we do work until very late, around 10pm. On one Friday, we even worked until 3am in the morning! Well, the dateline had past however the boss is not very happy with the results. We need to put in more effort to get it done. So there will be more late nights next week. Being a team leader I even need to face more stress from the boss as well as the top management team.

As for the kids, due to the unavailability of the previous babysitter, despite the busy work schedule I had to squeeze some time to look for a new babysitter for them. It was not easy at all due to the fact that both me and hubby are working late. So we need someone to take care them at least until around 9pm. It was so difficult to get someone who is willing to take care kids till so late. Most people requested to pick up the kids around 7pm.

Finally I manage to find someone who is willing to take care the kids, with some extra charges. The market price here for one child is RM600. I top up additional RM100 for late pick up. This lady is staying near my parents house, not somewhere near my living area. However I don't have much choice as I could not get any babysitter nearby my area to take care the kids. (There was another lady staying near the work place area, charging additional RM150 for late pick up. And later another Rm100 for the porridge when Hao turns 6 months old later. Moreover she is intending to take care more than one kid at the same time. I think this is over charging.) As for Lynn, she will be going to the child care. I will write another post on this.

Stress at work and the worries about the new arrangement of the kids leave some impact to the milk supply. Some of the days the supply will be low that could not meet the daily demand of the boy. So this add another stress to me. I do have some extra milk storage in the freezer, but I do worry about not producing enough for the boy during the days will decrease the supply over a period of time which cause me could not fully breastfeeding him very soon. Sometimes during the weekend, especially on Sunday towards the end of the day, I can feel that the supply had gone low and Hao is not having enough. I had no choice but to continue taking the domperidone in order to maintain the milk supply. Next week I need to increase Hao's serving per feed and this definitely will add more stress on my body in order to produce more milk for him.