Recruiting boo-boo

In the industry I work in, it is not uncommon to get a call from head hunters every once in a while. In fact, it is one of the more legit ways to land yourself a job without actually actively looking if you have got the right connections. I think I would be a little worried if no one ever calls me for “a chat” in a span of a year!

In the recent months however, there had seemed to be an influx of calls from recruiters from all over. Not surprising, given that there has been a shortage of talent in the industry of late as employers are constantly looking for people to fill in a position. I also suspect that one of the primary reasons for head hunters calling on me was simply because I had updated my profile in LinkedIn not too long ago.

Now. Being head-hunted can boost one’s ego, and the rule of the thumb is to never, ever pissed off a head-hunter as they would be one of the most important people who could help you through your career. The least you could do is be nice. Loud and clear, kabish?

However, that being said, I wonder if anyone ever felt slighted by a so-called head-hunter who couldn’t really be bothered to do their homework properly before even approaching a candidate and practice proper ethics when calling on one.

Look. I’m not about to sound all high and mighty here, and I do appreciate the work that a head hunter does and I do have the utmost respect for what they do. But, I was truly taken aback, no wait! appalled would be the most appropriate word to use, that a recruiter had sent me a message through someone else’s account. Case in point:

My first thought was: How is using someone else’s account even right? Couldn’t you spend a little bit of time signing up for your own account? Secondly, how do you even dare suggest to “keep in touch on a long-term” basis” when you are not even using your own email address to send me a message? Thirdly, who should I be replying to – you or your colleague?

I probably come from an old school of thoughts when it comes to business ethics, and so the practice of using another person’s account, no matter how casual it sounds, unless super-dire, does not sit very well with me; especially so when it was the initial contact. 

I hate to sound petty, but I was practically seething and was contemplating to ignore the message. However, the rule of thumb when dealing with head hunter prevailed.  It took me a day to think about how I should be replying to him without sounding like I was attacking him, but still able to drive the message that I was none to please as to how he initially conducted business.

I then shot a reply as follows:

He then called me the next day. He apologized and explained that because I was not his direct contact, he could not get through me. To which I thought, what fucking bullshit as all that you needed to do was send me an invitation from your own account! Otherwise, there are many ways to go about it to get to me. (Hello? You know my name, I’m on FB too!)

I can’t remember much of the conversation (I wasn’t interested in the job), and he told me that he’ll get in touch again. I then got an email message from one of his colleagues to explain the job description to me and asked for my CV – making the entire conversation even more confusing as this other person who contacted me had a different company attached to her.  

Some explanations and two correspondences later, I never did hear from them again.

It makes me wonder: is it just me being super old school about the protocols in recruiting or has recruiters become so blasé and nonchalant about how they ought to be conducting business when approaching potential candidates?

While I don’t expect an offer at the initial stage, a polite follow-up would be nice to maintain some sort of cordial relationship rather than just leaving the trail out cold.

This really ought to be one of the more bizarre recruiting experiences I have ever encountered.

Conversation with a prude

People can be such a prude sometimes. 

Below was a conversation I had in a meeting with a certain expat colleague after I contacted him for research information based on his field of expertise.And, after pouring through tons of documents, with him blabbering to me a research that was in Swedish, he practically shirked his responsibility and blew me off:

It went like this:

Me: Great! Can you please put all of these things together into a presentation deck. (No question mark here as it was a statement posed as a question)

Expat colleague (very curtly) : NOPE.

Me (raising an eye-brow, and clearly very unimpressed at the unexpected reply): And why NOT.

Expat colleague: Because I'm busy

Me (sarcastically): RIGHT.

And then he rattled off that he is currently looking for someone for his team to specifically handle "such request", and that for now I'll have to do make do (myself ) with what he has given me because he has yet to hire anyone. I had to bite my tongue from commenting in retaliation with , "Screw you. What do you think I do all day - twiddling my thumb while assholes like you get busy to make yourself look so important while dodging work?!" 

If not for my professionalism (ahem!) and me mentally telling myself not to fly off the handle, I would have bitch-slap him, pick him up like I would pick a roach and throw him off the 24th floor.

There certainly was no argument in my mind that it was clearly his job  - it is his area of expertise.  Yet being the atypical total expat prick that he is, he just flatly refused because he was "busy".

Guess what expat man, so are we!And I can make better use of my time by not having to deal with time wasters like you!

I then politely told him that he needed to find someone to do the job and quite quickly, he started to arrow someone else.

You know what -  I absolutely HATE working with people like that. And, all I wanted to do was to just do my job. These pests seem to have it so easy while they let other people pick up their shit.

Like I said, people can be such prudes.

Yes,I know - life isn't fair. And sometimes, you have to blame (nice) people like me let an asshole like him get away with things. I guess I could have been a bitch, but I choose not to.

Sigh.

All things pink

If Spud knows the tune and lyrics to one of Aerosmith’s songs, she would probably be belting out this out:

Pink, it’s my new obsession, yeah
Pink, it's not even a question
Pink, on the lips of your lover
'Cause pink is the love you discover
Pink, as the bing on your cherry
Pink, 'cause you are so very
Pink, it's the color of passion

Pink makes me cringe.

The sight of anything pink is enough to make my eyeballs roll to the back of its sockets in a nano second as the dopamine in my brains plummeted to the lowest low, while my body pelted out goose bumps all over me.



That’s how much I dislike pink. I happen to think that pink is an ugly colour, and it is a colour which I have an intense dislike for since I was a child. And, and as a child, I had always wanted to be different – I hated the fact that everyone else was wearing pink to death. It was way, way too girly for my liking, and to date, I don’t think I own anything that is remotely pink (some shades of pink on my clothes are sometimes just unfortunate, and I make sure that they are very minimal).

That being my sentiments on the colour pink, I have purposely kept anything pink at bay for Spud. I expose her to any other colours but pink, hoping that the ‘what you don’t know, you don’t miss” mantra might work on Spud’s preference for colours.

Of course Spud has her own grand plans – she has very well entered into the pink phase now; perhaps thanks to her peers and the influence she gets in school. Whenever she gets the choice, she chooses pink amongst other colours. Pink tops (used to be purple, but faded to pink with many washes), pink rubber bands, pink underwear, pink “noodles” (a floaty thing they have at her swimming lessons) and whatever else that comes in pink.

She refuses to wear her yellow underwear and insisted on wearing a slightly over-sized white underwear because there was a small PINK imprint on it. I don’t usually make a big deal out of it, but I want to bang my head against the wall. I really, really do.

What is it with little girls and pink? Red, yellow and green are nice too! Where did the obsession with pink come from?

Sigh. As much as I hate the colour myself, I realise that I just have to grit my teeth and let her enjoy her pink phase. If I am lucky, she’ll get over it soon enough. If I am not, then she’ll love pink forever. Arggghhhhh!

This pink phase is agonizingly cruel.

The one with caffeine overdose

"Caffeine can be unhealthy for kids. It can cause them to lose sleep, worsen anxiety and raise blood pressure”

Source: my healthnewsdaily

And everyone knows that giving coffee to a little child, especially one that is barely 3 years old is a complete no-no…

…or is it?

OK. The thing was – towards the end of our Sunday brunch last week with the family, I decided to order a chocolate milkshake for both Spud and me to share. Spud loves milkshake, and every once in a while, she gets to enjoy the occasional milk shakes (and sometimes a few M&Ms and ice-cream) as a treat.

The moment the beverage arrived at our table, Spud pretty much polished off at least ¾ of the milkshake there was, in a rather decent sized glass. I had a little sip of the milkshake when she ventured away from our table and had immediately thought that it tasted a little “off”. By “off”,  I thought it tasted more like coffee. Thinking I could be wrong, I even asked Silver Bullet to taste it but he verified that it wasn’t. In fact, he convinced me that it could just be “chocolate chips”.

When the bill came, I almost jumped off my chair when I saw “COFFEE Milkshake” being printed on there – confirming that my gut about the beverage not being anywhere near chocolate as I ordered was right. I was already annoyed with our whole Sunday breakfast experience at the restaurant, and so, seeing things I hadn’t need to see on the bill tipped me off the edge.

I was appalled. In fact, I was livid.

“Chocolate chips” my foot!  I was convinced that those bits were actually hardcore crushed coffee beans and nowhere near any chocolate chips. So I asked for their manager and I complained. I told them that I didn’t know where to start and that their service sucked. I let it ripped, and told them that serving me Coffee milkshake instead of the chocolate milkshake I originally ordered for the consumption of my daughter was completely unacceptable.  How CHOCOLATE translated into COFFEE in their minds was beyond me.

They did not charge me for the milkshake and few other things on the bill – but in all honestly, it was not about the money. I was MAD that my hyperactive daughter had consumed a large amount of caffeine unbeknownst to us and I was afraid for our sanity that she might start bouncing off the walls in her most fashionable temper tantrums. I was anxious that my child who has a penchant for not liking sleep will now never sleep! 

We paid, and left. By then, there was nothing we could do but watch Spud like a hawk for any signs of the caffeine effect on Spud – something which we hadn’t witnessed before. We had to brace ourselves up for the inevitable.

The strange thing was, nothing actually happened. In fact, scarily enough, the opposite happened. Spud behaved really well after that. She was mellow. She listened really well and was pleasant to everyone. The best part of it all was that when we got home, she went for her nap when we told her to without any fight – a little unusual considering that she has been fighting sleep and had dropped her afternoon nap several times; one being just the day before!

She still woke up from her nap wailing that day, but otherwise, her temperament was even. When dusk set in, she had ants in her pants and was comfortably back to her old hyperactive self again. She was a little restless initially when we put her to bed, but had slept pretty well that night.

Looks like caffeine had no adverse effect whatsoever on our 2.5 year old Spud. We even joked that perhaps we should start giving her a shot of caffeine every now and then as it seemed to have a calming effect on her.

I googled on this several days later and stumbled upon several articles suggesting that caffeine do have an opposite effect on kids with ADHD.

Uh-oh.

Hmmmm

Of garbage trucks and traffic

In any other (civilized) country, I would think that a dump truck would have more sense to do its round at a certain time of the day when the streets are not busy with traffic. Or at least, I would have thought that would be the most logical thing to do.

Not quite so in downtown Bangkok, where I have discovered, on several occasions that a huge-ass dump truck found it very necessary for it to pick up garbage on a weekday morning AND during the busiest hour of the day in a fairly small two-lane soi.

The soi, by default has already been littered by street vendors setting up their food stalls and frying their stuff in open fire, and also is a make-shift car park where you'll easily find vehicles parked on both sides of the soi, making the soi narrower than it already is.Top that with a massive dump truck hogging the ONLY road accessible to a school during the busiest hours in the morning while vehicles of various sizes driving into the soi to drop kids off to school as other parents/guardians walking into the very soi on foot or on a motorbike or even bicycle while carrying their child in their arms or as a pillion rider, the result is just mayhem – there just isn’t much room left! Cars and pick-up trucks that get through there usually just zoomed past at quite a speed without checking their blind spots.

It gets even more bizarrely annoying. While there are several people stationed there (including a traffic police) whose job is to direct traffic, I don’t think they are particularly apt in doing their job well. Having walked that soi every day to drop Spud to school, I have a sense that those people tend to prioritse traffic as opposed to pedestrians. Many a time, I was told to wait for a car to move first instead of them telling the car to stop for me and my child – a 13 kg child whom I was carrying in my arms under the sweltering heat

This is what I don’t understand - I am walking, I am a pedestrain, I have a child with me and I am carrying tons of stuff at the same time. How is it that pedestrians like me not get the priority as opposed to those who are sitting all snug and comfy in their cars?

This is how bad the soi can be with a garbage truck in the way:

As for the dump truck, could they not just change their schedule to pick up the garbage at night instead of during the busy peak morning where a million other people and cars are trying to get to the same soi to send their kids to school?

Safety is relative in this country. Just a few days ago, there was some crazy moron who decided to throw glass, bottles and what nots from the balcony of a condo along the soi onto this very same street. As both Spud and me walked passed it, the road was littered with broken porcelains and other unidentifyiable stuff. It was quite scary!

It is things like this that can drive me absolutely mental.

The Shang-story

Shangrila Hotel by the riverside has got one of the best brunch, lunch and dinner buffets in Bangkok. Although, prices don’t come cheap, it still is one of the best places to go once in a while or for special occasions.

While we have heard that they have a very kid-friendly area and it is a popular venue amongst expats during the weekend, we have never ventured there with the kids in tow. And so, when Silver Bullet’s parents came by for a quick visit one weekend, we decided to take them there for a nice little brunch – with the kids.

Spud was just too happy to run along to the play area which the restaurant had set up when we got there. Unfortunately, being a "kid-friendly zone" in Thailand does not necessarily mean hazard-free.

Not only had theyset up a small buffet corner for the kids next to the play area (which was fine), they also had placed several open fire underneath the chaffing dishes  Shocked at what I heard when my father-in-law told me about it, I thought we ought to inform the management to complain about it.

I was appalled to see how they had set it up – every chaffing dish had an open fire underneath them and lots and lots of steam were coming out of a few of the chaffing dishes  as kids continued running around in that confined space. 

It was one of the most ridiculous sights I have ever seen.

Call me paranoid, but, in my mind, it would only take one second of sheer carelessness on the kids’ part – intentional or not – and they could get terribly hurt.

Unfortunately, even though the complaint was acknowledged by one of the staff, it fell onto deaf years. 2 hours later, the chaffing dish were still there, and so were the fire underneath them (a few closed up with aluminum foil), still steaming away next to oblivious little kids.

I guess this is one of those "This is Thailand" moment. Nothing ever changes even when there is a clear need to. And when it comes to safety, posh and reputable places or not, every place and everything is just an accident waiting to happen.  

Amazing Thailand.

Rudeness personified

People can be so rude sometimes.

I don’t know what it is, but it makes me wonder what gives them the right to touch my tummy. They rubbed and patted my tummy when I was pregnant before, and now that the baby is out, they still pat and even poke my post-pregnancy bulging, flabby tummy to tell me that I am tubby. They make silly, disgusting expressions on their faces and tell it straight to my face that I.am.fat.

How bloody rude is that, right! Last I checked, unless you are part of my family or my bestest of friends, YOU.DO.NOT. have the right to be poking me in my stomach, telling me in utter disdain that you think I am fat.

But people do THAT to you (in this case, me!) in this lovely country called Thailand. For some reasons, as colleagues from a different department, they somehow think that it is their birth right to impose what they thought my physical self should or should not be.

The thing is, I KNOW that I am fat (hey! I just had a baby afew months ago!). And, while I acknowledge that fact ever since the birth of my first child, I am usually quite light-hearted when it comes to such things. I don’t take offence when people say I am “big”, because, for my frame, I KNOW that I am. In fact, I can even be self-deprecating when it comes to my flabby-self telling them that I love my food too much to want to diet. Or maybe, I just enjoy being fat because my love handles amuse me.

That aside, and back to what I pointed out earlier on how they absolutely have no qualms in telling people that they are fat, especially when it is true… is just not done. 

Seriously, how fucked up is that?! What is wrong with these people? And such audacity, too!

I mean, come on. What gives! Do they see me grabbing their asses and then tell them that they’ve got a flat, unattractive butt?! Or that I’d grab and poke their boobs and telling them that they need larger breasts?

Talk about Thais speaking up their minds…

There are then, the annoying brand ambassadors of sliming centers and gyms that lurk around at the BTS station doing practically the same thing. These people are just out for a kill to make you feel awful. These people would ignore that skinny person who was walking right in front of you, think nothing of zeroing in on the fat you and basically tells you in the face that you are F.A.T. by telling you that you need to sign up for  the program for you to lose weight. 

While the PC nonsense has gone way over the head with the western ways of the world where everything is absolutely fantastic and beautiful even though you look like a train-wreck who survived the last Sumo fight, such honesty from the Thais, in my opinion, is pretty darn misplaced!

So,  yes. I know I am fat, and I will eventually have to do something about it when I am done breastfeeding. But in the meantime, thanks for telling me. Last I checked, I don’t need your approval if I want to eat the fattiest cow on earth. 

And please. Take those hands off my tummy and wipe off that crazy, disdain look on your face. I may be fat, but at least I was taught that it was never OK to be blatantly rude.

Much ado about safety

This is how the streets of Bangkok seem to always be able to blow my mind:

What am I getting at, you ask? 

Well…this essentially is a very small soi of a rather busy street. Just like a typical Bangkok street, it is a soi where a few street vendors loom amidst walking pedestrians and moving traffic at about 50 km p/hour. It is also the soi in which I walk every day, at least 2x a day to send my daughter to school. The distance between me, the vendor on my left and the traffic on my right is probably just a couple of inches away.

The truth is, I hate walking along this soi in the day. There, halfway to Spud’s school, stood a vendor who thought that it probably is a good idea to set up stall right on the tiny footpath meant for pedestrians and in front of on-going traffic to sell his fried banana and tapioca balls. Not only that, I am sure that he probably also thought that it is a very good idea to place a wok, filled with extremely hot oil for deep frying. He hardly ever stopped frying, and unfortunately for pedestrians like me, there is no other way but to walk right in front of his mobile cart every single day. It is terrible to be walking there when some other moron decided that they were going to be parking their huge ass pick-up truck right next to the mobile cart with its butt jutting into the street, and especially when it rains!

I shudder every morning I walk there whilst I have Spud strapped to me. I shudder at the thought of any unfortunate accident that might happen to anyone trying to maneuver away from the moving traffic that tend to have no qualms cutting corners and act like they own the road. My heart palpitates each time I walk past his sizzling hot-oil filled wok. (Ok... I am also a paranoid freak when it comes to roads and moving traffic)

I’m sure that the fried banana man is a nice guy and all – he almost always never fail to flash me a smile and acknowledges Spud whenever we walk past him; but, really, his sheer disregard for public safety is appalling. 

And, because this is Thailand, there really is nothing much you can do about it but just grit your teeth and rant.

Here's a link I found sometime back on 12 Ways To Seriously Injure Yourself on a Bangkok Sidewalk. I think there certainly is room for plenty more examples!

It never is enough!

Since I went on my maternity leave almost 3 months ago, I have had the privilege of a first-hand encounter of seeing our Nanny at work day-in, day out. 

She has been a lot of help, our Nanny. She works hard, and truthfully, I have actually been quite impressed with how she has helped me take care of our two kids as well as managing the household chores at the same time whilst I was recovering from my C-sect. She did what she was asked to without any complains. There were even several occasions when she offered to cook. 

For all of that, I was thankful.  Thankful and grateful that we have ourselves a good nanny. To show my gratitude, I went out of my way to buy her a little gift not too long ago and telling her how much I appreciated what she has done.  I just wanted to make her feel appreciated and happy. 

I have been away from home quite a bit in the recent days and leaving Squirt in her care as a practice session for when I go back to work. She has, so far, been able to cope with the occasional madness when I am not around. She was nothing but rather impressive, and having seen what she is capable of, I am now more confident that she can handle it when I am back at work.

I told Silver Bullet what I thought and suggested that we may want to consider increasing her salary as a gesture of our appreciation and to keep her happy.  We then agreed that we can afford to increase her salary to x+1 .

It was good news for her, and we felt really happy to be able to give her that little bit more. We decided that we’ll tell her about it first thing Monday morning. As soon as we informed her of our decision, the first thing that came out of her mouth was, “Why don’t you increase it to x+2 instead? The Nanny agency pays x+2 and maid is x+3.”

You should have seen the look on our faces! She has the cheek to barrel through with a request that made her sound like a royal ingrate! What happened to just being grateful for the small things in life?

We naturally said No, and I then told her that we ain’t any nanny/maid agency. As soon as I said that, she then tried to renegotiate by asking us to ALSO increase her BTS transportation allowance by another 42%! (For the record, we just increased her BTS transportation allowance by 40% just the week before, due to the increased in fares;  and granted, this was not the initial agreement – rather the transport allowance was more of a goodwill gesture from our part as this was what we granted our previous Nanny who had to travel quite a distance in the morning. Technically, whatever we offered her on top of what she already has, she always, always asks for more!).

We were riled up. She had the cheek! I immediately gave Silver Bullet ‘the look”.  In one of his rare moments, Silver Bullet actually got mad and right in her face, told her off by saying, “It will never be enough for you, is it?”

We maintained our firm NO. Honestly, I almost wanted to take back what we said about increasing her salary altogether! We heard a lot of stories on how employers tend to manipulate or abuse their Nanny/Maid. In our case, we think we have been a pretty decent employer. We have been nothing but nice to her – we pay her on time, we buy her stuff, we give her day-offs without docking her pay, we pay for her visa, we lend  her some money, we gave her food and most importantly, I think we treat her well. Yet, each time we give her a finger, she wants the arm!

Perhaps she was just trying to push her luck, but whatever it was, we felt that it just was not the right place or time to be countering at us.

It makes me feel that sometimes, it just doesn’t pay to be nice. The proverb "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" comes to mind.

My gut feel somehow says that she is probably looking around. At this point, I won’t be surprised if one of these days, she throws in the towel.

Nonchalance, Thoughtlessness or Stupidity?

Bangkok is generally known for not being sufficiently accessible for people with reduced mobility or other disabilities.  The streets and pavements are uneven. Few buildings and public transportation system provide ramps and handrails to aid disabled access.  The Sky Train (BTS) is one of the worst culprits in my opinion as they just don’t make sense. Build on two levels – ticketing on the lower, and trains on the upper, it makes access a challenge for those in wheelchairs; especially when there is only ONE escalator going up , not to mention the sheer number of steep flight of steps one has to access for those who needs to go down to the lower level! (NO escalator going down!)

That being said, it is of no surprise that moving around the city can be extremely difficult not only for disabled people, but also for parents who need to tot their kids in a stroller. (This is why baby wearingbecomes a much better alternative)

While the city has been designed as such, the display of thoughtlessness amongst the very abled Bangkok residents can be appalling. For a culture that raves compassion, kindness and empathy, I cannot seem to understand why some people choose to look the other way. Take this incident which happened to us recently:

Silver Bullet was wearing a sleeping Spud and I was carrying a backpack while pushing a stroller with a sleeping Squirt in it. Between the both of us, we struggled to get the stroller up and down several flights of steps to get to where we want to be;  yet, people around us choose to pass by us as if we are inconveniencing them or they pretend that they did not see us and walked on by. Rarely would people be offering us any help.

What baffled me though was that on this particular flight of steps connecting the BTS walkway to a shopping mall, there stood a person trying to distribute her flyers to anyone who passed by her to get to the entrance of the mall. She literally was standing on a platform between 2 flights of steps, and actually saw both Silver Bullet and me struggling to carry the stroller up.

Guess what she did when we took a small breather before getting on to the second flight of steps? Instead of offering some help, with a poker face, she just handed us one of the flyers which she was distributing! Last I checked, she wasn’t blind!

That really riled me up and really was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.  I was so mad that I exclaimed loudly, “Are you stupid?!”

Excuse my rant here or the lack of consideration for calling people names, but really, times like that makes me wonder if that was just sheer nonchalance, thoughtlessness or plain stupidity.