Monica

Right now, I really really badly want to slap the shit out of someone.

And that someone is me.

I am at the end of my tether and just waiting for the bounceback. Or am I really? Maybe I am just blowing it out of proportion and none of it really is that big a deal. Or MAYBE the big deal is that it isn't such a big deal to me.

I am purposefully being vague because this blog is public and I know that personal thoughts belong in a diary, but I have put so much into this blog already that I want it to be my only source for reflecting back on myself ... so sue me.

It's pretty tough when you open yourself up for criticism and no matter how much you grit your teeth and listen because you genuinely want to work towards eliminating your flaws, some if it can be pretty bad.

When did I become this person that these people are telling me I am? When did I become this person that does these things on auto-pilot? When did I become so involved in changing myself (based on previous feedback) into something else that I totally lost sight of the fact that I had reached the goalpost and FLEW right past it? Stop, BPC, stop, turn around. LOOK AROUND.

I read somewhere today that "Character is what you do when no one is looking".

Really?

If so, then think about what you've been doing when no one's been looking. Surely, they are not things you would do otherwise.

But isn't that the point of 'privacy ... that you can be yourself. Or is no one allowed to be themselves in their own time anymore without being 'guilted' into introspection? IMHO intropsection is over-rated. Why can't we just BE without having to think too deep and too hard about it? Why can't some things just be things that you do ... if they don't harm anyone, then why do you need to be held accountable? Why do you need to hold yourself accountable for what is not changing/hurting/ruining anything for anyone else?

Why is there all this bloody social programming that bloody forces you to THINK so much.

Just shut up. Be quiet. Do. Be. Don't THINK.

I do that sometimes. I 'do and I 'be', but I have yet to master the 'don't think' part.

I know where this is all coming from. I have all the pieces infront of me, but the pieces don't add up. And that's what is frustrating. Growing up in a world of twoplustwoequalsfour, I can see the two twos and I know that's where the four comes from, but it'd bloody doing my head in as to why and how the four came along long before the two twos did.

Maybe it's some weird cosmic joke constructed to confuse me. Maybe I'm just PMSing.

But I see the two twos. And I am Monica. Boy, am I Monica right now. Arfiman will understand this bit precisely if he is reading ... because he is the one who pointed it out. Jokingly maybe, but he was right.

No one can have it all. But we all find our ways to get the bits we really need.

Is this going to make me feel better? Maybe.

Okay, so it's not been futile after all ... this long-winded post ... no, not when I realize that we all find our ways to get the bits we really need. And not when I realize that none of us can ever have it all.

Master Manipulator in the Making

After the uproar caused due to my last post on training, I really should think twice before posting ANOTHER training-related post, but what is BPC if not one to make things a little more exciting?

So here goes ...

I think I pleased someone with authority highly by my revelation in the last training post on how refreshing it is to be in training without having to simultaneously perform routine work-related tasks as well ..

.. and here I am, having completed Day Two of a Three Day Training Program with my laptop having gone kaput and me not even having checked my work email for more than 48 hours. A first!

It was nice for the first day, but by start of Day Two, BPC is in panic mode, fielding phonecalls from people who demand to know the status of tasks scheduled for completion.

About the training itself: loosely structured to introduce us to the core concepts of a) personality types and persuasion skills in light of that, b) Key Performance Indicators: how to collect, interpret, analyze and use them to c) strategise the maximisation (is that even a word?!) and alignment of those KPIs to align the departmental objectives and processes with the organisational ones and finally (whew) d) presentation/persuasion skills to combine all of the above.

As I said, whew.

So it's been a very interesting two days so far and what's more interesting is how the company pays so much money to send people into training and how so many of them can be so non-receptive and negative. I have heard ENOUGH comments from people being too defensive and/or critical about the content or the training, or the possible real-work application.

All the time, I sat there thinking "My God! How on Earth can you not see this to be of use?"

I mean, my head was reeling with ideas and I can't wait to get back to work and WHOOPAH my team and boss into shape ;) LOL

The training introduced us to Shape-type personalities (whereby people are either squares, circles, traiangles or squiggles). No prizes for guessing what I am.

LOL ... yours truly is a very Squiggly BPC with some Circle tendancies.

What's more interesting than analyzing these personality types was looking back at our past experiences of having dealt with them and being able to see what we were doing wrong!

I picked my subject (who turned out to be a very distinct Square) and found out that I was dealing with him in a very Squiggly manner ... so NOT the thing to do! Enter calculated manipulation ... err... I mean Personality-based Persuasion and I now have a very good idea of the approach I need to take the next time I present to this Square Person.

The persuasion aspect of the training itself was very enlightening. The handouts and reading material (25 pages of some VERY HEAVY reading from the Harvard Business Review) had a box on 'Four Things NOT To Do When Persuading Effectively' and turns out that those are the fours things I (and apparently anyone not familiar with the art and science of persuasion) would do. These are things we do instinctively thinking they are the right things to do, but are essentially the most effective way to kill any persuasion efforts with anyone who is not already sold on you or your idea.

Persuasion as a concept itself was something I hadn't given much thought to before this training.

In my current job role, one of my biggest challenges is that I am responsible for strategic input while being in a position not authoritative enough to have my input not be overlooked when a) it challenges the status quo, or b) when a person of higher authority (ie, almost ALL the people I am required to give this input to) has conflicting viewpoints, or c) (surprisingly the biggest challenge of all!) my peers are not on the same page (often due to their own lack of a strategic shot of the Big Picture, but also - as this training revealed - as often enough due to my own inability to convey the merits of an idea in words and ways that will make sense to them).

Hopefully, this training has equipped me with skills to:
a) challenge the status quo without appearing to undermine the current processes
b) persuade the Big Bosses effectively
c) get team buy-in

What I loved about this training was the Business Simulation aspect where we got the chance to apply the day's learning in a real-work type scenario: two very hard-assed HigherUps from the company agreed to donate some time to act as BigBosses and we had to present to them effectively on ideas that they were put in place to tear up. Very very scary. But I must say, kodus to the hard-assed duo ... I now have more confidence in how deal with situations such as these.

I am extremely keen to see what Day Three brings in, and even more keen to go back to work because I am now not only Spokesperson Extrordinairre, but also Master Manipultor ... err ... I mean, Prettygood Persuader!

Good News?

Nothing pisses the fuck out of me quite like the 'good news' question that everyBloodybody is inclined to ask you when you are a married woman.

"So, any good news on your side?"

Fuck that shit, man. I totally lost it today.

A very old friend who I used to go to school with and who got married quite after me and now has a one-year-and-some-months-old son asked the same question on MSN today: So, any good news?

"Yeah", I MSNed back. "Very good news."

"Really?" came back her enthusiastic reply. "How many months?!"

As I said, FUCK THAT SHIT.

"Honey," I told her. "I have no plans for kids anytime soon, and THAT is the good news from my side. No news=good news. No bun in the oven for me and that is the best news I could have for the forseeable future."

She was silent for a while.

"Really?" she said a bit later. "You don't want babies. But why? They're so cute."

And this coming from a woman who told me not five minutes ago that she was so relieved when she got to go back to Pak. for 5 months without her husband due to an ill MIL because the baby was finally off her hands and she no longer had to cook and clean while taking care of this little thing that demanded all her time, energy and attention.

Really.

They are so cute.

And it's such a relief when you have other people to take care of them.

Why have them then?!!!

Why? Why?!!!

So that you can live your life in bits where you have other people to take care of them? So that you need to make the decision of being away from your partner for months on end to regain your sanity?

Bloody hell.

I am quite sure that in some twisted way I am tempting fate by writing all this ... which could mean I either get a baby very very soon (unplanned, of course, if it so turns out) .. or that I don't get one when I really want one sometime in the future, just because I am so dead against having one just now.

I really don't understand what all this societal pressure is all about. Babies are NOT the reason people get married. Or are they?

Am I the one who has the wrong idea ... thinking that two people get married because they love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together? Is there some unwritten rule no one told me about: must get married and MUST have babies as soon as possible after?

Whatever works for you, is what I say. Then why does whatever work for me have to be such a big problem?

Geez man.

And even the nerve of people asking you howcome you've been married three years and have no kids?! MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS!

Okay, so I don't have kids out of choice. But how do you know that when you ask me that extremely private question? What if I have some medical problem and have been trying desparately to have a baby and can't? How rude and insensitive is your question then?

How many times do you meet a married woman and ask her how many times a week she has sex? To me, asking me why I don't have kids is breaching the same level of privacy: if you don't already know, you're probably not important enough to tell.

ChickenSouping

An interesting post on RantzRavez's blog (http://rantzravez.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-follies-of-living-in-fools-paradise.html) led me to comment and got me thinking.

It took me right back to a long shisha session with a new friend a few evenings ago and reminded me of something we talked about ...

... he asked me what was the one thing I regretted doing the most in my life ...

I though about it really hard and my answer was "Nothing".

Because what is 'regret' for an action if not the wish to reverse it? And I might have done lots of things that didn't seem 'the right thing to do' at that time .. either to me or to the people I did those things to ... but when I look at it in retrospect ... would I do any of it differently?

No.

Because what I 'did' .. and what we all 'do' .. is what we 'are' ... dictates what we 'become'.

And anyone truly happy with the way they are know that they are the way they are because of the things they did ... that going back and changing any of it will change what they are today.

And that leads me to the observation of how refreshing it is to meet new people and make new relationships ... you end up talking about things you can never imagine talking about with friends who you have been with for years ... old friends are good for comfort, but new ones are great for ChickenSoup.

This friend is somebody I met on a training course and he is a Really Nice Guy (the kind that is just not possible to run into these days). To think it all started with a compliment on nice shoes (from him to me obviously). And as nice as it is to get attention from a person of the opposite sex, we both flashed our wedding rings at each other and sighed in mutual relief that neither of us need worry about 'complications'.

Ended up having a veeeeeeeeery long shisha session the same evening with lots of ChickenSouping. We each tried to get our spouses to join us. Mine wasn't able to make it, but his did and what a woman!

Am still trying to get Arfiman to join so all four of us can be partners in crime and so that Arfiman won't start wondering who this Really Nice Guy is that I end up having shisha with.

Protocols aside, there is nothing like intellectualising with someone new.

The long conversations on the purpose and meaning of life, of love and everything else under the sun is something I was missing for so long. (And can you not see it reflected in the nature of my recent blog posts?!)

Let's face it ... we all need some ChickenSouping sooner or later. Okay, maybe it's just me but that just means that ChickenSouping is really, REALLY under-rated.

I have not had that for a while and I am TOTALLY enjoying it.

And it sure doesn't hurt that he insists I have the most beautiful eyes he has ever seen! LOL!!

Arfiman, that's it! You need to meet this guy now!

ScarboroughBoy and I

Pandora's box: don't open something you can't close. Don't let loose what you can't contain.

Life. What is it without death? Or love without loss?

It's not what other people do to you that makes you lose faith ... it's what you do to other people. When you get away with doing things you had no right doing, it makes you wonder what kinds of secrets other people are carrying around inside them. Can you really trust anyone?

Can you really trust yourself?

What is trust? What is good and what is bad?

What are all these things aside from what you have grown being told they are? Who decides what's good for you? Rules made by people who you don't know? And who don't know you? Who don't know what goes on in your life ... in your head ... or where it matters most of all: in your heart?

Are you going to live your life 'playing it safe' ... in your 'comfort zone'?

Or will you ever dare to follow your heart - forgetting about what 'they' say is right or wrong or good or bad?

Is anything ever any of those on it's own and are they only bullshitting when they say 'the end justifies the means'?

No one cares to know why you do the things you do ... because they can only see what they can see ... they can see the laughing and the joking, the flash car, the perfect nails.

Can anyone see anything else?

Can anyone see .. as Paolo Coelho puts it in 'The Zahir' ... "the empty space inside" for which we are forever (qoute Coelho again) "trying to remain upright and decent , in order to do honour not to the walls or the doors or the windows, but to the empty space inside, the space where we worship and venrate what is dearest and most important to us."

"Yes, we are all cathedrals."

And cathedrals we are.

Vast places of worship.

But what are we without the worshippers?

We can't all be the Notre Dam ... or the Sacre Cour.

We can't all .. or always .. swell with the solemn, sweet sounds of hymn .. a thousand reverent choruses.

We can't all fulfil our destinies. Some of us can sometimes. Some ... never.

How many of us are like backstreet cathedral we stumbled upon one late night in Istanbul ... that boy from Scarborough, Canada and I? That cathedral with no lights on ... and chains on the doors?

ScarboroughBoy and I ... we tried to make the cathedral come alive. We tried. But there were chains. And no lights. And severe consequences should a Canadian backpacker be caught tresspassing with a Pakistani one so late at night. So we turned back.

We turned to Taksim Square ... with its merry lights and its jaunty clubs ... to Istiklal Street and to places filled with cheer and cigaretter smoke. Places alive with the sound of music and the heat of bodies moving close to each other.

Places easier to understand. Easier to be a part of.

How many of us are like that backstreet cathedral? With our lights switched off and our gates in chains? How many would-be worshippers turn back when they see the darkness that envelopes us? The doors we haven't thrown open?

How many would-be worshippers do we send off to places easier to understand? Easier to be a part of?

And how much of it can we blame them for? How much of the blame lies with us?

I dedicate this post to ScarboroughBoy ... someone I haven't thought of in a very, very long time. Four years maybe. Four years since that late night of revelations and contemplation. Four years since I tasted my first snow. I still wear the MissSixty-copy paira jeans he helped me pick from the piles and piles in that street market. Four years!

Thankyou ScarboroughBoy for a really funky hard-wearing paira pants.

And for being the inspiration behind a really therepeutic post.

I hate the real world

BPC: Girl, sometimes there so many conflicting ideas and emotions in your head that the more I think, the more I end up confused. Your head is a very scary place to live in.
Collapse: *grr*
BPC: Right, first things first. The damage done isn’t going to go away. You won’t be able to talk your way out of this one. What you need to do, hard as it is – is to let it go. Take it like it is, because maybe this is who you are.
Collapse: People deserve so much more but once you've done what you've done, you've pretty much screwed it over.
BPC: Life can’t be viewed in black and white.
Collapse: If you love something, does loving it less turn you into a bad person? There has to be a difference between being a bad person and being a normal person doing a bad thing.
BPC: Don’t make a bigger deal of it than it needs to be. You need to fix whatever it is that makes you believe you need 'this' to feel complete. Figure out your life, grow some opinions on things other 'this' . There’s more to living than 'this'.
Collapse: What the hell is 'this' anyway?
BPC: What does it mean to you? 'This' isn’t a word you should use cheaply. Have you thought that maybe the reason you get bored is because you’re just not ready ?
Collapse: That’s not unusual
BPC: Say someone offers you chocolate cake. It looks really good – all shiny and chocolaty and tempting, but if you eat it, something bad will happen.
Collapse: That’s when you let your head do the thinking.
BPC: Are you prepared for the consequences? If your asnwer is ‘no', walk away.
Collapse: *grr*
BPC: What – you think you’re the only girl out there facing this? You’re not six anymore, stand by your beliefs. Being an adult is about making choices and living with the end result, be it good or bad. You made the choice ... it was conscious, believe me. THIS doesn’t happen by accident. Therefore, I don’t buy this whole ‘woe is me’ attitude. You made your bed and you must lie on it. It doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be unhappy for life.
Collapse: What’s with all the negativity?
BPC: The good news is that you know you’ve been making the choice to do 'this' all along, you can decide to stop. It really is as easy as all that. People complicate things too much sometimes.
Collapse: Emotions are confusing
BPC: Yes, but 'this' is not. Drill this into your head – there’s no excuse for 'this'. Be enough of a woman to stand up and own your mistakes. Embrace them and make them your own...then make the conscious decision to change.
Collapse: It will be bloody hard and far too easy to escape into old habits, can I really do it?
BPC: You’re not the first woman in the universe to encounter this problem. This is how you learn to become an adult. Welcome to the real world.
Collapse: I hate the real world.
BPC: Honey, it's the only world I know of. If you find a better one, let me know ....

Bitch

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I see a bit of you ... in the flick of hair, in the highlights, the color. The way it curls out at the ends.

I catch myself when I say 'bye' on the phone ... I hear your voice in mine ... in some ways ... your thoughts too.

Dark manicures in the winter. Burgundy or Wine. French in the summer.

"My mother told me off for not coloring my hair for such a long time. She says it makes me look older."

The shoes.

The black shirt from Splash. Too bad they didn't have it in white. Five years later, it still looks good.

The yellow pashmina.

The cigarette smoke.

I thought I hated you. I did hate you. Now I know why. I hated you because I wanted to be just like you.

And in many ways, I now am.

You wouldn't know it if you saw me. Hell, you wouldn't even know it was you I am talking about if you read this.

But I really am you.

I wish I could tell you this, because I think we could be great friends, but I met you a few months ago and I still thought you were a Total Bitch.

So no changes there.

I still hate you.

I don't think I'll ever stop.

Because everytime I turn around, you do something so wonderful that I hate you because I want to be just like you ... and then I catch up a little while later.

The problem is, everytime I become you, you seem to have moved on. Will I ever stop hating you?

I don't think I will.

And I like it that way.

Bitch.

Crazy days at Crazy Headquarters

Crazy Act#1:

Ate: Does anyone have a memory stick?
Kaju: Mmm ... I have a stick but it doesn't have any memory ...
BPC: And I have a memory, but it's doesn't come on a stick ...
Kaju: Maybe you can put my stick and BPC's memory together ...

LOL

Crazy Act#2:
BPC and Fati return from lunch break. Kaju is found wiping his eyes with a tissue paper.

Fati: Why are you crying?
BPC: Are you crying because we left you all alone?
Kaju: (after a very long pause): I'm crying becasue you came back so soon.

LOOL

Crazy Act#3:

LOOOOOOL it was so funny I actually forgot what it was!

Yep, that's Jo

Till I Collapse says: is the red coupe ur car?
BPC says: yes
Till I Collapse says: figures
BPC says: whaddya mean?
Till I Collapse says: fits you
Till I Collapse says: how you talk
BPC says: i talk like a red coupe? LOL! i shall take that as a compliment
Till I Collapse says: small chick, with a wild side, that knows her ride
Till I Collapse says: i walked by it
Till I Collapse says: and i was like
Till I Collapse says: yep, thats Jo

*smile*

yeh baat adhoori rehnay do ...

mat poocho dil main kya rakha hai
mat poocho honton peh kya tehra hai
mat poocho ankhon ki boli ko
mat poocho
mat poocho
rehney do

sab kuch keh dainey say
har ankahi sun lainey say
aksar aisa bhi hota hai
jo ho zeyr-e-lab khul jaat hai
jo dil main ho mil jaata hai

dil ki kuch baatein lekin
honton tak na aaeyn to acha hai

kal subha honay tak
yeh shaam adhoori rehney do
yeh baat adhoori rehney do

kaun jaaney ...

kab kuch kehnay, sunnay say
koi dil ki hasrat poori ho jaey
jo hum main tum main uljhan hai
woh kaheen kho jaey

yeh uljhan humko pyari hai
dil main yeh baat hamari hai

kuch batein dil ki dil main rehney do

kal subha honay tak
yeh shaam adhoori rehney do
yeh baat adhoori rehney do

BPC the spokeswoman?

And so ends another week at work. Honestly, I don't know where time flies these days. It's been a very exciting few weeks at work with lots of projects (and hence lots of pressure) with the added reason to finish all work soon in light of upcoming holiday (BPC and Arfiman to possibly go to HK mid-April).

Don't know where the last five days went. All I know is that LOTS of work remain undone with about five more working days to do it in. Yum. Don't know how I would function if I wasn't under pressure.

And let me just add at this point that I can't help feeling thankful every single day for Alhamdolillah being in a job that excites me every single day.

This week I had the luxury of being in training for two WHOLE days ... with my laptop not working with the WiFi at hand! I call it a luxury because - theoretically speaking - once you go on a training, you set up an 'Out of office' reply on your Outlook so all the five million people emailing you know that you are out and will not expect you to respong to their email in 2.5 seconds - but in actuality, you have to take your laptop to the training session and steal five or ten minutes here and there to check your emails and keep up. It gets a bit tiresome and does not allow you to be as focussed on the training as you would like to be.

And that's why my laptop not working with the training venue's WiFi gave me the rare opportunity to enjoy two full days of training without any other pressures.

I just had an awesome awesome two days.

The training was on Media and Crisis Management for potential spokespeople within Crazy Headquarters and let me blow my own trumpet here a bit - I was quite flattered that BossLady would nominate BPC as a potential spokesperson for Crazy Headquarters. So there li'l ole BPC sat in the training surrounded by Directors and felt glad that someone sees some potential in her. LOL. Fact ot be pointed out: BPC was the only female amongst the six trainees. Hm.

Now, it is not a commonly known fact yet a very true one that BPC is terrified of video cameras. Still cameras I can do. I love posing for pictures. But turn on a video camera and watch me put my foot in my mouth ... if i don't burst into tears first!

It was very very difficult to go through the first video interview. That dang camera looking right at me! Yikes! But kudos to the trainer ... he was A M A Z I N G.

In two days flat, I have NO fear of the camera anymore. Not only do I no longer put my foot in my mouth and say everything a spokesperson should NOT say, but I have been told by the training company that they think I might be an ideal spokesperson as I have 'a very camera-friendly persona' and that they would be recommending me to BossLady as such. Yay!

Okay, trumpet-blowing aside, I was amazed at the insight I got into the tricky world of spokesmanship. How sly these slimy buggers are! We learned techniques on how to avoid any qustuons we didn't answer and how to go into interviews knowing what you want to say and say EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY REGARDLESS OF THE QUESTIONS BEING ASKED. It was totally awesome.