Living a life is sometimes, if not most of the time, complicated. Each person thinks, does, and lives her/his life in a different way. No complaint. No doubt. Nobody would be the same, even twins, who have been together for almost 9 months before born.

What we say, think, and do will impact others in a way, more or less, and perhaps the reflect of that impact will revert to us as fast as a thunder at the end.

However, nobody would be able to say, think or do something to please everybody in all aspects. One has her/his own perspectives, and the others have theirs.

This makes the argument comes into play. Very few people live their lives without arguing with others. And it is strange that, to me, most arguments are with those in my family, with those that I am close to. The closer, the more.. somehow. We even argue with ourselves!

What causes those arguments? Varied.

Misunderstanding, discussing (some people call it this way instead of arguing though it looks like the latter), (just) talking out loud, (just) speaking our minds, being frank, having a ‘minus’ attitude towards somebody, stereotyping in a negative way, pretending to be able to read others’ minds, assuming, mis-interpreting, etc.

Countless!

Solutions?

Think thoroughly about anything we are going to do and say before we really make it happen.

Act discretely until we are certain of what we are doing. Do not even let our eyes readable by others.

Shut our mouths if we have not carefully considered what we are to say. Silence can heal sometimes.

..
.

I am telling myself..

When ones cannot focus on what they are doing, they cannot be successful and achieve what they expect for.

I, this morning, practised yoga while lacking attention to it. I kept thinking about this and that during the practice. I did not feel that I got anything from this morning class, plus I collapsed once when I tried to come back from a wheel posture with my right hand pointing to the ceiling.

Then I lost all my concentration after that.

..

.

Again, a receptionist is resigning. She has not completed a year with this company yet.

Not only at my company, my friend’s company also has the same problem, that is, receptionists cannot work for a long time.

I do not expect them to work for five years, but two years would be enough before they continue their jobs with better positions somewhere else. I fully understand the career paths that everybody is looking forward to. However, one single year is unacceptable. 

I am exhausted in getting and training new people every single year.

“Do we really need a receptionist?”

“Yes, we do.”

The answer from my boss made me even sicker and almost bang my head on my desk at that time. (I am not joking!)

Are there any statistics or researches about why receptionists cannot work for long?

Understand that..

• The tasks of a receptionist are boring.
• Documentation is something a receptionist should be able to handle as well, and it is totally boring (for me).
• A receptionist in a company possibly has no career path. Nobody wants to be a receptionist forever!
• I also assign more administrative tasks to a receptionist, so that she learns more and is able to use the experiences for the next career path. (I actually expected the resigning one to be promoted to a staff in our Support Team if her English skills had been improved a bit more.)
• Maybe, I should look for someone who is studying or plans to study another degree, so that s/he (preferrably she) will stay with us longer, at least until she finishes her study.
• So and so..

Don’t understand that..

• Why does a 40-people company need a receptionist?
• Why can’t everyone pick up their own phone calls?
• Why can’t everone let others know their extension numbers?
• Why does somebody not pick up a phone call at their desks while the phone is ringing?
• So and so..

This fast changing starts to be like a (weather) season of a year that happens at one time in a year.

And.. it makes me sick!~~

..

P.S. Perhaps, I should go back home and review my handouts about Employee Selection. I might be able to come up with better criteria for choosing a new receptionist. I got S* (highly satisfactory) for this class when I studied the Innovation Management programme ;p

At the beginning of the year, I was in a Knowledge Managment class, and The Ivory Tower – A Knowledge Management Fable article was chosen to be a part of the lecture for us to study at the time.

The assignment was to come up with a slide showing our understanding of the story, and present it to the whole class.

The story provides a clear understanding to me about knowledge creation and management.

Just this morning, I received a comment on my primary Thai blog from the author. Actually, I also got the exact, same comment at my slide page, but I did not know that the comment was there.

Hey – nice slide pack. Did you pick this material up as a CPA member? Just thought you may like to add a link to the original story – it’s on my blog at http://delarue.net/blog/docs/

Keith De La Rue
Author, “The Ivory Tower”

Once I saw that, I went to my SlideShare page and added his link to the slide description.

Besides, he also has his own SlideShare page here. Surely, I have subscribed to his blog feed and added him as a contact in SlideShare.

My boss mentioned that the IT department in the office would start a knowledge base. I am wondering what kind of knowledge base that will be. A folder containing some files to share among their staffs? And that is it?

How will they gather the knowledge? Only explicit knowledge is concerned here? How about tacit one?

Knowledge Management is something I thought that this company should have had since I was studying Innovation in Management. I found that although we have what we call ’shared folders’, not everybody uses them. And though they use them, there is no guideline of how ones should store what to where. All folders are there, and wherever ones want to upload whatever, they can just do that.

To me, Knowledge Management has nothing to do with IT apart from using the technology as an enabler to allow the process to go faster in better organised manner. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that most people still think that Knowledge Management is all about technology. That is why IT is the department who starts this project.

Technology will have no role in Knowledge Management if we do not have any knowledge to manage and to store. Where can we find and how can we get the knowledge from people in an organisation are the main questions.

It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be
– By Paul Arden

This is a book that is one of the best sellers by Phaidon Press at this time.

I bought it yesterday at 350 Baht at Kinokuniya, Isetan. The book is very easy to read with pictures and bigger font size. I could finish it last night (FYI, I am not a book lover and rarely finish a book completely).

Some messages are known facts, but we (I) sometimes ignore and forget to think about them. Reading this is encouraging and it tells me to aim high, so that I always try to be BETTER (not just GOOD ENOUGH).

And now I at least found out that I like reading this type of books. I also noticed that there were 2 more books by this writer. I might consider buying them later.

Refusing the translation job I got last year with Siemens might be a wrong decision. I started to regret.

Although the salary was not as much as the current job (they did offer OT wage when needed), the people and atmosphere there seemed to be nice. I could feel that when I walked into their office for a translation test and an interview.

But at the time the decision of leaving the current company was not that I was bored of the current responsibilities (unlike these days). Instead, I was sick of colleagues and internal politics.

Thus, after having talked with my boss, I decided to stay at the same old place. I was offerred higher salary increase, and promised more challenging responsibilities and tasks.

So far, only the salary is true; while I have not seen any challenges.

And now, because I graduated, I am even keener to move on, especially to the job field(s) I studied.

I am stuck now, I can feel..

Reading this, I am urged to start my reading again. I have more than 5 books unfinished. I started a few and have not completed one of them. I bought some as a collection, e.g. The Chronicles of Narnia, and I have just finished one of the 7 books.. (Oh, so now I have more than 10 books unread, I think).

To my feeling, I may like reading a non-fiction one more than a fiction, but The Chronicles of Narnia and Pricess Diary are exceptions. How many exceptions will I have!?!?

OK.. Got urged.. and now I will just have to TRY HARDER to learn how to EAT books.

:p

When you come to work where you feel bored almost everyday, does that mean you are not where you do belong?

I think I am in that situation now. However, I am thinking whether I am just too lazy or I do not belong indeed.

LOL..

Keep thinking.

:p

Just do realise that I ignored the monthly schedule in my paper-based desk planner the whole month in May. All boxes were left blank and I could not turn back time to use any boxes.