All about time difference

First day back at work after a long flight yesterday.

 

Having to fight jetlag means getting up at 5.30am for work isn't a problem for me. Malaysia is 7 hours ahead than London afterall.

 

Problem kicks in when evening comes, which means it's sleep time back in Malaysia. Surprisingly, my excitement got the better of me and I was super charged in the office all the way till I got off work at bout 5.45pm. Thank god for the best job on Trading floor, where no moment is too quiet.

 

Started the day so well with an incomplete trade in another region and time difference just made everything worse. Yup, it's well because I have never experienced such a problem and everytime I come to a stumbling block at work, it makes me so excited to learn soething new and get scolded for that matter! Haha!  By the time you know it, I was about to pengsan already and it wasn't even 8.30 am yet in London office.

Got me thinking of that statement Traders like to make "Market never sleeps". Currently I'm only handling certain selected countries, so the working hours would have patterns like those markets that we handle at work. I used ot find it very interesting to have colleagues shout out "New York is awake!" when it's afternoon in London or "Hong Kong closing now" when I haven't been in the office that long and "India closing last" a couple of hours after I get into work.

 

Have you ever felt so very very happy and grateful at work you start thinking what you did right? And by the end of it not come out with a single reason how you got this opportunity but instead, how you used to always think you'd never make it through school coz exams are that hard alright.  

 

For now, I'm just so thankful that I'm learning something new everyday, and I still get to laugh so much at work every single day! Alhamdulillah for awesome people around me :)

365

THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE

What to think of it

Sometimes, A is as important for/to B as C is.

It can either be good, bad or uniquely interesting :)

Postman Delivered Tinkerbells To The House Day 356

WHAT IS THIS?!!!!

So whilst I was rushing to finish up my report for our final Masters project, I got a text from Shasa telling me that there’s a surprise delivered at home for me. Such a sucker for surprises, I instantly told her to take a picture and tell me what it is.

Calmly she said “Some things are better left….unsaid”

-________________________________________________-

I know it would be really late till I get home after work and school, so I made it a point to head back and pray at home in between for a shortwhile before going off for our final classmates dinner (there’s another story to this surprise!).

Opened the door and my eyes could only spot a humungous, extremely large, bigg a** box, so very white and pure with the prettiest ribbon in Pink and a Congratulations card on top of it! Sorry, am I not getting news about something?

Seriously, if you look at it *melts* I don’t have the heart to pull that ribbon off! Just look at how pretty it was! But I want to see what is inside :((

Can’t blame me. I know this thing is pretty inside out, so I just had to have a peek!

Of course I gave up trying to restrain myself, so I spoke to myself and agreed that ok, I will open it when Shasa gets home. HOMAIGOD! I opened it and I saw my friends in there!!!! My happy little pretty friends! I was instantly filled with a burst of happiness and feeling all fluffy and warm and happy :)

 Do I sort of, a wee bit maybe look like her?

Aren’t they just the prettiest?! The icing to this cake is that these Tinkerbells were from Pak, my awesome lil Thai classmate! The minute I finished reading her note, I know we’re definitely coming to the end of Masters for real now :’( Seriously, what did I do to deserve such awesome classmates! I have THE BEST set of classmates!

Having said that, this week marks the end of Masters for good. Alhamdulillah, I’ve managed through the entire year, gaining so much knowledge and best of all, meeting awesome classmates that have grown to become like a family to me.

Congratulations everyone in Financial Engineering!! To all those flying out of the UK today and the next few days, have a safe flight and good luck with working life back in your respective countries! We’ve still got a mission to travel and cover South East Asia when everyone is back :)

For now, more important question is…would I have the heart to eat them Tinkerbells now?

Photos by Shasa Aziz

Selamat Hari Raya! 353

This year’s Raya feels a whole lot different than the rest. For the first time, on the morning of Raya, instead of getting all ready and pretty for sesi salam-bersalaman with the family and going to the mosque together, I was in fact rushing to get ready for work and making final checks on my project when I can. 6 days away from the end of my Masters course and I am the only Malaysian on this trading floor, what Raya? Hahaha, yup, I do work for a Malaysian Bank thanks for realizing :P

Raya did not feel like Raya this time apart from the fact that when I called our KL and Singapore offices, they were either already on ‘Raya leave’ or getting ready to welcome it. I forgot I’m not in Malaysia until I got the notification email about Bursa Malaysia on half day market hours, a day before the predicted Raya day.

But somehow, it didn’t feel so bad to be honest :) The night before Raya, we baked cookies and cake, sang Raya song and had our very own pre-raya BBQ with rendang and ketupat. Invited close friends over to the house, had Jemaah prayers and Takbir at home!! As you would have figured, we slept late hence the morning rush.

Well on that note, Selamat Hari Raya Maaf Zahir dan Batin everyone! If I have ever caused any sadness through my writing or in any possible way, please forgive me

Here’s one for the album :)

No, I was the only one working. Apen conveniently did not have his baju Melayu with him, but I thought it was alright, since I would have a friend then! :P Plus, I had no time to rush home after work to change! The rending, ketupat, lemang, nasi dagang, lontong….were calling!

But come weekend....I was prepared!

Music In Me Day 347

Music can make me do a lot of things. In fact it motivates the hell out of me sometimes. It accompanies me, makes me feel all happy and tingly inside...the warmth it brings, I can't even explain it in words! 

I don't have the best or beautiful voice to begin with, but I've always wanted to be able to sing well. What I did here for Dreamgirls before was just a major dream come true, really. I never ever thought in a million years that I'd get to audition and get accepted as a cast for a Musical, let alone step foot and perform at Istana Budaya! Alhamdulillah, He is great indeed :)

So now that I'm left with just my final research paper due in 10 days, I've been taking a little random breather the past couple of weeks and revisited the wannabe-singer in me a couple of times. I naturally have a high singing voice, so singing with my normal (sometimes talking) voice needs a lot of extra effort.

The living room has become a studio on some days and recording, searching for chords and vocal training have become a random norm with my darling housemate, Shasa. Recorded a couple of songs and I sounded like homaigod-kena-tutup-telinga for some! Seriously!

But most importantly, it brought out so much happiness in me recording them :) What made it even more special and a motivation is when your super awesome friends tell you that you sound like a superstar and that they keep listening to it, before going to bed, when they get up and pushes you to record more songs...you know they're such liars because I gave them incomplete recordings to listen to everytime. Too sweet! :')

Some of my favourite recordings were Listen, Everything Has Changed and Gravity. I know one day in the future I'm gonna look back and at least I have the recordings to listen back to.

For now, I'm in the midst of writing a song.

Taken for granted needs No Distance

I've always believed that people who would take you for granted (in any possible-even-smallest way) would always be the people closest to you. Up until today, I cannot quite understand the rocket-science of it all. Well probably apart from the fact that because they're close to you, they think that whatever they do and however they comment/annoy/say to you, you'd be ok with it. I mean because you're that close to understand it all right?

It's pretty clear how some are done intentionally whilst some are not. 

People who say or do things without thinking first and afterwards saying sorry (or perhaps not feel sorry at all, coz they think they're God-like like that or they know you're kind enough to understand and let them be).

A hundred times, I'm quite ok to tolerate, but if it's every single time.

My take, don't take for granted people close to you. They should be the person you care for the most and although what they do/say may not be as exciting as whatever someone-else-not-as-close do, you know that whatever happens, these people close to you would have your back at all times.

I've had my share of people making unthinkable comments my way and people close to me taking me well for granted. But it gives me no reason to do the same to them. I say if they aren't your direct family members, then you have no obligation to stick through, no matter how close. Tolerate and treat with kindness as much as you can, and when you have reached your limit, these people do not deserve your kindness anymore :)

Weightloss

My Managing Director came up to me today to ask if we lose weight during Ramadhan.

I believe the answer to it is always very individual specific. As for me, I don.t since I tend to attack those food right after sunsets, and I power charge myself up during sahur before heading back to bed after Subuh. Haha...I know it's THE way to only get fatter. Hooo welll. I've got work and school in the 17 hours of fasting a day, it's only fair for my body before my very sharp colleague said....

"of course they do. There's 'slim' in a Muslim"

Get it? SLIM. muSLIM?

Bahahahaha! How can one get bored working with this bunch. I love em! :) And I always have this work withdrawal syndrome everytime the weekend arrives.