free lance

On looking back at the year that flew by, my female owner thinks that she led a “free-lance” year. The year started with her clearing leave from her previous organisation (i.e. she went to work sporadically) and preparing to move to Brisbane. In Brisbane, she had lessons only on two days, leaving her with a “flexi-schedule” (an oxymoron, if you know what she went through) for the rest of the week. Back in Singapore now, she is supposedly on holiday but is holding two flexi-hours jobs in-between meeting up with people.

Hence, 2008 is a year where she was left pretty much to her own devices. Living on her own, she accounted to no one for her whereabouts. It was really independent solo living, "come and go as the wind". In addition, she was accountable to no one but herself to complete what she needed/ wanted to. She set her own work goals and planned her schedule to meet them “own time own target”. She could stay home the whole day with the laptop in front of her in the name of work and no one would query “why you never go work/ school?” She also mastered that art of looking as if she is working hard but is actually on MSN (not difficult to master apparently), much to the amusement of many of her course-mates.

I think my female owner found it refreshing that she is no longer doing work just for the sake of doing (sai kang, as many can identify with her). She no longer has to meet dodgy key performance indicators, or market herself in the workplace by doing presentations that she don’t believe in or planning for operations that were nothing but wayang shows to justify her colleagues’ existence, and being dumped with all kinds of random work in the name of “exposure” and being “junior”.