天下无不散之宴席

It seems only not that long ago when we were squatting in Thomson, moving from one building to the next, adding staff slowly - two in January, one in May, one in June. And now, we have our own office, renovated once for expansion.

In terms of staff, SF came and left, DC came and left and came back again, and just yesterday, LY left. For SF and DC, perhaps it was only one year each, I didn't feel quite sad but this time, with LY's departure, it really felt like a bit of the original troop was just..gone..

LY said she wouldn't cry. But I did =( How embarassing since I'm such a tap..

Looking back, we had a lot of memorable - good and bad - times together. Actually, the bad times for us referred to mostly two paricular weeks in April 2007 :p Even COS was great fun! Last year, even though there were only so few of us, we worked and played hard, laughing over things I should not mention here (:p) and celebrating LY's birthday the night before the speech, inevitably staying past midnight.

We were saying at the farewell lunch yesterday that next COS, we wouldn't be celebrating LY's birthday anymore.. No COS for her, no birthday celebration for us, and for me, no more familiar "小妹妹!"..

But I'm glad for her cos this is what she wants - to go home. I want to go home too but I have delayed the trip for another year cos I also want to finish my pet project.

I do like this place. Supportive bosses, nice colleagues, good environment, exciting work. But I don't think I can stay here for too long. My pet project will finish and I'm not sure I'm as keen on the maintenance part. Work, no matter how exciting, can also lose its lustre after a while, as I just realised this week for one particular issue..

Was at a course one day where we were asked to place money, recognition, job satisfaction, work-life balance.

1) Money: Enough. I don't need more though I wouldn't mind more :p
2) Recognition: Happy. In fact, I don't really care except that it has an impact on my bonus :p
3) Job satisfaction: Yes but this is odd cos I've not yet seen any major work of mine come to fruition.. But that'll happen soon - that's why I'm working so much...
4) Work-life balance: Not too happy. I mean, I can take leave as and when I need, and I have a life outside work. But I'm afraid I'm getting rather hassled by and even pre-occupied with work. Sometimes, I have to make myself go home; other times, I want to leave while there's still some daylight but I just can't. Recently, I'm unable to go out on Saturdays and Sundays without checking my emails in the morning in case I miss anything, and at night, I'll take a look too. I believe that work-life balance is a personal choice, but I'm feeling like I'm losing the ability to choose.

Not difficult to guess that I placed (4) as most important to me. For now, guess will make do with whatever work-life balance ratio trade-off I can get - I have been working my ass off so that I could hand things over nicely when I go on a holiday next week. I'm sure when I come back, it's going to be worse. I always find it such an irony that the holiday is not really a holiday. There is always work; you don't end up doing less work cos you're just cramping the work within a shorter timeframe before and after the work blackhole so that there is also life.

Anyway, I've digressed too much. I should really go do some work while I have some time. Be back in June..