Winza

After a month of moving into the middle of the open office, I am starting to get used to the fact that I can no longer hide from people and face the two walls in the corner. The chatter has gone up a bit, which brings me back to the main subject of this post. Sitting in the middle of an open office and facing people can have its downsides too. The forces of office politics feels stronger now that I am facing more talkative people. Different people have different ideas of how things should be managed and people have disagreements a lot of the time. And as a result of this, people whinge and complain about it. I must admit that I complain and whinge and that is the reality of life. But at the same time, I am learning to either complain in silence and keep things to myself or transform the negativity into something more useful. Training my mind to transform any form of discontent into happiness is a very difficult thing to do. It is even more difficult when there are external forces (people) expressing hell-ish mood. I have almost fell into the trap of gossiping today. I certainly feel bad about it, but I really hope that if I chant more, that this tendency would go away.

I need to tell myself that I have the willpower to stay strong and not to be influenced by external forces. Being weak means that I would have the tendency to get sucked into negativity and this will be reflected in my thoughts and behaviours.

Say no to negativity.

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Culture is one of the biggest things at work and in fact, it is one of four major components that make up the strategic intent. I don’t know how to describe it, but I can certainly feel it and even more of it since we moved out of the little corner area next to the kitchenette.

I don’t know what it is that contributes to it. Maybe the newletters that we get every month, the social clubs that people organise and drinks and R&Rs that people hold each month. I used to avoid them as I don’t quite like to mingle with people. Sitting in the corner of the building facing two walls used to make it easier for me to avoid social interactions. In other words, that would probably be one of my many fundamental darknesses inherent in myself.

Since we’ve moved into the open area last month, I felt more of the atmosphere around me. Avoid it is getting more difficult as the two walls are now replaced with people. I chose to get out of my comfort zone and fit in. It doesn’t mean that I had to act in a certain way. I still plug my earphones in when I try to concentrate, but I feel so much happier when I chat to people about things outside of work. And little things like fester celebrations and recognition of people and food sharing brighten things up a bit. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I chose to stay there for 14 months as a contractor.

I often find that I am spending most weekends at home surfing the internet, going out with my family members, playing on my Wii/Camera or going to Buddhist discussions. I also hardly go out to the city or to other places and in fact, I haven’t been to the city for over a month. I am probably being lazy and money conscious again, avoiding people after a week of hard work and refusing to spend more than I need to. Excluding paying back my debt, paying for car insurance and registrations, I only need to spend $50-$60 a week as I live with my parents and I do not have to pay board (although sometimes I need to contribute to grocery shopping and pay bills).

I don’t call myself stingy - I still donate to charities, give presents and take my parents out for meals. The word stingy has negative connotations - To me, it means the unwillingness to give. So I call myself, spending sensibly and being money conscious and there are very good reasons for it:

1. Climate change and drought is pushing the prices of goods and services up.

2. Inflation

3. The more we buy, the more waste we generate

4. I want to be able to own a property by the time I am 25 and pay off all my mortgage within 10 years of buying a property.

And I still enjoy life.

• I was walking around home this morning with my tracksuit pants on and forgot to change into my jeans. I didn’t even realise it till I got off the car at work. Luckily it was casual Friday
• I get a little fidgety at lunchtimes and go out for a mini photo expedition at lunchtimes
• I am still using Telstra as my ISP. It’s slow, connection drops all the time and they have BAD customer service. Don’t know why I am still using it.
• I like weekdays more than weekends.
• People have been complaining the loss of laptop salary sacrifice benefits since Tuesday. If people haven’t been abusing the system and get cheap laptops for non work purposes (via a loophole), then maybe the government wouldn’t have scraped the system. I don’t even know how it works and I don’t intend to know.
• I get my hair pulled at work. And then I poke them back.
• The amount people swear is inversely proportional to the network’s performance on that day.