Heart Space #58: Top 10 things about Bahamas

I guess it's typical to write such a note, especially that I have spent almost a year in this place.. Maybe even more than when I studied in Australia.

1. Clear turquoise waters and the pristine beaches
This has to be the 1 thing that I can never forget. The waters in Nassau is already pretty awesome, but if you go to the nearby  island, the colors will simply take your breath away. These waters, coupled with the fine sandy beaches will put out Sentosa's beaches to shame... seriously. These folks love their beaches and they seriously take good care of it.

2. Road and Traffic
Something that I have to get used to quickly when back in Singapore. The drivers here are the most courteous I have seen so far. Their car horns, are for expressing gratitude for giving way, and not for cursing and yelling at folks who drives a tad too slow or road hogging. You can almost get out a petrol station, a busy road junction after 5 cars... In Singapore, you probably can't get out even after 5 minutes. Another great thing is that once there are sirens, the cars will all move to the sides and wait for the ambulances or police to go through. I must also mention that no cars will then tail gate them... so unlike in Singapore.

3. Crowd
Along with the culture and the beautiful scenery, it has to be the absence of huge crowd everywhere. I do not need to queue for long to get a seat in a restaurant, nor long queues in shops. Even their local transport such as the buses, no one is ever in such a rush to get in or out of them. There's always time for the next one.This is definitely something I will miss from here.... when I go back to Singapore, for it will feel that i am not in my own country.

4. Service Standards
The service culture is simply fantastic. Maybe it is due to the fact that 75% of their economy is by tourism, but nonetheless, it is in their culture, their blood. I have yet to receive a bad service from the service industry here, in fact, I am almost always satisfied.

5. Food
Finally something that I am sitting on the fence. I really miss the varieties of Singaporean food. There's also little raw ingredients for the wifey to cook things that we get back home. I do like their cuisine, just that I am not that crazy over them. I love Goombay soda drink, conch fritters, cracked conch, Daiquiri and their fresh seafood... groupers, lobsters etc.

6. It's nearer to US than to other Caribbean islands
As my colleague puts it, it's easier to get to US, and we did on 2 occasions. Wifey and Faith love those trips there. We enjoyed Miami and Orlando with the outlets shopping, Disneyland and the tons of good food that we had there. Of course.. we love ordering stuff from Amazon and praying that the packages reach before we fly back to Bahamas.

7. Family life
What can I say about this... we spent more time as a family, doing stuff, chilling, going to the beach than all our time combined in Singapore. I so going to miss this place, this lifestyle...something that I should try to maintain even when back home.

8. Safety
Never take safety for granted, in fact anything for granted. This hurricane Irene showed us what you may possess today, may be taken away from you the next day. We must always pay attention to our surroundings, and more so especially when it comes to the well-being of your family. We also take for granted the level of security we have back in Singapore where we can go out till late at night, knowing that it is pretty alright to do so.

9. Groceries, Supermarkets and Stores.
US comes close to Singapore when we talk about huge supermarkets with tons of things to buy. At least the supermarkets here have no long and winding queues that takes forever to pay even for 1 item. Also they have young kids to help you pack and push your trolleys to the car. Maybe this would prevent folks from pushing the trolleys home...

10. Culture.
It's never enough to talk about their culture. What I love about their culture is the way the praise the Lord in everything they do.. yes, including launching of e-services.. and how they put their families in front of everything else. Being with their loved ones, doing things for their siblings are very evident in their daily lives. How often have you organize a birthday party for your brother or sister? We Singaporean should seriously reflect and take a moment to ask ourselves, what truly matters?

Heart Space #57: Tougher on the girls?

Almost every morning as I come down the Island Bridge from Paradise Island, my car will be stuck at the traffic lights. Recently there are some kids, probably around the age of 8-10 knocking on the window of every car asking for donations. Sometimes these kids will slam a piece of (seemingly official) paper on the window explaining to the passengers why they needed some donations. Only once did I manage to see exactly where my money was supposed for; it was for their school field trip to Florida, US. *gasp*

Well, I have given to them on several occasions sometimes without the need any justification as to why they needed the money in the first place. But yesterday, I got myself thinking that these kids, if they want to go for a field trip or something, shouldn't they work hard and save for it? In Bahamas, kids will work help out at the supermarkets, packing up your groceries, push your cart back to your car, unload the groceries etc... and more often than not, they get tips ranging from $1 to $5 US dollars. My wife and myself willingly give these kids for the services they rendered, afterall as my wife puts it loosely, "better be (at) here, then go play or idle elsewhere". While I do not like the idea of working at such a tender age, but over here, it is slightly different as these children may not get that much or any pocket allowances and helping out these supermarkets surely beat loitering and bumping around all day.

It worries me that all the kids I have seen, at the supermarkets or at the road junction asking for money are all boys. It makes me wonder how are the girls coping or work as to get some money for food should the need arises. Maybe they do help out in hair salons or some retail outlets to get by. It did occur to me that within the lower income group, the women on this land, seems to be tougher than the men. They are either young parents (mostly single), or working to support their entire household. Like in my case, the cleaning lady has to work few houses a week to support her husband and kid when the husband loses his job. I have seen my fair share of a sole female proprietorship operating a make shift stall selling cooked food, with her child sitting quietly in a corner.

Heart Space #56: End of Bahamas II

I am almost done with yet another posting and I have some time on hand to pen this long blog.

This time is a tad different from the previous ones that I had mainly because I had the luxury of having my family here with me throughout. It is their 2nd time back in Bahamas, the first being way back in late 2010. Having the wife and kid around definitely has its plus points as we managed to go on some getaways and holidays, not forgetting the those weekend grocery trips. Thankfully, there have been influx of different personnel from my company or Ecquaria's (especially Didi) to keep my wife and kid company. I am also glad that everything turned out fine and that the ladies of my house made some good friends too. (WanSie, Michelle, Georgin, Summer etc)

This assignment initially was for 9 months and thankfully (or not), the project timeline was shortened to 6. The project itself has it whole suite of issues and problems. The arrangement itself was difficult as me being the overall programme office, we (or rather I) do not have absolute control of the vendor (IBM) scope of work, which covered the infrastructure, portal and the horizontal services. We had a back to back agreement with Ecquaria who are developing the e-Services. 95% of my time are spent on sorting out the issues between design and implementation differences between these 2 vendors. At the same time, I have to manage client's expectations and ensuring that all the teams are working towards the common goal. With the successful launch of the portal and e-Services, I must admit that it was a great achievement not just for me personally, but the teams who have been involved from day 1.

Having said that, there are always folks who wants to steal someone's else thunder, maybe to compliment what they lack in their own department. Through the course of this assignment, I have seen my colleague, go against almost all I stood for, personally and professionally so that she could please the customer or get her way. The background of her work (and her teammate) is to start a new organisation and transit some of the existing resources into their new job or positions. Along with these, assessments and interviews are required in order to assess the suitability of the candidates in order to place them into the relevant job functions. However, based on what I have learnt and found out, the tests and assessment are not conducted in a transparent or fair manner. There were personnel who have not taken the tests and yet be placed into positions. In the end, there are some disgruntled government employees who questioned the integrity of the assessment and the impartiality of our company. Unfortunately, HQ could not do much about it, even though some of our folks have already feedback to them. As usual, HQ only knows as much as what is being updated to them, so to them things are often rosy.

Personally, she is absolutely hideous. I seldom (if not never) use this on anyone before. One example was how she made noise about having to tag along our trip to Miami to some of my other colleagues. We have never requested that she follows our itinerary, in fact, probably it is better for us that it is a family trip. I did even offer that she can take the car and drive to Florida Keys if that's was what she wanted, but she didn't take up the offer. Since she is already aware of what we wanted to do, why follow through the trip? What made it worse was that she kept telling me and my wife that she had enjoyed the trip tremendously.

One of the most despicable thing was that she complained to my HQ requesting that my extra fly-backs be removed as a result of my shortened posting. In her email that I was kindly kept in the bcc loop by the project director, she even said that she is not trying to remove my fly-back, but merely questioning the HR policies however, the email was never sent to HR. To top it all off like what she always does, she requested that her email be kept confidential and not be shared with me or my other colleagues as she is "a good friend and colleague" of me. My wife and me simply were flabbergasted. We wondered what else have been going on behind our backs and how HQ perceived our work overseas. (Note. also she told HQ that I do not like long haul flights... Bleah)

I could go on and on... but I just want to share one last one. Her track has 2 resources including herself. Yet this time, she is not actually doing any real deliverable. They were done by her teammate, but herself went on to do other "client pleasing" activities such as supervising renovation work, preparing for the launch (not even her track) and preparing a self gratification presentation for the client. I wonder just how many of the clients actually like her, considering how messy our office is now, and that their jobs are in limbo without knowing truly what had happened. In my opinion, there are so much work to be done; developing governance processes, helping with the transition, ensuring that all the employee grievances are addressed, unions are happy etc. This should be what her track truly entails. Finally, to top it all off, her team mate was only asked to attend the appreciation luncheon at the last minute.

While we need to constantly balance the company's bottom line versus the true meaning of a piece of good work, this seems to be a little over-stretched. In my view, when you talk about mentoring, a good indicator of a good well done could be that they no longer need you to be around to guide them and that they should feel confident enough in their new job functions.We should stop blaming our clients for being slow, unwilling to move for these are the constraints we know, especially we have been here before.

Before we point the finger at others, let's examine ourselves...