Is Life Tough?

I would like to apologize that this blog has not update for more than 10 days. Not to worry, I'm not feeling down and give up blogging because I'm jobless.

Over the past 10 days, I've been aggressively thinking and working on my future direction. At the same time, my house's Internet access was down for a few days. It's such a hard life for me without Internet access. I missed so much on Facebook.com, Blogger.com, online newspaper and local share market web sites.

Talk about my previous post, the news is still the same, there is no news for the jobs I applied in KK. Nonetheless, I did go for a couple of interviews using my existing connection. They are not looking good for me, so I decided to give them up. 

Time past like dropping a coin, it's coming to the end of March already. If this 'work in hometown plan' doesn't work out as what I'm expected, I believe it's time to exercise my backup plan, to find a job in the place where I'm working. It should be pretty easy with my existing achievement and connection. So I believe I will be fine.

Perhaps there are not many perfect solutions in this world. We should determine and work out the perfect solution at our own. No winner will win until the end, if he is already satisfied with what he has achieved.

Let's work on it.

A Retrenchment Story From Ekimkee

Have you ever being retrenched by your ex-company?

I guess this should be a rare case, if we work diligently and faithfully. However, sometimes it's not within our control. No matter how much effort and time you contributed to your company, close down, economy recession and natural disaster can cause you jobless within a short period.

I've been serving my current company for 3 years. I felt 'very lucky' that I received a notification from my management that I've been retrenched. In fact, it's not only me but the entire team in the region are being retrenched. This should be the first time experience in my life and I felt pitiful about it. I'm being told that the stakeholders decided to shut down this subsidiary operation last month. That's it.

Today, I'm being retrenched in the age of 31. Imagine that what if I've been retrenched in age of 41 or 51, how bad it could be for me to look for another job. Unless the position and field I'm working for is very demanding and extremely skillful, otherwise the age would be a problem. I was thinking, become an entrepreneur could be a permanent solution to avoid being retrenched again in the near future. 

Unfortunately, I'm still very poor in creativity, innovation and imagination. I do not see myself have much improvements over the years. I found out that my personality may not suitable to become an entrepreneur, at least for the time being.

On the other hand, it may consider a good news for me, as I've the intention to return and settle down in my hometown. I would like to live together with my family, relatives and friends. My parents are old and they may lost their ability to take care at their own one day. Another good thing of being single is that I'm portable.

My last working day will be end of this month. I've been looking for job in my hometown over the past few weeks. I applied some jobs via a local online job site, but so far so bad and no reply from the employers at all. 

Whatever it is, I'll go back to my hometown first in early April before stepping forward. Good luck to me in looking for a job in my hometown, I know it is not easy as I'm a little bit demanding. Worst come to worst, I will have to come back and work in the neighbor country again.

By the way, let's not forget to pray for the earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan. 

Remembering People's Name

Do you like socializing? How about remembering people's name?

Different people has different interest. Some of them like it, some of them force to due to work and purpose, and some of them have the choice not to. I personally don't really like socializing. I'mt not sure why, perhaps it's cultivated since I'm small. Occasionally socializing perhaps it's a good thing. So I've no problem for it. 

Unfortunately, I do have problem remembering other's name. Yes, I have no problem to recognize people's face at all. But I do have big problem in remembering people's name. Normally I can only cache the name for a couple of months only when I meet the person more than 2 times. 

In fact, remember people's name is a kind of respect to other. Most of the people likes to be cared and respected. People feel respected when you remember them and call them by name. And that's why remembering people's name is very important for sales people.

Nonetheless, I do have no problem in remembering beautiful and prestigious people, they are charming and I don't know why I can remember their names automatically even though I just met them once.

After I did some analysis, the problem more or less is related to my intention and desire. If my intention is to know that person or have purpose with him or her, definitely I have no problem to remember their names. Otherwise, most of the time I can forget the person name easily, even after 15 secs of introduction. Another problem is I'm not really efficient in using my memory to do this.

So how do we overcome this problem if we have this problem of remembering other's name? Since I know the root of the problem, perhaps I can change my intention. But this is hard because sometimes we just forgotten about it. 

The other effective method would be immediately jot down the person's name into paper or mobile right after introduction. 

If that's very cumbersome for you and you would like to be more professional, perhaps you can consider using another effective method from a memory guru, Harry Lorayne. He claimed that he can remember the names and faces of everybody in the audience of his lectures. I'm not sure how many hundreds of people in his lectures, but more than 10 people at a time are pretty good enough for me.

In his tips given, the only way to remember names is to tie the name o the person's face. The face will bring the name to mind, and the name will help you to picture the face. In short, they are 2 steps involved. The first one is to make the name mean something. 

For example, McCarthy might make you think of a ventriloquist's dummy, Charlie McCarthy. For no meaning name, you may use your imagination. For example, for a name like Gordon, you can always picture a garden. You also can make a sentence if you can imagine it. For example, Kusek - See a cue stick being sick. "Cue Sick" = Kusek.

Now, the 2nd step is to tie the name, or the substitute word for it, to the face. For example, Smith. Smith has a large nose. See that nose as a blacksmith's hammer, or you're hammering on his nose with the hammer. Again, this is individual thing. 2 people may look at the same face and pick 2 different features.

That's about it. I've summarized the method and perhaps you would like to refer to his memory book for full details. I hope you found the 3rd method interesting. Of course, practice makes perfect. The best way to practice all this is to go ahead and do it. 

There is another guru sharing 5 tips to remember people's name, which you may be interested.

Good luck and have a nice weekend, folks!