Things I left behind for SG...

After four and a half long, long, loooong years in Sykes supporting the problems of other people, I have finally resigned.

Big step for me; definitely big changes up ahead... Not the easiest decision for me to make, but one that I know I have to make. My life's not just for me anymore.. All of my future decisions will take into account my wife and family.

So now, let's see.. What exactly did I leave behind....

My family of course... After 26 years, this is the first time that I'll be leaving them for a very long time. You can tell the tension when I broke the news to them. My siblings, being a little bit old-fashioned as they were -- they are 11 and 9 years older than me -- thought that it's a big mistake to suddenly resign and look for opportunities somewhere else. To them (or at least the less open-minded sibling of mine) said that I would have wasted all of my four and a half years here if I go somewhere else -- note that they are both currently employed in their first jobs -- she's there for almost 15 years, the other one almost 12 years.

In the end, though, perhaps realizing that we have already made up our mind, they were all supportive, even giving us a despedida lunchout last Saturday.

I'll also be leaving tons of material things here, since we are only limited to 20KG luggage and 7KG handcarry. Our house, thankfuly, is going to be manned by one of our most trusted friends here. For security reasons, I will not post his/her/its name here. :-)

Also, Grae, our '91 Toyota Corolla was sold off. It's old enough to be a 3rd year high school student (15 years) and experience tons of crashes, scratches, bumps, and other stuff at my hands. Hehehe... My practice car as it were, I learned to drive in Pasay -- perhaps one of the best, uhmm, "training grounds" -- using this car and that is where I got most of my driving experience. You may want to practice driving in Pasay.. Hey, if you can get through a two-lan two-way side street with cars parked on one side, you can drive anywhere! :-)

Anyway, Grae is already showing signs of his age -- frequent monthly problems, excessive "kalampag", etc -- so it is best that we sold him off. The new owner should be able to take care of it much better than I did.

Of course, I'll be leaving behind my second home, my job. Unlike most of my other batchmates there, I really like my job. Sure, there are several times when I said I no longer want to work there, but that is only a stage/phase... Stress is high, so it really does get to you after a while... After getting the stress of my system, everything's back to normal. I learn more with dealing with people (which is one of the few things that I least miss, but otherwise thankful for) as well as more techie stuff. Also, got more practice on time management -- going back n forth between managing your cases and reviewing the cases of others. Ah yeah... Those times were great.. Rendering OTYs, getting nothing but shit from customers, client and/or client representatives not making life easy for you.. Things like that.

Sure, there are a lot of politics involved (although I must say it is significantly reduced now than way back then, around 2 years ago), but that's office life.. Actually, that's life.. As long as there is a group of people, some form of politics will be involved. I really don't miss this part much, but I did learn a lot about people because of it. How people act, react, and manipulate the people around them. The backstabbing. The hypocrisies. Everything and anything you can think of. It's the ugly part of any business and something that everyone must deal with.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.. The office politics there in the "Timberlake" account is a real eye-opener. I saw first hand what my Dad said about the office: know how to deal with your peers (same level as you are), with your subordinates (under you) , and your bosses (above you). Dealing with each one is important as well as keeping the balance among them...

In spite of the politics there, though, I believe what I'll miss most are the people of the SEC team. The team has seen the best and the worst. Getting the most number of cases (and in turn, generates the most revenue for the account/company), each engineer is doing the task of three, perhaps more. And yet, we see each of them -- although complaining whichis understandable -- doing everything they can to do their work, being the best in what we do.
And yet at the end of the day, the team manages to have fun. It's a great team, one that I hope the management would recognize. I really do hope everything is done to make the lives of these selfless engineers a lot easier.

That's all for now... :-)