Author: Sheu Quen

Should Companies Have Counseling Services For Their Employees?

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What do YOU think? Should you have someone to turn to when shit hits the fan? Or are you afraid of approaching anyone at your workplace for fear of misplacing your trust and jeopardising your career?   These questions have been on my mind for a long time, swirling and whirling in my mind ever since I re-joined the rat race in the corporate world. While it isn’t my first job, nor will it be my last, I still feel a little disconnected. I have been facing some work-based difficulties at the office. I find it hard to gel with my coworkers. I find it hard to deliver deadlines. I have fallen behind in my tasks. I have lost precious sleep thinking constantly about the impending training demonstration that I’m supposed to deliver. I have even refused to keep my manager updated on my work progress for fear of disappointing her. I keep to myself most of the time at the office, only opening myself up to one or two colleagues whom I can bring …

What Happens When You Have Been Unemployed for Too Long

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The last time I was unemployed and looking for a job was in January of 2016. The project I was working on in 2015 had closed down and the whole team designated for the project was forced to look for work elsewhere. It took me four months to get a decent job, and even that was a three-month contract at a startup company doing SEO writing. Three months later, I was back out in the unemployment market. Of course, the good news was that a month after my short-term employment ended, another company was kind enough to offer me a job offer, that time a permanent one with growth potential and possibly a brighter future for me. But what if I didn’t get the short-term contract? I’d have been out of a job for almost six months and that would have been a questionable scenario for employers during my interviews. There wouldn’t be an interview. It would have been a full-blown crime-scene investigation and interrogation. I would come under scrutiny for not having found a job, or worse, accused of being …

Book Review: Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie.

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It didn’t take me too long to finish reading this strange and whimsical book here but while reading it, it did feel like it took me forever. I’m not sure if it was a psychological issue, since the title itself is all about time. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by bestselling author, Salman Rushdie, is about the unique relationship between a female jinn, Dunia, and a human male, a philosopher by the name of Ibn Rushd, which spanned centuries, and the brood they created came into existence with a special soul. They were as normal as you and me, holding down a job, gardening, owning a home and driving a car. They were as normal as the other human beings in the story. The only difference was their inner possession of a super power and the levitation that caused an uproar among their own kind. The book wasn’t all about Dunia and Ibn Rushd, though. It was also about the rest of the jinns and jinnias in the fairy world. I was amazed that my …

Book Review: The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jefferies

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When I saw this book on the fiction shelves in Borders, I knew I must have it. The cover was attractive enough, the back of the book told me enough to know roughly what the story would be about, and also because I’ve begun drinking tea (Lipton, to be exact) more so than coffee. Of course, what you read on the back of a book cover can barely tell you much but it can give you an inkling into what to expect from it. Where there is love and romance, there would be secrets and a likelihood of a betrayal or two. It was enough for me to pay for the book and leave. It took me four days to finish reading The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jefferies. Four days. It’s not as short as I thought, but for me, finishing a book in less than a week is a good achievement. The last time I ever recalled having finished reading an entire book in a day or two, or staying up way past midnight …

Battle of the Sexes: Male Managers vs. Female Managers

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On our way home from lunch earlier today, I was telling my husband about my new job and then I realised that in all my past and current employments (I have been working for about 3 years now), the only managers I’ve reported to, served under, and worked with have all been females. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t have a beef with reporting to a female manager but I’ve never reported to and worked for a male manager, hence I have no idea what it feels like (though I get some friends telling me that working for a male manager doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better either!). But I know exactly what it feels like to work for a female manager. Women are women, and they have their follies. Some would be menopausal and cry at the tiniest bit of dissent. Some will rule you like an iron lady. Some prefer male managers because they are less emotional and more rational, while others prefer to work for female managers because they are more compassionate and understanding. Females Over Males According …

Book Review: The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

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A little delayed but here is the long-awaited book review of The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George that I had finally finished reading some time over the week. I must admit that the book was pretty damn amazing. Why? No matter how desperate I wanted to finish reading the book and keep up with my 2016 Goodreads Reading Challenge, I also wanted to take my time with it. It was quite a dilemma, indeed. What I liked about the book was the writing style. It was casually-written, injected with lots of bookish humour and dry sarcasm. The kind of dry Bitish wit that mocks your intelligence but you know they’re just kidding. They don’t mean to put you down or ridicule you. They just want to make you laugh. I also loved how literary it was, with the author leaving a smattering of bite-sized pieces of quotes in books written by dead (or still alive) bestselling authors. Monsieur Jean Perdu’s occupation as the literary apothecary, where he turned a little barge into his floating book clinic on the Seine, sealed my love for …

The A-Z (or Y) of a Book Lover’s Glossary

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Who else agrees with me on this? That no matter where we are, it will always feel like we have been transported to a new destination whenever we pick up a book to read. I feel that way all the time when I had my nose buried between the pages of a book. Carlos Ruiz Zafon took me to the olden days of Barcelona. Cathy Kelly brought me through the streets of Ireland. Elif Shafak was my tour guide in Turkey and Istanbul. And now, Jimmy Carter is wading through the murky waters with me in Georgia, Philadelphia, and Florida. Even though I was never physically there in those places. That’s it, feel the gentle bookish breeze stroking your mind and stoking your imagination. In the meantime, all this reading and bookish fever have prompted within me to draw up a glossary list (with a short caption for each letter) that most (and many) readers can relate to, although these alphabetical terms are more personal to me than to the masses: A – Adventure New travel …

What to Pack for a 3-Day Getaway

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Have you ever wondered what to pack for a three-day vacation, only to realise that you have over-packed your bags despite planning early and ahead of time? Yeah, that happens to me quite frequently. Also, I don’t travel often so mistakes are inevitable. For every five websites I visited, each would tell me the necessary clothing I should bring on my three-day vacation, from swimsuits to evening gowns. But they rarely ever touch on what are the activities and/or hobby items that you can pack when you’re away for only a handful of days.

Play Store vs Playground

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There are at least three playgrounds within the immediate area of the condo I live in, with my husband. Every morning when I join the rest of the corporate zombies on the clogged-up highway, I pass two out of the three playgrounds. When I return from work, I pass by the third playground. Yet, these playgrounds are empty and completely devoid of children laughing and playing on them.