Good luck, good health...

It's just funny how things come not by the dozen but by the droves. Even as I am recovering from saying farewell to my male Shih Tzu, I am now told by the vet that my female Maltese is suffering from nose cancer and probably has about six months or so to live. Well, if I were to backdate to the time when I first noticed a swelling on the bridge of her nose and her frequent sneezing, then at least two months would have gone by. We discussed chemo and radiation, but I guess having been associated with medical teams that handle cancer patients, I would just have to face the facts and move ahead.

All said, I was working with a client after some four years and now she has resigned to take up another job. Barely weeks after she tendered her resignation, it was time for me to send my maid back to Indonesia for her work contract has expired after two years. Thinking that these were just coincidences, I went to my usual watering hole, and there was the two guitar strollers who told me that they were leaving because their contract was terminated. So another "adios amigoes" and they sang their last seranade. But before they left, another solo guitarist who was performing at an affiliated pub also had his contract cut short, and strummed his last song one Saturday evening.

Tomorrow, and I hope it will be the last for now, I will be giving a lunch to bid one of my staff good luck and good health as he takes up another job. But at the way things are going at home, I may have to shake hands with my new maid because she's just unable to cope with her duties.

Well I am just thinking of the lyrics from one of the evergreen songs: "I wonder should I go, or should I stay...The band has only one more song to play..."

Wash away by recession

The advertisements in the newspapers posed a constant reminder that the Christmas season is just round the corner. The trees along the main business district was also donned with bright city lights and colourful decorative buntings. Santas, with their bushy beards and bells are somehow noticeable absent...perhaps it is still too early. Certainly the mood is dampened not only by the economic recession that pervades across the spectrum of society but even the weather is not letting up. Amid the whole gloom, I believe not everyone is affected badly. I would exclude the rich from the list as they are obviously still comfortably sitting on their wealth albeit the values may have lost one or two zeros. Certainly if we look at the professionals, the lawyers, doctors, accountants and those who are holding senior management positions like CEO, COO, CFO, Corporate Secretary, General Manager etc they would still be well cushioned from the impact of the recession. Perhaps they may be denied the additional dressings on top of their main dish, but the fact remains that they would still have their main dish. The next level would be those who are in the middle management. Earnings may be curtailed by employers cutting back on annual bonuses and increments, but they too would have benefited from the employer's generosity with raises in salary in 2007 and all the perks that came with it. Their only fear is that they have to keep themselves employed because when the axe comes down often it would fall on the middle terrain. The lower rankings and those on the shopfloor are the worse off. Though their wages may be small, often they are the target of retrenchments by virtue of their being in large numbers. $1500a month each for 1000 workers is a lot of money for a struggling business, compared with $5000 a month for four senior managers. Besides during bad times companies need good managers to develop the business, or to hold whatever business there is left. The production or shopfloor work can be outsourced or be done by fewer numbers, working a little longer hours.

The signs were there before the tidal waves hit the shores. Yet many in postion of authority did not more than make verbal exhortations and became passive bystanders when the waters crashed on the beaches, wiping away whatever stood in its way. Could we not divert the workers on the shopfloor to other areas? Point them to safer avenues where they can take temporary refuge even though wages may be lower? Did we think about it at all, or did we fail to lift a finger for them?