Work Experience The GEP might have quite a handful of students during my school days. Hence maybe I am not the only one labelled genius and a professor going to be an emiritus. Maybe there are a handful of prodigy, genius as well as profoundly gifted. Hence the challenged. Based on real age and not black magic spell age. Based on present year and calculated backward. Some interlapse while schooling. Age 7 turning 8, taught O-level to secondary 3 student. She passed her O level from a failure to a B3 grade. Age 8, taught kindergarten student for years until they were primary 4 or 5. Age 8, work in personnel department with Cycle and Carriage while waiting for my A level result. That will be 12 years ago. I used a machine called Word Processor. It was an electronic typewriter with a huge screen as big as computer. I used that to type out minutes of meeting. I used fax machine too. Not sure when fax machine and computer were introduced. Just take present year minus 12 years ago. Besides Word Processor (the thing was taken out of the market I think), I used computer to type out names of employees on letters for promotions, salary adjustment etc. There was no Microsoft yet. I used Wordstar as well as Wordperfect (if I can remember the names correctly). Age 9, I was working in Unidaf SA France under IB Diploma vacation training program. Nothing much except receiving calls from Indonesian coffee beans trader, filing, did some registration in Registrar of Business and updating high low graph. That work stint earned me the best Vacation Training Report award against the rest of the Business Administration faculty. Upon graduation, I worked in Unispan Pte Ltd as a coordinator. The very bottom of supply chain industry. This was a freightal company. It gave me an education on different types of cargo, loose or in container if via shipping. What type of special escort for overheight or overlength cargo for road transport. What type of inspection needed before certain goods can be send out for export or can be imported in. There will be fumigation needed for wooden pallets, SGS inspection, what import product needs to be taxed etc. The real look of AWB and bill of lading. The differences when goods are to travel via air versus via sea. This time round, I used telex machine. Age 10, Reda Pump Singapore Pte Ltd. I was working as a coordinator in a manufacturing line. It allows me to view how orders placed by sales office were processed in the manufacturing environment. How every changes on order since the pump is custom made, will impact on factory line. This job is about paper trail for different departments. In this line, I was introduced to view order processing, scheduling, engineering, factory floor and warehousing. Age 11, Hewlett Packard as Order Specialist. I moved on to sales office and was learning on how to process order received from customer. Were taught on order validation with a special emphasis on Standard Organisation Business Conduct. This is where I learnt on embargoed, sanction countries and I was mainly dealing with Asia countries. Married & took my degree while working. Age 12, promoted to Order Analyst, pregnant and was hit by black magic spell making me lost 8 kg during 1st trimester. My job was taken over by a temp while I taught him on system. Started to do a report using excel spreadsheet and for my degree, Visio. Was it only 8 years ago that Microsoft was introduced to the world? How come Bill Gates look so very old so quickly?! Age 13 gave birth to our first daughter Maisarah. Started to do project improvement to shorten delivery leadtime. It was an initiatives of the US counterpart. I used the proposed method and the customer was then passed on to another colleague. There was a project on rebates for IT Technologies. Cant exactly remember the details. Promoted again to Business Process Analyst while pregnant with our son Muhammad Danish. I started to travel between KL and Bangkok while also looking after a very sick daughter down with bronchitis which then later developed pneumonia. The job required me to take over Thailand as well as the Malaysia office. Both colleagues lost their jobs as they were unwilling to move to Singapore. I also revamped business flow and creation of reports as order processing department no longer resides with the sales office. Once that was done, I was promoted to Customer Sevice Officer (bloody name for a degree holder positions). I was asked to handle the SEA unbilled inventory to allow revenue recognitions. As some orders were aging badly, the case files were inches thick, I scrutinized via order what had gone wrong. I was able to clear up really past aging orders working with the director on what were allowed to be written off. I was leading and assisting the team on how to resolve issues as well as to have as much revenue recognition as possible. Impressive results as department gave free lunches as well as extra bonus (cant remember how much). New system was also introduced. I was using Rainbow and this time round, I learned how to create quotation. Please also note that for every new computer system given to me to use, it was taught on the spot and I was supposed to use them immediately for work. This was also the period I turned down work travel to Barcelona Spain to head new implementation system SAP. It clashed with Eid Day and I did not have the heart to leave my family behind. Age 14, by then I took up Australia working hours to spend time with the growing up children. At times I woke up at 5 am to reach office before 6 am or woke up at 4.30 am to reach office before 5.30 am. My husband was still sleeping. I ran down two floors to send Danish to babysitter. Ran up back to pick Sarah and headed to my nannys place via taxi. Head count was frozen. Some people left. Australia headcount was reduced from 2 people to 1.5. Was still leading the unbilled inventory project. I turned down a query if I would like to be promoted as a manager as I still wanted to spend time with our children. Here was another test. I was asked to use new SAP system immediately upon reaching work. I was away from the office down with chicken pox. Everyone in the family was hit. No issue in using the system although I missed the two weeks SAP training others had to go through. I was the only one in the office due to following Australia hours. Age 15, I changed job to Partner Operation Manager with BlackBerry. Our children have started growing and I needed to earn more money. Went over to Canada Waterloo for training. Came back bought a car as well as hired a domestic helper. Aim was to spend more time with the children which I did. Since they were borned to this stage, I was nurturing, reading to them daily, brought them to different playground, bought cakes monthly to allow them to blow candles for fun, went to Science Centre to look at exhibition and play at the water park, brought them to restaurant (usually Swensen), cinema, parks and to the library every Friday. Husband often not around, working. In BlackBerry, as a partner operation manager, I learnt how an order is translated to deliver for a new product launch. This time, the work added how pricing was set up, how new product launch is made, the marketing and promotion aspect, the engineering, plus the whole of supply chain. This time round, instead of working with direct buyers, I was dealing with business partners for eg Singtel, M1. Then they introduce the concept of distributors, cutting off the business partners. Here I found a lot of processes can be implemented. However not able to due to lack of support from manager. Our department was kicked from one manager to another. This was also the place where I handled numbers in huge quantity. Was asked to calculate on how much rebates the distributor can received. Just imagine 1 million units shipped within 3 months multiply by selling price multiply by %, how huge the discount was. I think sometime it reached nearly USD 1 million. Hence there was two people to run the report. The financial analyst versus me. I then had to find out why there was a discrepancy, justify them before sending in for discount approval. This needed to be done within the day on top of the normal operations job. Age 17. Last job. Promoted to Accounts Receivable manager. Was asked to travel to Canada again for two weeks. Divorced was supposed to be approved the week I was travelling. In Canadas was asked to create my own job learning and tell the team what I needed from them to take over their job. Flew back to Singapore and was able to reduce the badly aging accounts. Somehow, I was tested on how the payment were made. The numbers didnt tally or customer communication did not relay full information. Anyway, I found the job extremely easy. I created a process and shared it with my manager. No feedback given. In BlackBerry, I worked with the whole of Asia Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Canada. The only country I never managed was Japan. Hence, you can see that my education in corporate life covers nearly every department. By this stage, after we sold off our maisonette, my cash on hand was approximately S$140000. Not sure how much my husband have then. During our marriage, I was the one bearing the weight of total expenditure for our family. Basic plus luxury. I bought clothing for the children, myself as well as for my husband. I paid for the home renovation (S$30000) plus nearly everything like soft furnishing and electrical appliances. Some were my gift to my husband, some shared. His was only the home entertainment set (gift for entertainment stand, sound proof door & aircon) which I helped him to design and create. We travelled a lot as I do not have the heart to leave the children behind. Hence leisure or business travel I paid for everything except for my husband airline tickets. My CPF after selling our maisonette home amounts to S$400000 while my husband amounts to S$300000. Even then, the split of home sale was not equally done. It was merely based on CPF contribution instead of adding on cost of renovation plus any other fittings. He was begging me to have mercy as he needs to buy a new home. I guess new wife.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 03:30:44 +0000
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