I'm worst wedding planner. :D

I must say, I'm gradually regaining back my old talkative and cheerful self, and never gonna miss those times of dissimulation! Life's great again, thanks to people I have known from volunteering and workplace. 

Learning's at its best when you actively learn from people who are expert in their fields. I have gotten it so wrong in my last workplace; I felt so incapacitated all the time. So, it's never about how intelligent you are and how much knowledge you have in the first place. Instead, it's about how adaptive you are to changes and how motivated you are in developing yourself and initiating changes. :)

Never had a module in statistics and was thrown into a field where statistics is most valued, but while I learn the ropes, help was pretty accessible as it was just an email away. The visiting Prof from NUS who led large clinical trials was very kind to meet me and my team a few times to give us invaluable advice on how to approach a study, developing and evaluating it, and that was on top of giving his statistical knowledge input. :)))

Work is accumulating at a pace faster than I can cope. Things are always urgent, and I'm always trying to catch up, no matter how hard I try to pace myself. The moment I complete something and I thought I can breathe for a moment, something bigger comes up again. Work-life fit... When is it gonna be me?

4 abstracts for one research conference, and this means 4 posters OMG. I have trouble making one and now I need to make 4?!! OH NO!

"7 Habits of Highly Effective People" - I'm glad that I'm gonna go for this course next week and so gonna practise mastering the ultimate quadrant thing LOL.

Planning a wedding is a chore; I finally am experiencing the woes of my friends who previously laboriously prepared their wedding! 

Planning a wedding on top of everything I have been busy with is hard work. 

I must say, I definitely don't have a knack for event planning. LOL.

Other than work and more work, I have been busy with... Dog stuff.

Recent case I have been assigned to.

Family with a beautiful Goldie wants to adopt our strays.

Goldie's name is Butterball.. So cute!

Here is Hamburger treading over grasses and terrorising adopter's yard with her kid. :)

Adopter's cute kids with Hamburger.

And what's most anticipated and at the same time tensing me up is of course the solemnisation in September. We've been meeting so many vendors and coordinating so much that we sometimes are at a complete loss about what to do next!

Our vendors left us homework and we can't seem to finish them, and this is definitely, absolutely driving me crazy. LOL. Sometimes, words just can't describe what I want for my wedding, and I felt like gesticulating the message across, but I just don't know how to too. LOL.

Our casual pre-wedding shoot will be at Bukit Timah Saddle Club... And Photographer requested my friends to be present in the photos too as he feels it will be so much more fun! :D
Thanks friends who are all taking leave to be in the shoot, love you guys!

A prelude to the wedding bridal shoot. :D

Here are 3 of my gorgeous bridesmaids!
(I'm trying out the dresses for Ting and Joanne lol.)

Really looking forward to our shoot on 8th July :D

Have to leave the rest of what I wanna share to my next entries.

My family trip to Taiwan.

Birthday card from colleagues (Oh that elf ear!)

Birthday spent at River Safari.

And so many more... Please be patient with me! :D

I'm long winded.

The cool thing about my job is I get to meet different kinds of (pleasant) people and I must say I love it! And the culture and values that the company hold have been really instilled in the staff. Help I need are readily available and people responds very quickly. :D

Recently 2nd PI (I have 2 projects now, long story) assigned a clinical research manager to help me in the data collection as he wants me to submit an abstract for a conference due in end June.

Then I assumed that the manager didn't know anything and explained every detail to him, even took him to the medical records office and show him every bit of the patient's data. Haha! He is a manager who already knew most things but was humble and patient enough to listen to every single word I said.

And later in the email he said, "Thanks for the informative tour." 

Hahahahaha that is a pretty nice way of saying that I'm long winded. 

To say the truth, I'm not an easy person to work with cause I'm always using alot of time to explain something and always micromanaging lol.

My 2 PIs are enthusiastic about research and their passion for research was the reason for my hiatus from this space. And these are medical doctors, not research phd doctors. They are geriatricians and to be able to provide care for the elderly, they are slow paced, long winded and have the tendency to correct everything. Sounds like someone you know? Sounds like me right? Lol. If I have an intellectual capacity like them, perhaps I'll be a geriatrician too. Haha. It's very comforting to know that you are worth 3 hours of your PI's time for each meeting (also cause we are both so long-winded) and he made sure that you understood everything he said before he moved on. Geriatricians have the habit of having u repeat their advice so that they are assured that you understood them lol. I wanted to go for an analysis course and when I seeked his permission, he said, "Don't need to ask me la pls, as long as you don't stop doing research cos now they are really looking into a lot of research on the clinical side..." Lol. Yea, I think other than caring for the elderly, their next major interest is research.

I'm now a confirmed staff after 6 months' probation! Appraisals are times where your boss convey to you his/her honest opinions to you and they are the times where I get pretty nervous about cause I'm really not ascertain if boss (the operations manager, not the PI) knows what I'm doing lol. The first question boss asked me was, "How? Did you enjoy working here the past 6 months? Do you see yourself working here for the next 5 years?" 

They say, when u meet a good boss, follow him wherever he goes lol.

Then he went on to explain what you have done well, what's on target and what needs to be improved. 

And under the section "Develop self and Others", he said I needed improvement.

"Don't be shy to say what you think. I want you to give your opinions, whether personal or professional, to help the team. Give your advice from a view of a researcher to improve the team efficacy. 6 months is no longer a newbie... So many new people are coming in and they need your help. In 2-3 years' time, if anyone needs advice on evaluating a program, I will tell him/her go and ask HJ. I want you to be that person who gives advice to others."

"Develop your own character."

And he said, after going through each point, "Yes, of course I'll confirm you." I found a leader who would spend one to two hours with every employee (from admin assistant to manager level) to talk about his/her development. I found a leader, not a boss. :))) 

Love my job and love my leaders. :)))