Bureaucracy

I have been hearing this word a lot but I never found myself dealing with it till recently.

Ever since we took over this new project, 80% of the time we spend is in dealing with bureaucracy issues because they are the main reason the project is WAY behind schedule. it exists to make whatever possible impossible.

no matter how much I explain, you guys won't understand how bureaucracy is involved in every single aspect we deal with. I once read this quote about bureaucracy which was funny but somehow true (Sharr Al Baliyyah ma yu'97ik)
“I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughtnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, 'Don't even act like I didn't get that doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... It's in my file at home. ...Under "D".














you think that's funny, here is a story that happened at work yesterday. We occupied a new office space and we are sharing it with 2 other companies. I was really tired and stressed and needed some tea to straighten up my mind. I call the tea boy to ask him to make me tea and this is his reply: "Sorry sir, I can't make you tea without my boss's permission, I need you to submit a letter requesting my service and it needs the signature from the project manager and must be signed by the developer"

Blank...

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Still in shock...

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having a "WTF" moment.

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ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!!!!!!!

I used to get tea everyday when I used to be a visitor. now that I'm an employee, I can't?! Anyway my colleague handled it the old cowboy way: "no need for any letter, you bring us tea and whatever we require and if your boss has a problem let him deal with me"

The reason why this project came back to life after a messy state is because our CEO is the biggest enemy of bureaucracy. he follows a simple way of dealing with it:" I would rather apologize later than ask for permission."

I'm sure many of you deal with bureaucracy everyday in work and school. you know that when "paper work increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing." <<< Gotta love that quote.



End Of Blog Entry...

R.E.O shuts down operations

I’m back! (but maybe not for a long while)

I have been super busy lately. I feel I have no life anymore xD

For months I and my colleagues got the vibe that the company is not doing well. After getting this big project 4 months ago we forgot how bad the situation is and got caught up in work.

September 16, 2009: early Eid gift: The Mexican resigns after giving up on the directors in Dubai. They have been so unsupportive, so negative, so stingy, and worst thing: they keep lying over and over again.

September 26, 2009: The board of directors gets into a very long meeting discussing the resignation of the Mexican and the situation of the company. 3 possible solutions were proposed:

Appointing the COO to be the new CEO.

Appointing a new CEO from Dubai.

Closing down the company.

(Last option is the most likely option they will pick)

October 3, 2009: The directors send an auditor to check all company’s accounts and files. (can it get any more obvious??)

October 4, 2009: CFO flies down from Dubai to give us the hit: R.E.O decides to shut down all its operation due to negative liquidity and insufficient funds. This means that all employees are to be terminated from their jobs!

The news of the company shutting down operations wasn’t as shocking as the fact that the board decided to give us a pity amount as compensation. To be thrown in the streets jobless with so little money isn’t pleasant at all …

Thank god I saved enough money to survive and I have my family to back me up, but what about the others?? Some of my colleagues support 3 families, have couple of loans, and are struggling after the salaries cut. Is it humane to throw them in the street with only a month notice?

October 10, 2009: Chairman Sh. A.M. is back in Oman after a long business trip, TOTALLY unsatisfied with the compensation the directors gave to the employees. He got them to pay us 3 times what they previously promised us. I (and I’m sure all the employees) can’t thank him enough for his support =)

October 10, 2009 – present: Serving my notice period of 1 month, finalizing everything.

I think I can start a whole blog about this closure, probably make a movie out of it, but just wanted to share this part with whoever reads this blog.

I have already received 2 job offers that I need to study and will hopefully start by beginning of November.

End of blog entry…

and I was called "David"

another post related to my recent work change.

There was this somehow-old couple who were inspecting their new house before moving in. They have spent nearly 19 years Oman and the guy could even speak Omani (yup, not just arabic, but the Omani accent of it).

They were very pleased with the amount of work done in the last month, and being the only guy with construction group wearing a Dishdasha , the two were very friendly and the guy spoke with me in Arabic.

I was wondering around with my camera taking several photos here and there, and they asked me politely to take couple of photos of the house and the view in general.

a month later, the wife came with a friend to inspect another house, and the 1st thing she said when she arrived was: "Oh I can see you still have your camera with you"
"Always", I replied being Formal and friendly at the same time.

During the 1st couple of minutes of inspection, she referred to me as "Camera guy".
"What do you think, camera guy?"
"beautiful view isnt it, camera guy?"

she never asked for my name, and for some reason, I never gave my name either.

I think after a while, she felt like she doesnt want to call me "camera guy" anymore, but she never asked for my name. She decided to call me "David", like the famous photographer. ;)

in the rest hour or so of the inspection, she would refer to me as "David". She asked me if I mind that and I told her I don't.

The inspection was done, and we got an "Ok, Thank you Carl, Thank you Marry, and thank you David for your time, hope to see you all soon".

"Who's David??" asked Carl, the troubleshooter with a REALLY BIG question mark over his cowboy hat that he wears 24/7. (which was soooo typical of him, he gets so busy with his work he looses touch with the surroundings. That's why he never noticed that the lady was calling me David this past hour.)

"Oh I called him David, like the famous photographer"

now every now and then Carl would call me "David", along with "Buddy", "difficult", "MTV omani" and couple of other names he has for me :P

The funny thing is, I had couple of conversations, emails, SMS's with the lady's husband regarding financing/payments issues, but I don't think he and her know that I am "David" xD

So that's how I was called David.


End of Blog Entry ...

People are so different

Throughout my job, and being around one of my friends, I got to meet many homeowners from different backgrounds, different personalities, different perspectives, etc.

It’s really interesting in so many ways. I met people who had lousy jobs but inherited lots of money. Some started from scratch and now have become millionaires and some started normally, found a connection, and then built their empire based on that connection.

People are also different in how they treat each other. We met some people who seem to be born with stand-up comedians' character, and some that are just too cold you would yawn in the middle of the day just talking to them.


I'm not being biased here, but honestly, amongst the many homeowners that i have met, the Arabs were the best (generally). I'm not saying all the non-Arabs were bad and the Arabs were great, but that's in general. Most of them were very understanding, talk politely and they were open and easy going.


I will post some good and bad examples.

Special features in the house
- Good: one guy was really upset that he ordered some extra stuff for his house but they weren’t there. He just asked the construction manager politely to check if those stuff can be added or not. A second after that he was throwing jokes about his assistant having an iPhone which is "a joke" to him.
- Bad: one guy found out that he does not have a big back-yard (even though its size is standard in that complex) and kept bitching about it for the whole hour of inspection! :S

Material used in toilets:
- Good: one guy was complaining that the material used in toilets were bad in quality, but when he was told that the same material used in all the houses, he accepted it.
- Bad: one guy replied saying: "well I don't care if all the other owners were dumb enough to accept these materials, I'm not paying till you change them all"

Treating the workers:
- Good: one guy shock hands with all the construction workers and at the end apologized to them if he have taken some of their time during the inspection.
- Bad: one guy told one of the workers: hey, stop what you are doing and leave the house, and he asked the construction manager to take all the workers to wait outside (in the sun) during his inspection (which lasted a little bit over an hour).

I can go on and on but these are just few examples of how people can be so different.

It makes me wonder, those owners must be dealing with many companies and have several properties, so how do they view us (or view me). Sometimes it's easy when you get a pat in the shoulder and a "great job" said to you, or maybe get an email that says that. However, most of the time, people don't show that.

I think giving a little bit of time and thought while doing your work (which is not a very hard thing to do), gives you some comfort that at least other people appreciate you and know that your better than most of the other people they have dealt with.


Let us all make that small extra effort to be better than "most" people ;)

(or you can follow what this poster says) xD

A man I admired

I was with one of my friends who is working in a big residential project.

It was a day where one of the units owner is coming to check his house for final touches before the handover.
Neither I nor my friend have seen the owner. We just knew he is a wealthy businessman from Jordan. I expected to see a guy with an Armani suit, long hair styled with lots of gel.


When the guy came, we were all shocked. We saw a guy with a slightly-over-average beard wearing a normal short jalabiya (Arabic dress men wear in Jordan) and a simple red cap. We greeted each other and exchanged names. He was walking around the house and admiring the finishes, the material used and the design. All the workers there were appraised for their work. He was always smiling and had a simple, very polite way of talking to everyone. Even when there were some obvious flaws, he asked the supervisor to correct them without showing any sign of ingratitude or un-satisfaction.


Just when I thought I can’t admire him more, I was proven wrong. He was discussing the rental agreement (that his house will be rented by a hotel for 11 months, and he’ll be using it for 1 month). The agreement states that when the hotel rents the room for him, he gets 60% of the profit and the hotel gets 40%. He then asked an interesting question: “will these 60% applies only to the room charges? Or will I also get profit from the food and beverages (F&B) the guests order? “

Now I thought that he asked because if the profit includes the F&B, he’ll make more profit. It turns out; he doesn’t want to get profit from the F&B because he doesn’t want to make profit if the guests orders alcohol or pork. Then I admired him even more for having such way of thinking =)



God bless him, his family and may we have more people like him.


End of Blog entry.

Why Dubai??

wow been a long time since I last posted.

and while checking other people's blogs, i though of posting something.

but what???

hmmmmmm

Cars! (i soooo saw that coming)

no I'm actually going to talk in general about why people go to Dubai for shopping.

there are many reasons, but for me, they can be included in these points:
- Prices of goods (unfortunately that's not always the case these days)
- availability of goods (big time)
- variety of options.
- DESCENT malls and shops.

sometimes I wounder why we dont have some of the goods that are sold in Dubai, even though the demand for them is high here.

Both City Centers here (Muscat & Qurm) get soooo crowded during the weekend, couple of extra malls will surely make profit if they open.

I Cant wait for the new malls to open, specially Muscat Grand Mall (because it's goin to be big and close to home)



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ok since i'm talking about Dubai, i'm going to represent a counter argument by giving an example of a trip to dubai, a FAILURE trip if i may say.

I went with my brothers to Dubai for 2 reasons:
- get myself new tires
- Get my bro's Audi TT from the garage it's getting fixed at.

I checked around 7 tires shops, they were either closed or didnt have the tires i wanted -__-
In the end, i found the tires at the dealer, but for a price that needs at least 2 months' salaries =)

my bro went to get his car and went into a huge storm of switching from place to place, everyone blaming the other and nobody knows what's its problem.
I call it: "The curious case of Ayz's TT" -__-

and throughout this Dubai trip, my shirt was stolen at Wild Wadi (who the hell steals a sweaty shirt??) and I lost my new Ray Ban shades that i got from my father =(

BAD trip indeed.


End of blog entry ...

My 1st lecture!

I gave my 1st lecture :D

Date: May 6th, 10 am
students: CEO, COO, Marketing manager.
Subject: Simple interest, compound interest, and their calculations.

the lecture lasted for around 45 mins, and included:
- introduction to interest: definition and history.
- simple interest: definition and calculations.
- compound interest: definition and calculations.

I was nervous at the beginning, you know when you feel like: "SHITT! I cant remember all the slides! the presentation is not set well! is my zipper open??!! (oh wait im wearing a dishdasha)


but as soon as i started talking, everything was going as planned ;)

the above post is not that interesting, what was important to me is the feedback i got from the students :P

since it's I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E for the CEO to compliment me in my face, he just said: well done Amarant, good lecture"

BUT (and it's A BIG HUGE BUT, kinda like the kung fu panda butt)



Oops, BACK TO TOPIC:


our marketing manager came to me after the lecture and told me what the CEO told her after the lecture, and here it is:

" I was surprised, the lecture was really good and Amarant went way above my expectations. He is smart (mashallah) and he knows what he's doing, I cant wait for his next lecture"


it was a nice start of the coming weekend =D


end of blog entry.